Wes Streeting wants NHS staff to work overtime to save the NHS...Will this work

[CleverCloggsClaire]

So Wes Streeting has said if Labour get into power, he will fix the NHS by getting staff to work overtime. Do people think this will actually work?

I work for the NHS in a hospital pathology lab. We are running at absolute full capacity. We don't have enough machines or staff to run the samples we already have, never mind extra ones from extra clinics. Overtime is already on offer to staff. The staff in their 20s, don't want it because extra money they earn will be taken by student loans or they don't have time because they already work a second job (uber eats or in a pub) as the NHS isn't paying them enough to cover their basic needs; rent/food/fuel. The staff (we are 80% female) aged between 30 and 45 - don't want overtime, mostly they only want contracted hours of 20-25 per week because they have young children at home who they need to be with. The ones of us (me included) aged between 45 and 55 ARE picking up extra hours, but there is only so much more than the contracted hours (37.5 a week over 5 days) that each person wants/feels able to do. The staff aged 55 and above don't want overtime because their mortgages are paid off, the kids have flown the nest, they don't need so much money and want to 'wind down' a bit.

I'm guessing this situation plays out all across the NHS. There comes a point when having personal time becomes more of a priority than earning extra money. So to Wes Streting I would say, have a re-think...could buying new, reliable equipment (and enough of it) be a better solution than trying to flog an already shattered workforce further into the ground.

Totally agree

He's a twat

🤣 . No I don't think that is a solution. Many of us already doing over contracted hours - we just don't get paid for it.

I work for the NHS and work in excess of my hours every week (unpaid)
I'm run down and have no more to give.
Labour are idiots if they think that this is a plan!!!

He hasn't a clue. Where are they going to put all these patients they are going to operate on at the weekends? In the car park? There aren't any beds/nurses.

My local hospital already does scans, Xrays, and similar things at weekends. Outpatient clinics and operations are much more complicated.

I just want to hear somebody say they will sort out carer's allowance/social care/day centres/respite care so that families who want to care for their relative can do it without being plunged into poverty.

Then bring the care homes back into NHS/Government control, pay carers a decent wage and give them all free training. Self funding residents shouldn't have to pay over twice as much for their place as the state pays for the funded residents in the same home.

I had high hopes for Streeting, but if this is the kind of thing he thinks will "cure" the NHS, he's hopelessly deluded.

As others have said, people aren't motivated by money as much as he thinks they are and the entire tax/benefits system is set up to "punish" people working more in terms of high marginal tax rates, loss of benefits, student loan deductions, pension deductions, etc.

I hate the guy, but at least Sunak "gets" the problem hence why there's been a push to get people working involving reducing NIC, changing the child benefit claw back rules, etc.

If Streeting wants people to work more, then he also needs to ensure his colleagues in the treasury change the tax/benefits/pensions rules at the same time.

i have a relative who has just given notice on his job because of the huge pressures of working unpaid overtime, including at weekends.

He was supposed to get ‘time off in lieu’, but somehow that never materialised.

I think Wes Streeting needs to tackle this shitty culture in the NHS contractor world as well as in the NHS itself, from the maintenance teams to the caterers and cleaners, right through to the admin and clinical staff.

Burn out is real. Exploitation is real.

There is no appetite for overtime in my NHS team. People are already feeling stressed and overworked just working their contracted hours. People will do extra if there is a crisis e.g. in the pandemic, but it's not a sustainable plan for the long term.

Yeah I do that already. He should employ more staff and pay people more

If they are talking about being able to afford overtime, then they should be focusing on recruitment and retention …..oh but wait. As pp said, I think they mean unpaid overtime. Which is already happening.

if you currently work in the NHS - prioritise your own family time. I urge

Nah I don’t want any overtime. I literally do the bare minimum right now to keep my registration.

For the past two years there has been 50% staffing in my speciality in my team. That means there has been one of us. As of last week there have been two, which means we are fully staffed. We do work Saturdays and Bank Holidays on a rota.

I've done enormous amounts of extra hours while we were on 50%. More than I should have. I neither can, not should, work 7 days a week.

Hasn't he said staff can work overtime and be paid overtime rates if they want to, not that everyone will be made to do it?

Oh absolutely. My relative was the third one in a year just on his team for whom it was ‘job or marriage’.

The money wasn’t great to start with, relative to local living costs (couldn’t even buy a tiny flat) - the expectation of an additional weekend of unpaid overtime felt contemptuous.

And when staff don't want to do that he can shrug and say it's their fault the NHS is failing.

Dear Lord.

I know many NHS staff and they are all working above and beyond.

That's not a solution.

No. Other half is a paramedic and is exhausted, so he avoids overtime at all costs. If he wants more money, he works for private firms, less stress, and they pay better.

No because people are burnt out now. I’ve left the nhs but only ever worked part time as I just couldn’t face full time. It was very rare ime for front line staff to be full time. The long shifts haven’t helped. You can’t force people to work overtime.

i work full time now and it’s nowhere near as bad as part time ward work.

There's got to be quality as well as quantity. Most people who work too many hours find the quality of their work will suffer.

I work for the NHS and have done for 18 years and like you out of the hundreds of staff I know I could maybe think of one single person that may want overtime.

Anybody who's ever worked in the NHS (or schools) knows full well that even though there's the facility to pay for overtime - or TOIL - managers invariably say there isn't the money/punish people for not keeping up with an unmanageable workload but then say 'well, it's your choice to work without a break and stay behind/come in early' or 'you can't be paid, there's no money, have TOIL taken in three and a half minute sections of the course of the next year whilst also constantly increasing the amount due, we're too short staffed right now/oops, you should have taken it last month because it's expired/we only allow you to come in later the next day when it's been specifically approved a month in advance by a manger who isn't here right now because they're on secondment somewhere else for two years'.

A politician suggesting that people could be paid for the work they do is completely irrelevant when the likelihood of a manager signing it off when it happens is pretty much non-existent.

Why doesn't he do it as one of politicians famous second jobs which they have so much time to do? He can help us all out here and show us how it's done 🤔🤡

I worked as a Nurse for 30 years and the Nurses were always doing overtime so not sure how much more they can do. We would work 3 0r 4 12 hour shifts a week and then do overtime or a shorter shift on our days off !

I work in occupational health and this is absolutely the worst idea I have heard. We are seeing so many people with stress and burn out because they have been over worked for so long. So many people already do overtime. We have had job openings open for literal years and no one wants them because they can earn double working in the private sector who are then contracted by the NHS. The whole system is crumbling and it's so late to stop it. They have an aging population who are living longer but with poor health so they need far more doctors than have been trained. The job of a nurse is now actually the job junior doctors used to do so they are far more stretched than they used to be. The whole thing is a mess.

I think it's an incredibly bad idea. When working long hours each additional hour worked is less productive, in other words the NHS will get better value for it's money by employing additional staff rather than overworking current staff.

Exhausted staff are more prone to making mistakes. Typing a letter it probably doesn't matter too much. Analysing samples and performing surgery it definitely does.

Importantly, pressuring staff who already feel overworked to put in even more hours is going to lead to an increase in stress and burnout.