What was the problem you were facing? West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust is a multi-site trust with a weekend service operating from the main acute unit at Watford General Hospital. Although the dispensary had been open on Saturday and Sunday mornings for some years, it had become noticeable that longer opening hours were required because of bed pressures, even after a 120-bed acute admissions unit had been opened. On some days, staff were still dispensing at 4pm after starting at 10 am without any breaks. The advertised opening hours were 10am to 1pm for accepting work with the plan to leave by 2pm. However, there was an increasing frequency of late requests for discharge medicines that were difficult to refuse. We wanted to extend the hours for accepting work until 3pm with the intention of closing at 4pm, but with the option to accept later work at the team leader's discretion. We needed to achieve this using only our current staff because no money was available for funding any new posts for the increased opening hours.
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