Contacting the duty or on-call consultant, anaesthetic department (ARI)

There are several duty consultants available to cover the theatre suites in Aberdeen. They are there to provide support and supervision to any anaesthetist as required.

If the consultant has a theatre list, they are always doubled up with a trainee or specialty doctor.

They are identified in the corresponding location on CLWRota at the top of Rota by Location view. Locations are:

• Duty Consultant – ARI – 52588
• They supervise all the elective surgery locations within Main Theatre Suite at ARI.
• Duty Consultant – Chronic Pain
• Duty Consultant – RACH – 59165
• Duty Consultant – Woodend – 56781

The following roles are located further down CLWRota or can be found in the AMH and ARI – On-Call sections.

• Emergency Consultant – AMH – 59173
• Theatre 16 – Emergency 1 (1st on-call) – 52589
  • As well as emergency calls, they supervise all locations outside of Main Theatre Suite in ARI.

On the mobile app version of CLWRota, the location of the duty consultants will also be shown.

Outside the normal working hours of 0800 to 1800 and at weekends, supervision is provided by the on-call consultants. Trainees or specialty doctors doing a solo list should inform the supervising consultant if they are likely to still be in theatre after 1800.

General On-Call

There are two consultants available for out of hours emergency duties.

• Consultant 1 (C1) is the first to be called by the on-call trainees.
• Consultant 2 (C2) may be asked to help by C1 if the workload demands it.

Obstetric, Paediatric & Cardiac On-Call

There is one consultant on call for each of these specialties.

If the consultant is on-site, use the Wi-Fi phone number for their role.

If they are off-site, contact them on their preferred first contact number. This will usually be their mobile phone. Their phone number will be available within the CLWRota app and you can contact them using your mobile phone.

Switchboard can also contact them if you call them and ask for their name and role. They will also have their landline phone number.

This is the system used by switchboard to identify all on-call staff in the hospital. It can be accessed on the intranet by typing ‘rotawatch’ into the address bar of the Microsoft Edge browser or using the Managed Bookmarks tab in Edge.

Rotawatch is useful for colleagues outside the department; non-consultant anaesthetists should already know who is on-call.

Contact Switchboard by dialling 0, then 0 again to bypass the voice recognition.

The Anaesthetic Department rota team will update CLWRota and Rotawatch for any changes that happen during office hours.

Outside office hours, any changes to consultant on-call should be notified to switchboard so they can update Rotawatch.

In emergencies, when delegating the responsibility of contacting help to another member of the team, it is essential to give clear instructions about:

• The name of the person sought.
• How to contact them.
• The message. This could be simple, such as ‘you need to come in’, and the location of where you are.
• Confirmation of understanding of these details.

If the phone is engaged, keep trying and do not give up and leave a message.