If you'd asked me this 5 years ago, I would, on balance, maybe say it was 'worth while', but now the cuts are biting, I'd say 'stay away'.
In common with many DGH's, we've 'merged' We now have more Band 8 managers than Band 7 managers.
The 'old guard' are not just leaving, they are walking away from the NHS.
Why?
They are sick of the endless merry go round of middle management. We merged 6 years ago. We are undertaking our fourth 'restructuring' (same people, different titles, same 'professional weaknesses' (aka incompetencies)).
Many of our middle managers have no idea, and don't care- what we do. They do not understand that to them, (being, say, pathology managers); because an MRI scanner looks a bit like a CT scanner, those staff become interchangeable (Them: 'Flexible'; us: 'Jack of All Trades'). They make us take on any applicant for a job, from wherever, with whatever dodgy, purchased qualification- then castigate us all for 'falling standards'. Some of the work and practice I've seen over the past 5 years is shocking.
They think that cos Jeremy (C)Hunt says so, The World works 24/7, now, so people aged 55 who haven't done night shift in 10 or so years should be coerced back onto it.
Twelve hour shifts are 'the norm'; however 13+ hour child minding facility isn't.
The equipment is often older than some of the staff.
Agency (on twice your wage) will come and go, but you will be held accountable for their failings. ( recent missive to staff: "C'mon, 'team'! Let's all Pull Together! We need to recognise that many of our agency are barely qualified and inexperienced. Let's put in that bit extra for them....!"- or, let's not hire someone, at £36ph who can't do the job?)
I am literally counting the months. Every single day brings some new micro-aggression from management to the shop floor staff.
Managers whose only, single care is to stay on the right side of a breach. Whatever the human cost to their, evidently wholly replaceable staff. (Allegedly). That is all they care about. An endless fudging and obfuscation. Hide, hide, hide the reality that the services are on their knees.
Targets.