NHS

I always found that often in good companies people speak up if they feel things should be done better and there is a feeling of pulling together. In the Civil Service and NHS people don't take on this responsibility any more. However, my recent experience as a patient shows even consultants whine but do nothing to change things. Everyone needs to make changes, and if you see waste call it out, and suggest changes, even as patients. I have worked for all three.

Well said Theworriedwell and Scones! its easy to understand what doctors and nurses do, but not so easy to understand the role of managers and its easy to attack them, based on not very much. Of course some managers are not brilliant - but that applies to every profession and job - but without managers organisations couldn't function.

Having worked in the NHS for 25 years I do think your sister has a point.

Bankhurst Having Read everything what's your opinion now?

Its undoubtedly true.... nothing will change.

When I first went back to work after having children, I applied for a five hour a week admin job at the local hospital. I had three people interviewing me. I was asked what I felt I had to offer the health service (my husband suggested my body!) and also whether I’d be prepared to do a first aid course….I guess a hospital might need me to have that qualification during the five hours working in an office, just in case there was no one in the building with the knowledge!!!

I always find ' I can see that is your truth'
It's propaganda of the popular press
Divide & rule rather than Democracy.

Worked in the NHS for 12 years until a few years ago and your sister is absolutely correct. Management is overpaid and there are too many of them.

I would have totally agreed. I know an NHS manager who was having wallpaper for his office at £130 a role. His wife said to me “you can tell he’s not paying for it”. I could give you lots of instances!

She is so right so why are you not speaking to her?

My son in law was in charge of a busy store in a hospital and he said that the waste was dreadful and he made suggestions to reduce it. These were ignored but he has recently been promoted so maybe he will be able to make a difference.

"How do you kinow? Do you have access to the accounts?"

I worked as a nurse in the NHS for over thirty years and partially agree with your sister, the management is top heavy but it could also do with extra funding partly due to the growing population of the country

I have to agree with your sister. One very small incident I'll quote here. Because of Procurement rules a bottle of cleaning fluid that can be bought in any supermarket costs 3-4 times as much by the time you use it in the. NHS and unfortunately the same happens in schools especially with school meals and cleaning products. Many people don't know this happens because these organisations don't get too much scrutiny.

theworriedwell

People always seem to think management isn't needed. Would be chaos without it. The NHS actually spends less on admin/management than other big organisations as a percentage of their budget. It is an easy target.

I was a senior HR manager, I remember having meetings with staff where there would be moans and groans about how things were done. Eventually I suggested they nominated 2 people to come and represent them in HR for a month. Both dropped out within days, it is easy to moan but when you present them with the problem and they are expected to find a solution rather than moan about it they don't seem so keen to be involved.

I worked in NHS finance when a round of reporting on management costs came round, and I know exactly how the figures were massaged from the raw data I gave the senior management team (reaction: "We can't report that!") The whole organisation is vastly over-bureaucratised. As for spending on management consultants whose sole purpose is to carry the can for decisions already made - words fail me.

I had to attend hospital for a routine scan recently, I received 3 phone calls, numerous texts and best of all 36 pages ( in colour) of what to expect and the COVID precautions.

The hospital have my email address.

She’s got a good point of view ?why wouldn’t you want to talk to her again because of a difference in opinion?

Too many chiefs and not enough Indians, as the old saying goes.
Having worked in the NHS for 20 years I completely agree with her.

How strange that you say you're now finding it hard to talk to her.

They would be full time in the organisation if they were part clinical/part managerial though, It would be very unusual for clinical directors to be full time managerial. Non-executives are never full time in a Trust, they are external people who sit on the Board and a few committees, but work one or two days a work to cover those functions, and in their substantive roles in their own organisations the rest of the time.
I’m really surprised that the best paid advertised roles in your area are non clinical, when I just looked at the vacancies in my local Health Board, nearly all the senior vacancies are for consultant medical staff, which is not a good position to be in for us.
How many total staff does the organisation employ, that gives an appreciation of the percentage of roles that are managerial?

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.

As an NHS clinician before I retired, I was very glad of the management and admin staff that took care of all the boring but necessary tasks that needed to be done and let me get on with my direct patient work.
As said by others, most of our managers had also been clinical staff.

Without context this means very little though. How many total staff in the Trust Chewbacca?
How many of the roles you have identified are full time, and how many are sessional? The non executive directors and clinical directors will be people with other roles and a small commitment to management, 2 or 3 sessions per week usually. I’m sure you know that some of the roles are prescribed roles, every Trust has to have a Board and designated Executive and non-Executive Directors to run the organisation. Non-executives are businessmen, university, professional bodies etc.

In my local NHS Trust (by no means a large Trust) there are:

21 Clinical Leadership roles
45 under the Chief Operating Officer
9 non clinical Executive Directors
7 non Executive Directors
9 clinical Executive Directors
and associated staff, administrators, PA's, secretaries etc etc

If you'd like to know what your Trust spends on it's non clinical budget, you can apply on the foi. You'll be surprised.

Perception is not reality, I wish people would do their homework before posting wild statements based on hearsay or ‘experience’ because they or somebody they know happens to work in the NHS. Managers are soft targets, they are not the core of the problem. They make mistakes like everybody else, but they also have extremely difficult jobs, the service is under-managed, not over-managed. Here are some statistics, there is lots of information out there if people are interested.
There are around 31,000 managers employed in the English NHS. About a third of those are ‘hybrids’ – doctors or nurses with a frontline position and a management role – while the rest are dedicated managers, many off whom also came from clinical backgrounds originally but have moved into more generic roles. But in an organisation of 1.36 million employees that amounts to less than three per cent of the workforce. The average UK business has 9.5%.

Crumbs, the incident I mentioned earlier has been escalated up to the head of the local health board. At least someone is taking it seriously.