SnoringSnorlax how many back office staff are on £115K though?
I am a clinician. If they want the answers to their questions how about asking the patients and clinicians?
Here's the thing I work in therapies. Evidence based practice tells us the best outcomes for patients are high intensity therapy programs. The gold standard in my field would be 4/5 days a week (with rehab tasks carried out by the patient both after clinician led therapy and on non therapy days) for 4/6 weeks. How much of this am I able to provide? 1 or at the most 2 sessions of therapy followed by discharge. Totally ineffective! Do I rant talk to my manager about this? Of course I do, and the answer? "Sorry pursued but as you know there just isn't the funding and our waiting lists are constantly breaching guidelines, you'll just have to find away to worker harder and smarter".
Do you realise £115k would pay for 3 band 6 therapists? Do you know if I could work effectively I could make a real difference for my patients? But here's the thing those who decide where funding goes really aren't interested in 'well-being' data, because it's difficult to quantify.
Someone up thread said if this person going into post can effect change then it's money well spent, my response is 'yes, but how do they effect change with no further money for staffing?'
Reality is this; £115k post holder, goes into post all enthusiastic, says yes we need more nurses, more drs, more therapists, more pharmacist/ dieticans/ ophthalmologists/ more discharge coordinators etc, only to be told "provide the evidence". So now our postholder devises a form for all clinicians to fill out, accept the clinicians are really busy seeing pts and put the form to one side, which quickly goes to the bottom of the pile of the to do list. Now the postholder is getting thoroughly peeved, as they can't move forward with their brand new changes so they send a snappy email to the clinicians, who grudgingly fill out the form thinking fucksake we do this constantly and it never makes a change, now I'm running late for my next pt oh this again. Form finally gets completed and returns.
The post holder looks at the returns but realises the data is qualitative not quantitive. "Ah well" says the post holder "I'll take it to the meeting". At the meeting the post holder says in earnest "look evidence of what we need now can we have these extra staff" and the VIP chief exec. Laugh and point out that qualitative data is not evidence based and therefore no, you can't have more staff, you need to redesign your measures...
And so on and so forth. Eventually the £115k post holder gives up, realises it's a load of codswallop, but quite likes the salary and breakfast meetings so, continues to sit in a job making no changes whatsoever. Chief exec are happy as don't need to ask for more money, and actually can now show the strategic health authority that they can save money by getting rid of £115k job. The strategic health authority are happy, because they now have another pot of money to advertise for a job they want to give their mate Norman, whose had a bit of rough time, and Norman is happy because he's about to get a new job in a comfy heated office with new carpeting!
Meanwhile £115k post holder who has been doing the post for five years, and can see the job is failing can request early retirement, with a nice tidy retirement sum, and is happy.
Meanwhile those of at the coalface feel more and more frustrated that nothing changes and our patients continue to suffer.