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Where possible departments should empower employees to make decisions concerning their jobs, regarding task variety and options to develop and learn new tasks.

Job reviews should take into consideration individual risk assessments for anaesthetists in the context of environmental threats, ill health, pregnancy and breastfeeding, menopause, fatigue, and the impacts of ageing. Where relevant advice from an accredited specialist in occupational medicine should be sought.²⁷

Job plans and rotas should be constructed to ensure reasonable rest periods and should be regularly reviewed taking into consideration out of hours work frequency, duration of out of hour’s periods and availability of recovery time after being on call.

Where ‘group job plans ’are the norm, there may be specific requirements for individual variation including susceptibility to fatigue. This includes consideration of work intensity before and after out of hours commitments and discussion of strategies to minimise impact.^27,28

Feedback should be sought from departmental members about working patterns and their effects on health and wellbeing and adjustments made where working patterns are problematic.

Departments should encourage flexibility when reviewing job plans to support the changing needs of colleagues over the course of their career. Colleagues should be supported in tailoring their career over time. The impact of change on the rest of the department should be considered.²⁷

Anaesthetists appointed to organisation wide, non-clinical roles should be adequately supported with sufficient time and resources to undertake the role.

Anaesthetists with commitments to regional and national work should have appropriate support through job planning. Departments should take into consideration both the impact this has on the rest of the department, as well as the considerable benefits local departments gain from having staff undertake anaesthetic regional and national roles.

The workforce plan should include the minimum number of staff to maintain the service without compromising safety, quality, education and training and wellbeing.

Rostering should allow flexibility and capacity within the system to cover sickness, which may help to protect against staff burnout and build a sustainable workforce.²⁹