In my first HO posting, I was shocked by the amount of bullying and abuse of rostering power that roster planners wielded — fellow junior doctors who prioritised their own needs and those of their friends over fair workload distribution. The term “roster monster” is familiar to all Singapore junior doctors, and for good reason. The first roster planners I encountered assigned themselves to teams with the lightest patient load, avoided the most unpopular calls (think weekends and public holidays) and approved their own leave requests but left the rest hanging and unable to plan for breaks.
Imagine some HOs having 9 calls a month while others cruise by with 4, or being assigned to a string of teams with heavy patient loads without respite. The fatigue and burnout that these can lead to have consequences on the quality of patient care delivered by these same exhausted junior doctors.
I spoke up about the issues with junior rostering, and was told by the senior clinician overseeing it that rostering is a “thankless job”, whoever was willing to take it on should thus be allowed to prioritise their own interests, almost as a form of compensation, and that this is the “norm”.
I was appalled.
In my next 2 postings, I volunteered to join the rostering teams and introduced changes I hoped would bring about fair, transparent and effective rostering with the goal to distribute workload as evenly as possible, building in rest and maximising leave requests, overall encouraging a culture of peers helping each other rather than benefitting at the expense of another. I was heartened to see these 2 departments and my own peers welcome the changes, and received many thanks along the way — proving that effective rostering is not a thankless job at all, and in fact is much appreciated.
As Calvin and I wrote in our SMA News piece: To have an overall better healthcare delivery, a fair, optimised roster should provide adequate rest for healthcare workers, which hopefully reduces burnout and improves decision-making each day.
That, of course, does not make it easy, and unlike rostering at the senior clinician level, most junior doctor planners are not given administrative days or any form of time / resources to do all this extra work for the benefit of the entire workplace. Less so any credit. Hence in our list of suggestions, we also highlight the importance of recognising, enabling and incentivising good rostering.
Have a read at our suggestions below, or at this direct link to SMA News.
Do also check out the full DIT special spread in SMA News. SMA DIT advocates for junior doctors in areas such as welfare, education / training, and workplace issues, as well as liaising with MOH and MOHH on larger policy matters. It has been my pleasure to be part of the DIT committee since 2024, working alongside fellow passionate advocates and under the guidance of dedicated advisors.
