To remind you to be thankful for ALL NHS staff?

[pizzaorpine]

Not just Doctors, nurses and midwives?

I just want to also clarify that this isn't a personal attack on anyone since I know a lot of people are grateful for everyone working in the NHS.

I worked for the NHS for a while as a PA. The band below me, medical secretaries, use to work their bloody arses off for less money and less 'band'.

They would work tirelessly in that particular department to ensure you get your appointments arranged and everything is put into place. They organised referrals and arranged treatment times and dates. I think people forget that without that you don't get treatment in the first place!

Lots of them put in overtime to make sure things were running as smoothly as possible for patients.

Another type of person would be the healthcare assistants. They deal with a lot of shite and no, they're not nurses.

AIBU to say these people deserve the thanks too?

do you not get paid op?

Occupational therapists. When have you ever seen one in any of the millions of hospital dramas and true life emergency hospital programmes. Never! I know we aren’t glamorous but you’d miss us if we weren’t there

Weaselwords
Our children's services, including Paediatric Occupational Therapy, is now under contract to Virgincare.....and they're not there, and we do miss them!!

Sometimes when you're really ill in hospital, it's the little things that make so much difference: someone fetching you a pillow; someone making up the bed when you have just been admitted; someone fetching you a cup of tea when you need one; someone helping you to get to the loo. All those things are often carried out by non-clinical staff (who always seem to be glued to a computer screen) but they make a massive difference to the patients, who might be scared, feel like things are out of their control, in pain etc. Just to have small needs attended to can make the unbearable, bearable.

OP YANBU. Sometimes even someone sorting out an appointment for you can be massively important when you're scared. But also agree that it doesn't happen with all staff. They're not all angels. Some are on a power trip and make everything seem worse.

I meant the clinical staff always seem glued to computer screens!

YANBU but.....

You should be thankful for EVERY person that makes a difference in your day, I'm prepared to get massively flamed here but I'm finding this being thankful for NHS staff/how hard they are worked quite tiresome. I fully understand and know NHS staff work hard and this is nothing personal against any of them, I had to take my 6 month old to A&E last week and fully appreciate how amazing they all are!

The thing is so many other people in so many other professions work just as hard/do just as long hours without a break, the waitress serving your evening meal may have been on her feet since breakfast in a physically demanding role without stopping as they are short staffed, the teacher teaching your child has been up late marking your child's book, lesson planning and updating parents portal before coming in early to set up her lessons, the shop assistant taking pay for your sandwich hasn't been able to even nip off the shop floor for the toilet because they are so busy, his arms are aching from putting away a huge and heavy delivery before the shop even opened but still manages a smile for you.

I'm not undermining what you are saying but there are so many other hard working people in the world who deserve some appreciation as well.

Building nhs staff up as heroes or saints who deserve automatic undying gratitude is how abuse goes unchallenged.

I'm going to go the other way and say that NHS staff get huge amounts of praise amongst my social group. People falling over themselves to repeatedly praise the whole service.

I work in the education sector, and led an initiative to improve an area of it. The work - highly stressful for the duration of the project - resulted in the first successful delivery of such an initiative in the UK in the past twenty years. It's well regarded by the service users, and has had a demonstrably positive effect.

Where's my bloody parade? Where's my Facebook badge or Mumsnet thread?

To be honest, you just sound envious that the frontline staff get heaped with thanks and you don't, but it is the NORM that people don't get endlessly thanked for what they do, not the exception!

But the NHS admin staff get so much scorn heaped on them, that the waitress doesnt.

Then lets have the same respect for the HCAs in Care Homes. Many are desperate to work for the NHS, where the pay and conditions are better.

My DD works as a Manager in a private MH service. Many of her staff are on minimum wage and face daily attacks.

People are often surprised at what workers in residential/support care services have to do. They think they are just pad changes.

EleanorReally, have you worked as a waitress, as a full Adult?

Told people that's what you do for a living etc?

I'm grateful for the NHS and most of the people in it but I can't feel grateful when my doctor has made me feel like shit on the phone and same about the receptionist as well. Both made me cry at one point. Sometimes it comes across like just cos someone works in the NHS they're automatically supposed to be good and you're automatically supposed to be grateful. I hate going to the doctor's cos of how they make me feel half the time

my dd's have worked as waitresses.
are they put down by the press? by politicians, by mumsnet?
www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2015/jan/29/nhs-office-staff-burnout-risk-open-thread

It's like any job. Some good, others less so.

Very often you are not in a position to judge, as you don't come across their work. Not that some people let's that stop them.

I know where you're coming from. A huge amount of scorn is heaped on admin staff in the NHS, particularly in primary care in my experience.
You get some who aren't great, but the vast majority earn minimum wage and go above and beyond many times every single day. Sometimes they make errors (which is understandable given their volume of work), and front line staff get abuse more than once every day about things over which they have absolutely no control.
I am sure it's the same in many jobs but it still needs saying.

It is apart from the must see so many vulnerable people or people in just vulnerable situations so it's so important to treat people right and take them seriously otherwise you could make life threatening mistakes

My sister is an admin team leader in the NHS and has the most hilarious stories about her work tbh- she changed career from a very busy low paid job and finds her new world hilarious. Staff who are off sick on and off for years, in fighting because sally took Fiona’s skimmed milk in 1992, and she has no actual work to do to be honest. I’m not really thankful for them.

Incidentally, my mother is a senior nurse and my sister is paid almost as much as her. My sister has been doing it 18 months and promoted twice.

I'm grateful for the NHS i worked in a hospital a few years ago and found a lot of doctor's, nurses and receptionist quite unpleasant, the nicest were the cleaner's, i say please and thank you to everyone not just NHS staff

Having just read the 12 page thread full of horrific experiences on the postnatal ward (and I had a few myself), I don't think gushing praise for all NHS staff should be given without question. Sometimes it seems like doing the very basics of your job are seen as going above and beyond Surely being treated with dignity and respect, being given gentle nurturing care in the immediate hours and days after giving birth is the bare minimum that a woman can hope for but reading the thread and thinking back to my own experience, it seems that on the rare occasions that this attitude presents itself then we are to be prostrate with gratitude and praise.

I too work in a behind the scenes admin role in the public sector. If I didn't do my job properly, children could be placed in care with totally unsuitable people. I don't get thanked by the professionals I support or the public nor do I expect it.

Although I will say having just had a baby I do think the whole concept of midwifery is just amazing and we’re lucky to retain it (in many countries there are no midwives or they have limited remit) think you have this highly qualified woman who takes you through the whole of labour, delivers your baby and even does lovely supportive things like make you a cup of tea after! They look after you, an adult woman, the newborn baby, and they’re even nice (usually) to your partner who isn’t even medically involved. You don’t get that from a gynaecologist!

Having said all that I am extremely grateful that the NHS exists and that healthcare in the UK continues for the most part (dentistry excepted) to be free at the point of need. We should try and protect that as far as is possible.

I'm a mental health nurse in a inpatient ward. It's a pretty thankless job as the majority of my patients (understandably) do not want to be there and have had their liberty taken away. Our ward clerk certainly shares in any thanks that comes our way (she sometimes gets her own thank you card!). A&E staff also get heaps of abuse from patients as well as the adoration, we tend to define doctors and nurses as being saints or devils.

I've worked in a care home as a HCA and that was truely thankless. People see you as a piece of furniture or robot, you really are treated like shit. We don't respect care work, which is sad.

I also worked as a barista, and wow, that was a job with lots of abuse taking too!

A previous post has mentioned about clinical staff being glued to computer screen. A lot of our work is getting information about a patient - blood results, pathology, previous history, treatment plan and putting all this information together so that further decisions can be made. Then go to see a patient and then document new findings. The introduction of the workstation on wheels has made it so much easier

I’m in agreement with those saying we should be appreciative of all good work and all the work going on behind the scenes that make a difference to us all.
I also think the NHS often needs positive stuff to counteract the negative stuff that is quite prevalent... but in saying that, my husband works for the local authority and really works his arse off trying his hardest to do a lot with very little and yet people only ever say bad things about the LA and call managers like my hubby “fat cat bosses”... I bloody wish he was on a fat cat wage- he actually dropped salary to move out of the banking industry into LA and I can assure people he really works hard and cares deeply about the people needing support from services such as social work and child and family services- and often lies awake at night going over numbers to try to stretch the budgets further.
So all people doing hard work for the greater good deserve our appreciation.