The reality of working for the cash-strapped NHS
- Thread starter KnackeredBike
- Start date
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Drago
Legendary Member
- Location
- Suburban Poshshire
Same story in the plod. I was losing D's to private firms, 15-20k more, no shifts, no hassle, no late home, not treated like a piece of dirt by the management. If my retirement hadn't been pending I've have joined them.
OP
OP
KnackeredBike
I do my own stunts
There are a few people who have retired on final salary pensions who still work, nice for them to earn a few extra quid that they don't really need. They have a easy job because no-one is going to run a seventy year old into the ground with a heavy case load. But it isn't going to staff an entire health service.
Don't get me wrong, the job is GREAT and I really enjoy it except every day you are running on half the safe staffing, patients pissed off because they've been waiting on a trolley for hours to come onto the ward because you have no beds, waiting for ages for simple tasks because you have no time, relatives pissed off because the patient is getting no care, staff pissed off because they're working a thirteen hour shift with no more than a five minute cup of tea for their one hour unpaid break and they are still late going home.
And your manager tells you there is no point complaining about it because things are going to get worse and worse.
Richard A Thackeray
Legendary Member
My wife now has a Domicilary Care company (which was the offshoot to her main business, but now roles are reversed)
She pays mileage between cliients, tries to plan so carers aren't travelling miles between calls, gives a payment towards phone-calls
Yes, I know there's bad ones, & bad Nursing homes, as I see names/hear stories at work, but there's also good (even if I am biased in this case)
classic33
Leg End Member
I've started at 6am, finished at 10pm, with only the time snatched in travelling between floors to get a cuppa. Not aways in one go either.
Reason: No one else willing to do the work, and it went un-noticed. Or if it was noticed, it was considered to be expected to be done. Almost killed an area manager who came to oversee a delivery. He wasn't expecting to have to do his share of the work, nor the three hours non stop, between four floors. Down one, up two.
Longest shifts were twenty hour, with the one hour dinner(Not included in the twenty hours). In what passes for heavy engineering. There was also travelling to & from, in those two months, trying to save their business.
Reason: No one else willing to do the work, and it went un-noticed. Or if it was noticed, it was considered to be expected to be done. Almost killed an area manager who came to oversee a delivery. He wasn't expecting to have to do his share of the work, nor the three hours non stop, between four floors. Down one, up two.
Longest shifts were twenty hour, with the one hour dinner(Not included in the twenty hours). In what passes for heavy engineering. There was also travelling to & from, in those two months, trying to save their business.
That is true, I work with HCA's, most were private home care assistants, you'd think they'd arrived in shangri-la such is their appreciation of NHS work conditions.
Many ( prob most) long term NHS employees I talk to & work alongside, clearly live in a bubble.
I'll have a go from another perspective. All my life I've worked in the private sector, latterly for myself for the past couple of decades running a business that I was fortunate enough to sell.
I've never worked with fat people or smokers till I joined the NHS, now I am surrounded by fat smoking colleagues. The smokers take a break, mostly every hour, this might last 15 mins, 5 mins walk to & from a smoking area, 5mins for a fag and a chat. This is "normal" and there is no point in challenging it, because the managers are out there smoking too! So where is the non smokers 1-2 hours extra break a day? Who is doing the smokers work whilst they smoking? Well its not the non-smokers, do you think they are stupid? And so it goes, it's a culture of "Not my dept", "Just going on my break" "It'll do".
Nearly 3 years in and it's like I have arrived today from Mars.
Salty seadog
Space Cadet...(3rd Class...)
Is that justification for beating down our healthcare?
edit to say a race to the bottom is not healthy.
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Drago
Legendary Member
- Location
- Suburban Poshshire
To be honest, if what I'm hearing about the NHS is true I'd probably want a fag if I worked there.
According to some you would not have time to smoke or eat, seams odd when you see so many obese staff fagging it. Of course I can only speak from my own observations and I am sure there are many working very hard.
Richard A Thackeray
Legendary Member
Sorry, rant/off-load
Know the feeling Mark!
It's generally the workers who get penalised, I have 'collegues' the same
One shift, I was theoretically due my meal-break, about 16:00, it got to 17:30
I eventually got someone to cover me, I'd been in staff-room a few minutes, even the teabag was still in the pot
He told he was going back, as he needed canteen before it shut - so off on his break too
Same guy another time, was meant to be covering me,
I got my teabags & pot, from locker (located in department)
By the time I got to staff-room, also in department, he was sat there with a cuppa & biscuits, leaving the new-starter (I was looking after) by himself, fielding 15 Nurses & about 10 Doctors, plus patients relatives
Fuming was not the word, in either situation
I have others far worse, who have been sacked, re-instated, because management over-egged the pudding & added faults/time-keeping problems
Now, no matter what they do, they get away with it, as it's perceived that any action will be perceived as 'bullying & harrassment'
One of these people has got so bad, that UNISON will not represent them!!!!
Then I got a roasting, a couple of months ago, because, with 6 -7 outstanding patients to deal with, I told a junior Doctor (fairly politely - ie; not using these words, but the sentiment was there) to 'sod off''
This seems to sum my situation up
Know the feeling Mark!
It's generally the workers who get penalised, I have 'collegues' the same
One shift, I was theoretically due my meal-break, about 16:00, it got to 17:30
I eventually got someone to cover me, I'd been in staff-room a few minutes, even the teabag was still in the pot
He told he was going back, as he needed canteen before it shut - so off on his break too
Same guy another time, was meant to be covering me,
I got my teabags & pot, from locker (located in department)
By the time I got to staff-room, also in department, he was sat there with a cuppa & biscuits, leaving the new-starter (I was looking after) by himself, fielding 15 Nurses & about 10 Doctors, plus patients relatives
Fuming was not the word, in either situation
I have others far worse, who have been sacked, re-instated, because management over-egged the pudding & added faults/time-keeping problems
Now, no matter what they do, they get away with it, as it's perceived that any action will be perceived as 'bullying & harrassment'
One of these people has got so bad, that UNISON will not represent them!!!!
Then I got a roasting, a couple of months ago, because, with 6 -7 outstanding patients to deal with, I told a junior Doctor (fairly politely - ie; not using these words, but the sentiment was there) to 'sod off''
This seems to sum my situation up
I have long been astonished at the number of medics I know - from nurse to GP to Consultant/Professor who smoke like flecking chimneys
And if people stopped wasting NHS resources:
One of the HNS111 regions had 8 people manning the call lines on a Wednesday afternoon (and easily coping with demand) on a Saturday morning they had 450+, about 50 of whom were dealing exclusively with repeat prescriptions.
It's not how it 'works'. It's all about enforceability.
So for example if you look at the MiHomeCare case which is probably the one you are talking about it was taken out by Leigh Day who specialise in crackpot crazy discrimination and other workplace issues. For the case we're talking about one of the tactics leigh day used was the simplest of the simple, they argued that it was unlawful deductions of wages to not pay travel time. Anyone who knows anything about employment law knows that in a lot of these cases if it goes to employment tribunal unlike just about every other type of case the tribunal will come down on the side of the employee/worker/other because it's basically in the sort of language you will would choose to use it is unarguable. So Mrs employer can you tell us why you haven't paid this person having looked at the paperwork provided - yeah, but no but yeah but no but yeah but no but I didn't have to pay them anyway innit. We do not find that a sufficiently good reason. Case closed.
Unfortunately that is completely meaningless because you have to go to employment tribunal to get that often. If you don't you have to find some other way of enforcing your rights such as bad publicity, a trade union or sticking up for yourself - on a zero hours contract? Nope. I would love it, I would fecking love it if some of these people went to tribunal and got money off these scum employers. Sadly it's fairly unlikely.
The stuff with the minimum wage, it took years for the naming and shaming thing to come about. Even then allegations fly around about delays/focusing on particular companies for political reasons.
