The Hospital at Night model aims to redefine how medical cover is provided in hospitals during the out-of-hours period.

The Hospital at Night approach provides the best possible care for patients given the changes in permitted working hours for doctors in training. It offers the most efficient method of preserving, and even enhancing, doctors’ training in the reduced hours available.

The Hospital at Night model consists of a multidisciplinary night team, which has the competences to cover a wide range of interventions but has the capacity to call in specialist expertise when necessary. This contrasts with the traditional model of junior doctors working in relative isolation and in specialty-based silos.

Hospital at Night also advocates:

• supervised multi-specialty handover in the evenings 
• other staff taking on some of the work traditionally done by junior doctors 
• moving a significant proportion of non-urgent work from the night to the evening or daytime 
• reducing the unnecessary duplication of work by better coordination and reducing the multiple clerkings and reviews.

The Joint Consultants Committee, the Royal College of Nursing and the British Medical Association have endorsed Hospital at Night

Comprehensive information about Hospital at Night is available in the Implementation Resource Pack and in the Resources section. The independent evaluation of Hospital at Night will be available in July 2005.