NHS

From experience working in the clinical side of the NHS, your sister is spot on.
Hospital consultants are paid less than senior management, who from personal experience have thickly carpeted big offices with expansive desks and separate “conference areas”, and two or 3 layers of Pa’s with their own outer offices, whereas consultants frequently have to share offices and secretaries , sometimes with secretaries in the same offices, one of the reasons your GPS often don’t get your clinic letters in as timely fashion as they ought. And experienced clinical advice is often ignored; I remember our consultants giving a reasoned opinion to managers as to why we would be desperately short of beds down the line, but managers knew better and shut a couple of wards, one of the annual “cut 15% from your budget” rounds” which only seemed to be applied to the sharp end of the service, and look at the queues of ambulances waiting outside A&E now for patients to be found beds. Proper dietitians designing diets suitable for different illnesses were another cut. Also the Time and Motion officer! And the numbers of trainee doctors entering the 5 year postgrad training programme. There are many other nonsensical examples I could quote.
Black humour is rife in NHS clinical staff (unless it has been outlawed since I retired), and we used to joke if we saw an area of the hospital renovated that it was ripe for closure.

Doesn't the salary depend on what pay grade they're on? I don't recall seeing whether pay grades were mentioned on the website with staff vacancies at out Trust.

Chewbacca

Casdon All of the ones I listed were an actual "head count"; they either did their roles full time in that designated position or, as you say, sat on one or more boards within the Trust so that they're employed full time. I specifically checked for that. They have 55 vacancies across the Trust, 8 of which are non clinical and offering salaries up to £76,000 per annum. The highest salary being offered for clinical staff is £49,000, apart from one locum vacancy at £118,000 pro rata.

Clinical roles go much higher than £49k. One of my kids is a nurse, still in their 20s and they are earning more than £49k.

magshard20

What really annoys me about the NHS is the amount of unnecessary paperwork sent out to patients......I recently had to have a diabetic eye screening, I was sent the original letter giving me date and time.......that's fine BUT a week before the appointment I was sent a reminder letter (identical to the original!) and then the day before the appointment I was sent a text
message. A bit like overkill in my opinion. I retired from the NHS almost 11 years ago and can definitely say that the service has gone downhill in those years.

You do realise how much is wasted by people failing to turn up for appointments. I bet if you'd forgotten or the first letter was lost you'd be complaining that they hadn't done enough to get you there.

SecondhandRose

I’ve just finished chemo. One of my nurses was Vietnamese. When I tried to give back unused sealed medication she said it would all be binned and how the people from her country would be desperate for it and how sad it was.

I’m afraid I agree with your sister. There should be a central buyer for the NHS. Too many trusts, too many high paid managers.

Just imagine the uproar if some medication or equipment was re-allocated and was found to have been tampered with.

I totally agree with your sister. When my daughter was training as a student nurse I was with her when she applied for a car park pass. The number of departments we had to go to was ridiculous!!!!!

I recently had an accident and had to have various hospital stays/treatments and was rather annoyed at the many obvious ways that money could be saved but nobody seemed bothered.

bobbydog24

No one is arguing managers are not important to the running of the NHS, it’s the amount of them that is unnecessary and the ridiculously high salaries they are on. I can recollect chef James Martin being sent a photo of a meal by a patient that looked inedible. He made it his business to go into the hospital and was amazed at the amount they were paying for the supplies. He sourced local suppliers for half the amount the hospital were paying and got the price per meal right down. He later returned to find they hadn’t changed anything. Says it all.

14% of the budget goes on management and admin, lower than the average for businesses.

I don't think the canteen staff qualify for the management slot.

As usual no one has mentioned the millions we spend on medical aid we give to health tourists. Or the millions of extra people coming to this country who we are duty bound to give medical care. Over 1000 economic immigrants arrived in one day. I can give one example of when I worked in Occupational Therapy, one man had a stroke in his own country but his family got him here somehow so he could be treated here. Our NHS cannot cope with all these extra people, it is logical that our overworked medical staff are run ragged trying to cope and they are at breaking point. I would imagine that because these people cannot register with a GP straight away, they go to A and E for treatment. Our government cannot say this as usual they would be called racists

You are entitled to your point of view and your sister to hers.

Surely there is no point in being so offended that she didn't just agree with you that you won't talk to her?

Quite a number on this thread seem to agree with your sister, so perhaps you will reconsider both what she said and what you feel about it.

I wouldn’t worry about her comment, right or wrong, it’s just her opinion, not worth falling out over.
I agree the NHS needs more funding though & there’s no doubt there will be areas where money is wasted but it sounds like they are tightening things up. I’m sure some NHS Trusts will be better at controlling & managing staff budgets than others. The NHS also spends a high amount of money on Scientific research which is essential if we want to move forward with new treatments, vaccines etc.
Money is wasted when people repeatedly order expensive items on prescriptions, just ticking the boxes when they don’t really need it and stock piling pills, creams etc. Expensive unused and unopened drugs have to be thrown away and I’ve seen people take carrier bags full into the pharmacy. They have taken some things off prescription now and rightly so. If we had to pay for things like blood tests we would have a shock too but people just take all these things for granted and don’t think about the real costs involved.

theworriedwell

Rosalyn69

I worked in the NHS as PA to a consultant surgeon.
I agree wholeheartedly about excess of management and misuse of funds.

You realise you were one of those useless pen pushers that people don't want to pay?

Surely no one is saying no management, and a PA is required for a busy Consultant surgeon, but not assistant pa, or assistants assistants pa. Work in the NHS and you would see it.

Am afraid I agree too. It’s the hands-on staff who are badly paid.. None of us want to complain but you only have to be involved as an in or out patient and you witness casual waste. And yet bad food when food is a medicine! It’s crazy. And when I commented as an out patient on the lack of involvement or empathy of consultant I was given a psychologist for six weekly appointments who knew nothing of my rare fatal condition but was a lovely expensively paid people person. It was just rubbish. And waste of money whilst those doing the tough caring jobs are paid so poorly.
In a heart/ stroke ward I was only offered cheese omelettes or cheeses sandwiches every day as a vegetarian. I asked if I could say I was a Hindu and get the aubergine curry on their menu .. no chance. But there was a Cranks franchise on the ground floor where all the staff went. I was told they hadn’t heard of a Mediterranean diet. I discharged myself after two weeks. They went round and gave everyone senokot every night because there was so little fibre or foliage. Just dreadful. And this was major teaching hospital. Luckily my daughter brought in fruit and salads every day. No one wanted to know. In the end having been blanked by young doctor very rudely I had a word with Sister as I left and she said we just have to get the calories in. No wonder people opt for private care. It’s disgusting actually and I wouldn’t know where to begin to unravel the problems . At least some of the new billions thrown at it will get through to the necessary parts. But a lot will line consultants medical and business consultants pockets. I mean why are consultants allowed to use nhs facilities for their private work?? Why is my consultant retiring from nhs in his fifties to concentrate on private work? Why did I have to wait six weeks for result of critical aortic measurement when a private patient got it the same day? These are big questions. The NHS is the biggest employer in the UK and I really don’t know who is responsible. Trusts go bankrupt, get sued etc etc. Ministers get changed too frequently have powers that they are not accountable for. It’s a mess.

No one is arguing managers are not important to the running of the NHS, it’s the amount of them that is unnecessary and the ridiculously high salaries they are on. I can recollect chef James Martin being sent a photo of a meal by a patient that looked inedible. He made it his business to go into the hospital and was amazed at the amount they were paying for the supplies. He sourced local suppliers for half the amount the hospital were paying and got the price per meal right down. He later returned to find they hadn’t changed anything. Says it all.

She has my vote. I work for a very big organisation and now work in the regional management offices. Waste is phenomenal, bad management in every sense of the word and massive pay rises for top management.

If you want to see needless waste of public funds, try working in the civil service. The organisation I had worked for, for many years, was taken into the civil service. The bureaucracy was staggering, the waste of money through the procurement process as mentioned by nipsmum meant many hours were spent on sorting out supplies which we had previously just bought locally for less, and subsequently we had a very narrow choice of product which on the face of it were cheaper, but were of such low quality they didn't work. The layers of management were unbelievable and the rigidity of policies staggering. I did try speaking out against some of them, in my role as a union rep and was branded a trouble maker. I left as soon as I could. Horrible place to work.

More than once senior medical staff have been reported in the media as saying that administration is top heavy, and the figures for administrators as compared to nursing staff for example are way too high. This is a fact in many organisations who are not answerable to shareholders to the degree that management in commerical enterprises are, and have public money to spend. My neighbour retired from working at the local hospital because he couldn't cope with the amount of silly waste that he witnessed - one tea cup broken and the whole set thrown away and another ordered. The same hospital had two new wards built that were never used, as the site was sold off to a private developer and the hospital demolished. No doubt many posters have witnessed the same kind of ridiculous and alarming waste of money.

Agree with your sister the admin get given “perks” from suppliers therefore don’t always get the best value for NHS many are self serving and greedy .
They have a free hand

What really annoys me about the NHS is the amount of unnecessary paperwork sent out to patients......I recently had to have a diabetic eye screening, I was sent the original letter giving me date and time.......that's fine BUT a week before the appointment I was sent a reminder letter (identical to the original!) and then the day before the appointment I was sent a text
message. A bit like overkill in my opinion. I retired from the NHS almost 11 years ago and can definitely say that the service has gone downhill in those years.

My sister worked with the NHS on the admin purchasing side nearly 40 years ago and I have to say she was flabbergasted at the waste. She could have gone to Waitrose and bought toilet rolls cheaper. She tried to change things but unfortunately that just caused a storm so she left.

I am afraid your sister is only reiterating what many of us who have had experience of the NHS have found...along with the Fire Service and the Police Force! It was ever thus.

Whatever you disagree on, is it worth losing your friendship with her? Maybe it is, that is personal to you of course.
I have two or three relationships where as I have got older, have chosen to deliberately "forget" some of their opinions I disagree with if overall the relationship is important.

I’ve worked in the NHS. They have managers to manage managers to manage managers & it goes on….
Anyway, what happened to the promise on the Boris Brexit bus - £350 million per week to go to the NHS instead of the EU??

I’ve just finished chemo. One of my nurses was Vietnamese. When I tried to give back unused sealed medication she said it would all be binned and how the people from her country would be desperate for it and how sad it was.

I’m afraid I agree with your sister. There should be a central buyer for the NHS. Too many trusts, too many high paid managers.

Having worked in the NHS for many years I think you are both right. More money is needed to update the IT systems and modernise equipment etc. More money is needed for staff. But the systems of working and management and decision- making are antiquated and wasteful. It’s an impossible situation to work in which is why I had to leave for my own sanity.

Juliet
Love the dry humour.?