A gap becomes a request the moment a practice names the hours it wants held.
A request arrives as an e-mail from the person who keeps the rota, and it names the dates, the hours, the site and the block length. Where a practice sends a rota extract instead of writing those out, the office reads the extract and repeats back what it has understood before doing anything else.
That repeat-back is the whole of step one. It costs a message and it settles, in writing, which dates are actually wanted, which hours sit inside them, and which of the dates the practice would take at a push. A request answered without it is a request that gets re-opened later.
Requests are taken for single dates and for runs of dates alike. A run is held under one reference for the practice’s convenience, and the office still confirms each date on its own line, because the reference is an administrative handle and the date is the thing that gets worked.
What slows this step down is a gap sent without hours. A date on its own tells the office when, but not what, and the two are settled together or not at all.
The square stays amber while the file is read against the practice’s own list.
The office holds a file for every person on its books, and step two is reading that file against what this particular practice asks for. The file is described in full on the next page; what matters here is that it is read every time, not once when the person joined.
Three things are checked before a name is put forward. That every item in the file still runs to a date beyond the shift. That the disclosure level and the training certificates match what this practice has told us it requires. That the person has confirmed, in their own words, that they are free on the date and will take it.
Where one item falls short, the office says so rather than putting the name forward and hoping. A practice that is told on the Tuesday that a certificate lands on the Thursday can decide for itself whether to wait; a practice that finds out on the morning of the shift cannot.
What slows this step down is a document sitting with a third party. Renewals and disclosures move at their own pace, and the office writes to people a month before an expiry precisely so that this step does not become the one that fails.
One document, sent both ways, carrying everything that was agreed.
The confirmation is the document the whole booking rests on, and it is sent to the practice and to the person placed at the same time, so that neither is working from a version the other has not seen.
It carries the date, the site address, the start and finish times, the block length, the split between work booked ahead and work arriving the same day, the reserves the practice keeps back inside the shift, the name of the person on site who holds the rota that day, the purchase order reference where a practice uses one, and the agreed rate.
Anything agreed after the confirmation goes onto the confirmation. A change agreed on the telephone on the Friday is re-issued in writing on the Friday, not recalled on the following Wednesday when the timesheet arrives and the two figures disagree.
Once it is out, the square on the board turns to covered. Where a practice prefers to hold its own copy in its rota system rather than in a mailbox, it is sent as an attachment it can file.
What slows this step down is a purchase order that has not been raised. The office asks for the reference at the confirmation rather than at the invoice, because a reference chased four weeks later holds up payment and nothing else.
Arrive before the start, work to the confirmation, leave a handover note.
The person placed arrives inside the window named on the confirmation, carries photographic identification for reception, and is shown the room and the system login before the first block rather than during it.
The shift is worked to the confirmation. Where the practice asks on the day for something the confirmation does not cover, it is agreed with the person who holds the rota, and the office is told the same day so the confirmation can be re-issued and the timesheet will match it.
At the finish time anything still open is written onto a handover note and given to the person the practice named for that. The note names what is outstanding and who it has been passed to, and a copy reaches this office with the timesheet.
If the practice would rather the shift ran long, that is a change like any other: agreed before it happens, written down, and reflected on the timesheet. Nothing is assumed in either direction once the finish time on the confirmation has passed.
What slows this step down is access that was requested but never built. It is the single most common reason a covered shift starts late, and it is the reason system access is asked for at step two rather than on the morning.