This section gives more information about some of the principles and story behind the CLWRota system.
Main Principles
The CLWRota system has two main ways of describing sessional activity: template slots and real slots. Template slots describe a projected activity some time in the future, based on work plans. Real slots are created when a rota is Setup for a week and are copied through from template slots when an existing event does not block this action. One can think of this process as a rationalisation of how plans meet reality.
Leave records and other one-off or manually entered records will stop template events that conflict with them entering the rota. So, for instance, if Consultant Dawes was expected to do Plastics in Theatre One on Monday morning, when Setup is run, the resource requirement for the Plastics session will be made, but Dawes will not be added to it as she is on holiday.
No resource should ever be able to exist in the system in more than one location.
After setup the first role of the Rota Master is to make sure all sessions are covered. Typically one will use up all available Consultants using Location view, then switch to Trainee view (which is listed by seniority) to assign outstanding sessions to senior Trainees. Further resourcing of trainees can easily be done with reference to their specialities listed in their profiles.
When the rota is ready to be seen by the department and other hospital users which your department wishes to give access to the system, the Rota Master presses Publish. This represents what your department expects to happen for the week in question.
After a rota is published it is still possible to modify it, however the system requires more information about what has changed and why. The affected sessions are marked, and it is possible to send email and/or text message alerts to help notify trainees and consultants of changes to their work schedules.
After the week has been completed, the Rota Master is expected to check that the activity recorded on the rota is accurate, and then to Complete the week. The system keeps a copy of the rota at Setup, Publish and Complete stages to provide data on how expected activity deviates from what actually happened, to assist with future planning.
There are many more features and aspects of the system, including sub-rotas (or on-call rotas), leave books for trainees and consultants, consultant and trainee specific logins, management functions and so on.
The CLWRota Story
The CLWRota story started in early 2005.
The South Manchester Hospital Anaesthetics Department were looking for software to help make their department more efficient and manageable, and to extend their current leave book system (based on Filemaker Pro).
In close consultation with two senior figures in the department, the CLWRota system was slowly developed through several iterations to provide a usable, centralised, yet secure web-based rota management system with an integrated leave book.
