Morning all. Bit pissed off, because of something I read yesterday - that some stupid percentage of people apparently want fewer non-clinical staff in the NHS, in relation to the usual election bullshit about 'efficiency savings'.
I work for an ambulance service. Our ambulances see all kind of unpleasant things, so it's essential that they're kept clean.
But without non-clinical staff, we have nobody working in Cleaning, so infections spread.
And we can't have a plan to bring these infections under control, as we now have no Infection Control staff. What, you thought Infection Control was a clinical job? You probably thought everything was a clinical job, right? Guess what? Just because a role is in some way connected to medical things, doesn't mean it is classified as 'clinical'.
Also, we don't have anything with which to clean and stop infections, because no non-clinical staff means no Procurement staff out there buying what's needed.
Even if we could procure what we needed, how could we pay for it? We'll have nobody in Finance.
Perhaps, okay, we can have Finance staff, but who's going to do that job if we can't pay them? Because we can't pay anyone, if we have no Payroll staff.
And if we have someone doing Payroll, presumably they'll be using payroll software on the computer. Except, they can't do that, as we won't have any IT staff.
This is a bad idea, right? Let's bring back Cleaning, bring Infection Control, bring back Procurement, bring back Finance, bring back Payroll, bring back, IT. Except... actually we can't do that either, because no non-clinical staff means no Recruitment team.
Non-clinical support staff matter as much in the NHS as any other organisation. Without non-clinical support, there is no NHS.
This has been a public service announcement on behalf of Support Staff Who Are Already Overworked And Underpaid As It Is, And We're Really Fucking Tired.
I think cleaners are considered front line staff - if they aren't, they should be!
Years back, I did a little software job for a local hospital in the UK. It was to deal with the provision of teas coffees sandwiches and biscuits for meetings various locations throughout the hospital.
The manual system is then in use, required the person placing the order, usually a doctor, to fill out a form in quadruplicate and submit the four copies to the catering department. One of the four copies was sent to a junior manager on a 50% part time salary for authorization (her sole responsibility). When I asked how many such requests were refused, the manager replied “Oh - we never refuse them” so I responded by asking So what is the point of “authorising” something that you never refuse to which the manager responded “well, it's public money, so it has to be properly accounted for!”
I'm quite sure there are literally 10s of thousands of instances of similarly, criminally wasteful management in the NHS.
