Surgical Job Planning

This guidance provides a practical framework for collaborative surgical job planning that reflects the realities of modern surgical practice. It supports surgeons, employers and clinical leaders in developing job plans that balance patient care, workforce wellbeing, education and service improvement while responding to increasing demand for surgical services.

Read the Surgical Job Planning Guidance

Summary

Effective job planning is essential to delivering safe, sustainable and high-quality surgical care. This guidance explains how job plans should recognise the full scope of contemporary surgical practice, including direct clinical care, education and training, research, leadership, governance and quality improvement. Drawing on findings from the Royal College of Surgeons of England's workforce census, it provides practical recommendations for developing realistic, flexible and collaborative job plans that support productivity, workforce sustainability and the future development of surgical services.

Key points:

• Job planning should reflect the full scope of modern surgical practice, recognising activities beyond operating lists and outpatient clinics, including governance, education, leadership, research and clinical administration. 
• Collaborative, transparent and evidence-based job planning helps align individual workloads with service demand, patient safety and organisational priorities. 
• Job plans should support workforce wellbeing by promoting realistic workloads, protecting supporting professional activities (SPA) time and recognising career-stage and specialty-specific differences. 
• Surgical training, supervision and professional development should be explicitly recognised within job plans to support the future surgical workforce. 
• Effective job planning should promote multidisciplinary working, consultant-led care teams and the integration of SAS surgeons, locally employed doctors and the wider surgical workforce. 
• Flexible approaches, including annualised and career-stage-sensitive job plans, may better reflect the changing demands of modern surgical practice. 
• Job planning should be viewed as a dynamic process, with regular review to ensure it continues to support high-quality patient care, workforce sustainability and service improvement. 

Who is this guidance for?

This guidance is intended for consultant surgeons, specialist and associate specialist (SAS) surgeons, resident doctors, clinical leaders, medical managers, workforce planners and healthcare organisations involved in developing, implementing or reviewing surgical job plans.

Chapters

1. Introduction 
2. Workforce census themes and their implications for job planning 
3. Principles of surgical job planning 
4. Components of a surgical job plan 
5. Key considerations for the effective implementation of the surgical job plan 
6. Useful resources 

Document length: 27 pages

Publication date: August 2026