Extended Working Hours

Question:

To help fulfil our contractual obligations we are looking at extending our working day to include an evening session. I would be most grateful for any information from members who have implemented this change, from problems with existing staff to expected average number of UDA’s for the evening session. We are a large NHS practice with 6 surgeries and 11 dentists! Many of our girls have been with us for over 20 years. I’m sure this service would be very popular with our patients.

Answer:

How long is a piece of string?

Depends how many hours you do in the evening, how many patients you see, how fast you see them.

Tell your staff it’s a PCT requirement and we are all lucky to have a job.

We have always done it, working late is a pain in the rear but patients appreciate it in general in the present economic climate.

As Nike say.. Just Do It!!

Answer:

When we started doing a late evening, the first thing we did was ask all the nurses individually if they would like or mind to work a late sometimes or once a week etc.

We were lucky as one of our nurses really wanted to do it as it gave her some time in the morning to get things done, she now works 11-7 instead of 9-5.

If none of them really want to then I would probably have done it on a rota basis so that they only had to do a late every so many weeks.

Answer:

We have evening sessions for a different reason we are Ortho and our evening sessions are for our Private patients, we offered the nurses and receptionist overtime at the rate of time and half, this meant we had a good response and have been able to offer this to patients for nearly 5 years now.

May 2012