Incomplete employment history for long term locum doctors
NHS England received 2 coroners' reports about this hazard between 14 Aug 2014 and 11 May 2023.
They came from 2 different coroners in 2 coroner areas. A similar concern was raised again 1 time after the first warning.
A published response was found for 1 of the 1 earlier reports, stating 3 specific actions.
The story, report by report
Spacing grows with the time between reports.
“There are particular difficulties with securing a complete sequence of employment and the associated references and confirmation about concerns for fitness to practice of long term locum doctors who may have gaps between jobs or worked abroad”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ NHS England responded, stating 1 specific action.Response (PDF) ↗
“time. We also review both policy and practice in relation to employment checks on a regular basis and as changes to the national requirements are introduced.”
Stated timescale: January 2015
- 8 years 9 months laterClosely relatedConfidence 0.80 · moderatea different coroner
“The Trust had relied on long term locum consultants, leading to some short-term gaps in provision.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Repeated from the earlier report:longtermlocumgaps
NHS England responded, stating 2 specific actions.Response (PDF) ↗Response (PDF) ↗
“The Trust now has 3 consultant sessions per week for neurology consultants to provide advice and guidance for GPs. This is a new facility which was introduced in May 2023, for GPs to access advice prior to or instead of referring for an outpatient clinic”
Stated timescale: May 2023
“I note that the Trust aims to see urgent referrals within 4 weeks and has committed to making further improvements across its neurology service.”
- All reports to NHS England
Each row is one judged link between an earlier and a later report. Open a row to read both quotes, found word for word in the originals.
2014 → 2023Nicholas Pennicott8 years 9 months after Thomas Warren · different coronerClosely relatedConfidence 0.80 · moderate
Closely relatedConfidence 0.80 · moderateBoth reports highlight problems arising from the use of long‑term locum doctors, specifically gaps in employment history and continuity of care.
Thomas Warren · 14 Aug 2014
“There are particular difficulties with securing a complete sequence of employment and the associated references and confirmation about concerns for fitness to practice of long term locum doctors who may have gaps between jobs or worked abroad”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Nicholas Pennicott · 11 May 2023
“The Trust had relied on long term locum consultants, leading to some short-term gaps in provision.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Stated action in the response to the earlier report
“time. We also review both policy and practice in relation to employment checks on a regular basis and as changes to the national requirements are introduced.”
Stated action · timescale: January 2015
“time. We also review both policy and practice in relation to employment checks on a regular basis and as changes to the national requirements are introduced.”
Stated action · timescale: May 2023
“The Trust now has 3 consultant sessions per week for neurology consultants to provide advice and guidance for GPs. This is a new facility which was introduced in May 2023, for GPs to access advice prior to or instead of referring for an outpatient clinic”
Stated action
“I note that the Trust aims to see urgent referrals within 4 weeks and has committed to making further improvements across its neurology service.”
- Each report's concerns were extracted by Nemotron 3 Nano on Nebius Token Factory, each with a quote copied from the report.
- Concerns from reports to NHS England at least six months apart were compared by meaning (Qwen3 embeddings) and wording (TF-IDF).
- The closest pairs were judged by Nemotron 3 Super with reasoning on. Only identical or closely related, with confidence of at least 0.70, are shown.
- Every quote was checked by code as an exact substring of the original text. Names of staff and family are redacted, and the deceased are named by report title only.
| Link | Meaning | Wording | Judge | Coroner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 → 2023 | 0.67 | 0.35 | Closely related · 0.80 | different |
Judge model: nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b. How Nemotron did the work · Full methodology.
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This shows that a similar concern was raised again after an earlier report. It does not say why, and it is not a finding about any organisation or person. To report an error, see the corrections route.