The Duty Holder

What Harborview needed

While a group is away, one person at Harborview holds the phone for the school. A call can come at any hour, from a trip leader, a provider or a parent.

On the call, the duty holder needs to know where the group is, whom to wake and which emergency departments are nearest, without searching through the trip file.

What we did

We prepare the Duty Manager Trip Brief from the same information as the trip reports. It opens with the first ten minutes of a call, set out from Harborview’s own procedures, and it gives the duty chain, the route with the nearest emergency departments and where the group is in each block of the week.

A phone edition opens on the hour and the place the group is in now, so the duty holder can answer from a phone at any hour.

The brief gives a link to Harborview’s own emergency actions, and it names each risk assessment by its group reference. It does not copy or rewrite them.

What Harborview decides

• Harborview names the duty holder and the duty chain for each trip.
• The duty holder decides what happens on each call, under the school’s own procedures.
• The school or the provider chooses which emergency department the group uses.

We prepare the brief, and Harborview’s duty holder makes every decision while the group is away.