Why it's needed
When you rank jobs as a resident doctor (junior doctor), you're choosing where you'll work, and often where you'll live, for months at a time. What you get to go on is the hospital, the specialty and the order of the rotations. What the job is actually like, whether you make it to teaching, whether seniors come when you call them overnight, whether there's anything to eat at 3am, has mostly been passed on by whoever you happen to know who worked there.
I've had many requests for this to happen. Ward on the Street puts that word of mouth in one place, in the words of the doctors who did the job.
What each review rates
Every review rates the rotation on up to 12 things. The overall rating comes first, and every review gives it:
- Overall satisfaction
- Workload
- Rota design
- Senior support
- Induction
- Local teaching
- Leave approval
- Facilities
- Food out of hours
- The doctors' mess
- Digital systems
- Teamwork
Each rating is shown as a score out of 100, and a hospital's score is the average of all of them. Reviewers can add a comment too, about what the next doctor should know before starting.
How it stays anonymous
There's no sign-in necessary, and you don't have to use a name or GMC number. Every review is read before it's published, and the only thing shown about you is your grade, as the tier a rota would name it: F1, SHO, registrar, fellow, or locally employed.
When you send a review, you get a receipt code. It lets you check your review, fix it if it wasn't published, or withdraw it. If the ratings are fine but the comment needs a change, the ratings go live while you fix the words.
If a job is affecting you, there's a page of free, confidential places to go: where to get help.
It follows on from Before You Rank
Before You Rank had a highly successful launch in March. It's helped thousands of NHS staff with their careers, and it's had countless submissions from staff keeping their trust's details up to date. It gives you every NHS trust's systems: the electronic patient record, whether notes and prescribing are digital, how well it all connects, and where to park.
Ward on the Street is the natural next step, and it builds on everything Before You Rank started. It adds what Before You Rank couldn't: what the job is like, from the doctors who did it.
The leaderboard
Hospitals are also ranked on a leaderboard by the doctors who trained there. A hospital joins it once it has enough reviews, and a specialty once it has enough of its own.
