NHS employee- workload doubled overnight

[Hurryupretirement]

I am posting this as I think it’s important that people know how the government is ‘tackling’ NHS waiting lists.

I am an NHS nurse with 28 years experience. I work in a specialized area which assesses people for a specific, life limiting condition. The assessment process is long and detailed.

We, like most of the NHS, have a waiting list ( we lost 9 months over covid and haven’t been able to recover).

With no notice whatsoever we were told that we would need to see double the number of patients. We had to make it work. Non negotiable.

Myself and my colleagues are now working evenings and weekends just to stay afloat.

This is the NHS’s ‘plan’ for tackling waiting lists.

Are you a member of a union op? This sounds untenable and will lead to burnout

Or what? They can't sack you all. Can you band together and agree not to do the stupid extra hours?

This must be something your trust or whatever is trying to pull. Find out who your whistleblowing contact is.

Are you at least getting paid for the extra time I hope?

it’s appalling. It’s just more stupid higher level decisions that will only back fire.

This happened to a colleague. She became so stressed she was suicidal. You have to communicate concerns to management and keep an audit trail. She won a huge payout from the NHS and never returned to nursing. If you can prove the doubling workload is unreasonable and it adversely affects your health legal action can be taken.

Classic NHS flog the staff until they leave….

How many hours a week are you now working? Are you getting paid extra? Even if you are you have the right to say no. Can you contact the speak up guardian/whistle blowing guardian?

Sorry to clarify, we have to see double the number within our usual working hours. So no doing extra in overtime we just have to squeeze twice the number in. We dont even have enough clinical space to accomodate this so we are being sent to see people in their homes instead….

I would find a new job!

What is your union doing about this?

Surely travellling around to peoples homes is really inefficient?

if they are making you book double the number of people,for a clinic just see who you can get through. If it gets to 5pm and the waiting room is still full just send people home. The complaints will rocket and maybe the managers will take notice then. 🤷‍♀️

You are now working weekends & evenings and not even getting paid? You need to join a union.

Yeah i work for the NHS i’d be looking for another job and/or contacting the union. aThis is not the answer and terrible for both the patients who get no time and staff who burnout and leave. Terrible management.

If you are having to see people in the same hours how come you're working weekends and evenings?
In my trust we are operating at 110% and this means we have operating lists and clinics at weekends but staff choose to do these as extra hours and get paid for them. There is a careful watch on how much people are doing to ensure no one is working 7 days a week every week

I feel for you. I work in community, caseloads are unmanageable, they were before COVID and have tripled since. I cover a virtual frailty ward as part of my job - the number of patients we are expected to see has tripled, staff are leaving and we are told there is no money to replace them -

What does you “have to” mean though? Says who? who books in double the patients and on whose say so?

Who punishes you if you don’t and what is the punishment?

I presume your manager is quite a junior member of staff, are they just so poor at co-ordination and planning that the easiest/ laziest thing is to give you this ridiculous task so that you are somehow responsible for delivering rather than looking at the problem maturely and professionally?

Also- excuse my ignorance as not worked in this environment- if you used to see 5 1 hour appointments a day, the only way to double your workload would be for you to be working 14 hours a day and seeing patients at anti social hours ie 9pm which doesn’t generally happen in the nhs… where you fully utilised before? Because it seems so impossible I wonder whether you were under capacity

The NHS is truly fucked. If people knew how bad it was they would pull all the stops out not to go in. Ive worked in the NHS for 43 years and Im now a patient. Being a patient has driven me to the point of mental breakdown.
I had a colleague and friend on the phone last night crying uncontrollably after her day at work.

They are idiots who think we are idiots. Of course waiting lists will not go down without a whole system refirm to deal with the inefficiencies in the NHS. This doubling of workload or offering overtime is no solution at all.

Honestly OP, look to work privately. You will fall back in love with the job that you do. May well earn less money, but it is better than working in the system or you are punished for the inefficiencies elsewhere and you have more agency over your workload.

This is appalling yet very typical.

There is no pride in working like this.
This is not why you go into nursing, the caring profession.
This is not caring, this is processing people through a system that won’t work and will inevitably lead to things being missed.

You will be putting your PIN on the line with every patient you rush through this system because inevitably, things will get missed on every single one.

Not one single part of this is your fault, but when it comes to defending yourself in either a court of law or in front of the NMC, it will all be down to you for not speaking up through the right channels.
You and your team need to consider a paper trail to management and Union involvement.
protect your patients from this shit show and protect yourselves. Please do something.

I wish.

The system has a way of making this the clinician's problem. You can't see them fast enough, so you are underperforming. No matter how impossible the task.

It's also really hard to leave patients stranded.

If its a long and detailed process then that process needs making more efficient to e.able your workload to be tenable as well as reducing waiting lists

I would guess that they were fully utilised before. Probably already over - booked.

That does not stop the NHS from squeezing in more people, believe me.

So angry and sad to read this, and so sorry you’re being put in this position. Have you considered speaking to the press? You could do it anonymously if that is more comfortable.

I am so angry about this on your behalf OP.
You and your team and your patients just do not deserve this.
You sound like you are putting heart and soul into it by working so many extra hours. This is because you care.

Leaving or standing firm are your options.

People are complicated. Complex health issues are complicated. If you try to simplify that, you do harm. You miss things.

Clinicians cannot be more efficient than they already are. They've been cutting corners for decades. There is no substitute for enough time with an individual patient.