Do non NHS people realise how bad it is at the moment?

[DoyouknowJo]

I had to justify to my managers manager why I needed to spend £7 on stationery. Stationery. Some biros, some staples and a box of envelopes.

One of my colleagues chairs broke and she was told to apply to charitable funds to get a new one.

Everything is held together with sticky tape and blu tac (literally and figuratively)

We have four members of admin staff bunched into a desk meant for two, because there is no money to pay IT to put a new port in on their desks.

Waste toner cartridges are on lockdown. If yours is full you should take a scalpel, cut the seal open, empty it and then stick it back together and put it back in the printer. Don't worry about all your printing then being covered in smudgy ink. We're broke ya know.

And some fucking idiot turned up to A&E today...because their arm has been hurting for two months and they are off on holiday tomorrow and could we sort it please.

I'm thinking of starting an anonymous instagram account to get all this crap out.

Dungeon yes - scores, unfortunately - my DH is a consultant and most of our local GP’s have worked for him at some point in their training. I listen to plenty of GP’s moaning about their lot. Most seem blissfully unaware of how fortunate they are compared to the people they are moaning to!

I work with many and have friends who are GPs and while it used to be a good job it isn't anymore. I wouldn't do it nowadays in a million years.

I see the old boob job and facelift chestnut has raised its head again.
Yep they won’t even fund fixing a broken nose let alone a facelift ffs.
My colleague fell over in the shower and badly broke her nose a few months back. NHS said tough luck and she had to pay £3k to get it fixed privately

I work in admin in a small Community hospital. Over £1bn a year lost due to fraud in the NHS really annoys me - a lot of good could be done with that money and not just for buying pens!
And I agree there are too many managers having meetings about 'managing'...

Dungeon I am sure it has got more difficult but I also think that GP’s (and other NHS workers) seem to exist in a bubble which doesn’t really take into account what’s happening in other jobs with similar training/entry requirements/responsibility. It’s not pretty there either.

As has been described above, GPs aren't NHS workers. Having worked in the NHS the only people who existed in a bubble were consultants so no surprise that someone who is married to one thinks NHS workers exist in a bubble. I wouldn't extrapolate his experience to everyone else though. I pretty sure that many nurses and other healthcare professionals would strongly disagree that they exist in a bubble. I personally found love outside the NHS much easier as do most of my colleagues.

love life!

Well
My dh as a Doctor earns less than any of his friends he went to university with. He was the only one of their group who did medicine, the rest of them did business/ economics type degrees. They are all working in banking, finance or own their own businesses. They are all in awe of what dh does and are always a bit embarrassed of how little he earns compared to them.

But hey ho these rich greedy lazy Docs eh?

@missyB1, I have the utmost respect for doctors but please don’t ask me to sympathise with someone on a six figure salary. Your post just shows how fucked up the values in our society are. Doctors shouldn’t earn more, parasitic bankers should earn less.

Doctors shouldn’t earn more, parasitic bankers should earn less

Compensation isn't determined by some abstract concept of social worth, it's determined by supply and demand. The problem with medical staff compensation in the UK is that the NHS is essentially a monopoly employer. They can set wages as they see fit, and they set them low. That's why you have a shortage of doctors and nurses.

Why @TheBouquets?

Why are NHS staff held to a higher ideal than anyone else? If her justified complaints and bad language are your main cause for concern regarding high standards of care for the patients then you are clearly missing the entire point of this thread.

OP you're right: we had a stationary embargo 6 months into the financial year last year: if the NHS cannot afford the basics then how can they afford to properly care for patients? How is it sustainable?

THAT is the real issue, not swearing and cold hard facts.

Grow up.

@groundanchocchillipowder - it's a fucking scandal what's happening with mirena! I've never had and would never have a coil, I've always felt with my gynae history it would be asking for trouble to have a foreign body in there! I've told dd of my concerns around how it's being dealt with and cautioned her against having one - she's 18, never given birth, only quite recently become sexually active, has a disability that means she has certain physical vulnerabilities and she's ALREADY getting the hard sell on this!

@dungeon - I know GP's that work part time too, why do you think we wouldn't know them? They're our GP's!

"Doctors shouldn’t earn more, parasitic bankers should earn less" hear hear!

Comparing GP pay to investment bankers pay is ridiculous!

I know exactly how it works @MissConductUS. I pointed out that it’s wrong and symptomatic of how fucked up our society is.

dungeon - I know GP's that work part time too, why do you think we wouldn't know them? They're our GP's!

I wasn't asking if you know any GPs as a patient. I meant do you know any socially either as a friend or colleague.

Alsohuman I didn’t ask you to sympathise I was pointing out that being a doctor isn’t as well paid as some other jobs that are “apparently” on the same level in terms of commitment and responsibility. Doctors aren’t greedy or lazy or making a fast buck, but some posters here are insinuating that. They earn every bloody penny and more that they are paid.

I agree. And the level of responsibility a doctor has is incomparable - no banker literally holds life in their hands.

I keep seeing comments about the "extremely generous" pension provisions in the NHS. OK it's a defined benefit scheme based on average pay over the last 10 years of service, but doctors do have to pay into that, around 14% of gross salary last time I recall. There is no "opt out" of this scheme.

Trouble is once you earn more than a certain amount per year, the amount you can put tax free into your pension goes down. So the doctors HAVE to put a certain amount into their pension by NHS rules, that is then taxed at a high rate by HMRC rules. This is why many go part time, as then they can keep below the HMRC threshold.

But as NHS pensions are based on the number of years service, working say 50% of the time halves your number of years contribution e.g. 50% working for 10 years gives 5 years service towards your pension.

But didn't everyone want to "tax the rich" to save the NHS - ironic that doing so impacts the GPs (who are rich as they earn in the top few percent of the working population). Be careful what you wish for. As seen in this case, "taxing the rich" has unforeseen consequences.

Kazzyhoward - I think the problem is, the tax on the pension is so high that for working more hours, they take home less pay than they would if they worked less hours - and it makes no difference to the pension they get when they retire, because they are in a defined benefit scheme, not a defined contribution scheme. Tell me, can you imagine anybody who would be really willing to work more hours for less income than they work fewer hours for?! Nobody envisaged a tax rate of over 100%...

What it’s a nice problem to have that Doctors are being forced to drop NHS hours or even leave altogether? I can tell you dh is not finding it a nice problem at all! And how many of the public are going to enjoy having even less Doctors than they do now??? Don’t moan about not getting appointments or being not seen by a consultant in hospital if you are in favour of this debacle.
Anyway the health minister seems to be waking up and is begging them not to leave and promising to find a solution by the next tax year. We will see ....

The role of a GP has definitely changed massively. My df was a GP and he would do all his night calls and home visits, in addition to the usual surgeries and clinics. He felt the rot was setting in for GP services when GPs started contracting out night calls, and he refused to join the service - he felt the anxiety caused by not knowing someone who knew you would be there for you in the night if necessary would result in an increase in emergency call outs and would damage relationships with patients. These days, there just aren't enough GPs to go around to provide such a service, anyway, and the relationship between patient and GP no longer exists for most people - you see whoever has the next available appointment, or whoever is doing an emergency clinic, or someone who doesn't even work at that practice but is providing a back up service. It no longer has much to do with building relationships of trust and knowledge about entire families, and just seems to be about fire fighting. I can't really see the attraction in the role any more, except for the possibility to work part time, which makes the original purpose of a GP even harder to fulfil.