ABSTRACT
An NHS consultant’s working time is ruled by his or her fixed sessions. The basic plan is that seven sessions (or ‘notional half-days’) a week should be ‘fixed’, that is, taken up doing clinics, ward rounds, case conferences, endoscopy lists and so on. A fulltime NHS consultant contract comprises 11 sessions. One session is to cover continuing responsibility, including on-call. That leaves three for all the other things a consultant is supposed to do. Some of these are listed in Table 1.
