The benefits of Hospital at Night have been proven but realising them at your Trust is not easy. The biggest obstacles we see and experience include:

• Persuading all the stakeholders to embrace change
• Collecting the evidence for what is happening out-of-hours today
• Getting consultants and doctors to agree to rota redesign

Every implementation of Hospital at Night requires significant change in the Trust and the most successful examples we have seen have involved the following stages:

1. Writing down clearly what the benefits will be and how they will be measured
2. Making sure you know exactly what activities are happening out-of-hours in your Trust today
3. Writing a draft for yourself of what you think the changes will be for each department and person (so that you have a good idea of how they will react!)
4. Communicating the aims of your Hospital at Night project to all the stakeholders - in person not by e-mail!
5. Agreeing firm dates from each stakeholder of when they will do each of their tasks (strong negotiation skills a must!)
6. Keeping up regular communication with all the stakeholders

To see how we have worked with Trusts up and down the country to solve these issues click here.