Wasting Money - A Feature of Health Service Life Every time I think of waste, I think of managers. Can't think why; maybe it's because when I was a student, six wards shared one (nurse) manager. She know all the staff, she knew all the patients; indeed, on alternate week ends, she'd ask a student on each ward to take her round - and invariably she knew more about the patients than the student (and woe betide the student who tried to bluff their way round).

Now, the ward where I work shares managers with a handful of other wards; shares about 15 managers, most of whom wouldn't know a patient if they tripped over one - or most of the staff, either.

But there's so much management waste, and it makes me so angry, that I really cannot compose a useful post about that.

So let's look at lifts (Elevators, for nurses across the pond in North America).

Hospitals require lifts and lots of them; they get caned in daily use, and fail a lot. Or do they? My multi-floor block has five 'public' lifts facing each other in a central foyer. For the second time in ten years they are starting on a program of 'complete replacement' (Last time the program foundered after one new lift).

But why do lifts fail? I did a little research, and by and large, it's door problems, with occasional bearings giving out, and even more rarely, software problems. On a daily basis (if they are lucky), the lifts get swept out and the floor mopped, I guess by the people cleaning each foyer up the tower. There's no specific attention to the lift runners, and the non-specific attention involves dirt being swept into the runners on a daily basis.

At any one time, two or a maximum three lifts work. And at least one of them shows signs of oncoming problems, either the outer door snagging on rubbish on one or more floors - or the inner door catching on very floor. The one 'new' lift (just a few weeks old), the first of the replacement program, already has problems on two floors, and the runners are visibly silting up with grease, dust and grime.

I wouldn't expect the cleaning managers to spot it - they tend to hide, not even answering their bleeps, unless it's an outside phone call (if we need them, we go via switchboard and pretend to call from outside). But what about those other managers who have nothing better to do than design forms for us to fill in? You'd think an ambitious manager would like to be seen saving the trust many thousands of pounds, many wasted hours - and many buckets of frustration? No.

Ah! - why don't I report it? Well, the problem exists in virtually all London hospital tower blocks, and probably in every hospital tower in the country, if not the world. I did once report it at another site. I was, of course, ignored. I'm only a nurse, after all.

But the sadder explanation is that I cannot even find time at work to report the occasions when patients admitted to the Emergency department due to pain, arrive on the ward with no pain prescription. And yes, I have reported such events in the past.

Care to guess what the out come was? Nothing happened.  ¶ 02:15 0 Comments

  Pay Rise - What Pay Rise As is so often the case, Nurses in the UK have been shafted by the Government.

With inflation at 3.5% - and rising rapidly - we've been awarded what amounts to 1.9%

OK, hands up who expected more ....

With an excess of nurses at this time, due to an overprovision of education (still increasing last academic year), the government knows that they have got away with it again, despite all the kind words and genuine support for nurses that exists out there.

But, as ever, short term thinking by a short term bunch of cheap crooks. Yes, there is an election coming one day, and it's close enough for nurses to remember. Not 'New Labour' care, of course. But what will get them in the end is the downturn in nurses that will happen within a few years; they have guaranteed that no intelligent teen will enter nursing, just as the major retirement wave hits the profession.

Stupidly, they've done this just after cutting off the theft of nurses from developing nations, and are relying on stealing from the new members of the EU - but that is bound to fail, as far too few of them can speak enough English to get by. Sure, they'll try anyway - but having stirred up anti-immigrant feelings, that one will fail.

Nobody likes being shafted time after time; but at least we get to laugh at the idiots who are ruining the NHS one more time. Where do they find these people?

It is unlikely, of course, that this years stupidity will whack Gordon Brown in the eye, despite his native Scotland choosing to be more generous than the England and Wales bosses. But I suspect he's miscalculated.

He was probably intending to be mean - sorry, 'prudent' - this year, allowing him to appear generous next year, when the election is much closer. But with inflation beginning to slip from his grasp, he won't have that safety net. So he'll be even tighter next year. And that will end his 'honeymoon period', assuming it lasts that long.  ¶ 01:44 0 Comments