Home

"Working together to reduce commuting times and improve the well-being of UK doctors in speciality training".

​

​

​

Rotational training is not easy, it’s tough moving to a new hospital and tougher when the commute is long. The job of allocating doctors in training to their next hospitals is hard and methods vary, to an unknown extent, across the UK and specialities. The Reducing Trainee Commutes Initiative (RTC-I) has been created to explore and improve current methods of hospital allocation to reduce the impact of rotational training, for both trainees and Training Programme Directors (TPD).

​

​
 

​

​

​

Why is this important? 

Health

Reduced time at home has several deleterious impacts on health (1).

• Physical: exercising, eating well and sleeping enough.

• Psychological: driving requires concentration, contributing to fatigue.

• Social: less time to fit in social activities after work.

​

Road safety
Those working night shifts are likelier to have an accident (2). A 2017 survey with 2231 anaesthetic trainee responses in the UK found that 73.6% of trainees feel that fatigue impacts their physical health and 59% of trainees had experienced an accident or a near-miss whilst driving home from night shifts (3).

Driving tired is considered dangerous driving under the Road Traffic Act (1988). A serious injury to a single individual caused by dangerous driving has the starting point of a three-year jail sentence. A death in this circumstance has a six-year custodial sentence as a starting point (4).

Educational

Extra hours of study are required to pass exams during speciality training.

Financial

Health Education England (HEE) will now only reimburse fuel for miles driven over 17 miles each way, leaving many trainees out of pocket.

Environmental
1. Reduced chance of walking/cycling/using public transport to commute.
2. Extra miles driven contribute to carbon emissions, a direct contradiction to the NHS commitment to NHS Zero by 2040 (5).

​