To think staff in a hospital coffee shop should have their own priority queue?

[Thorilicious]

Just getting a coffee while visiting a relative in hospital. A few of the people in the queue are paramedics, nurses. I think they should have their own queue, so that they can be served first, so they aren't wasting their break queuing.
(I would have let them in front of me, but the queue only built up once I had paid.)

No it isn't the same, but neither is it just a simple matter of scanning stuff or putting things on a shelf. It is a daily grind of abuse from the public, both physically and verbally, plus the snooty attitude of people who think you are there simply to serve them and therefore must be less intelligent than them and not worthy of politeness. It may not be life and death but it is not without plenty of stress and unpleasantness.

NHS staff get treated like shit and I'm strongly in favour of anything which makes their working lives a bit easier

Any job has its downsides. At the end of the day, nobody dies during your shift, you don't have to clean up people's bodily fluids or be a shoulder to cry on for the family of a dying patient, or comfort someone who's been given a diagosis - or give that diagnosis. All while doing 10-12 hr shifts.

This is like everyone wanting to be a keyworker because they work hard. We know everyone works hard at work. Being a nurse/doctor is not equivalent to working at Tesco (as someone who's done both).

I know who do the staff think they are demanding safe staffing levels , fully working equipment, toilet breaks, showers, staff rooms, parking, safe bike storage, paid extra hours, subsidised food, they will be demanding a pay rise too if we're not careful😥

@blankets banned, it wasn't too long ago that I attended an outpatient clinic for an infusion when the nurse who would be looking after me greeted me with a bowl of porridge in her hands. There were 4 nurses and 4 patients. The nurses were chattering the whole time and complaining about how hard they had to work whilst talking about who was going to make the next brew.

It was 9.05; the clinic started at 9am. Isn't it reasonable to expect an out-patient nurse to have finished her breakfast before 9am. I didn't get the impression any of those nurses had come from a shift in theatre. Not sure that most outpatient nurses would be trusted to cover an theatre or ICU shift.

A friend of mine who is a Director of a health Trust once told me that the problem nurses get shunted to outpatients. The problem is, it's the outpatient nurses that most of us see and on which we form our judgements.

Yes, of course, to the OP.

They shouldn’t have to pay to park on the hospital site, either. I find it mind boggling that they do.

And that's even if you can get a permit to park. Had friends apply (and pay for) permits and not had them approved for months.

Not in my building. Nearest is a 10 minute walk to an entirely different building way across the hospital site.

I think a separate queue for NHS staff would be a nice touch recognising how hard they work. I'm not sure letting staff ahead of you would go down well with patients, i.e. if you are nearing the front and two nurses joined the back, you let them join front; I would be happy to do that but might get short shrift.

As an aside, one thing hospital cafes must do now is start accepting cash. Ours (Kingston) still doesn't ("hospital policy due to covid") and I wonder how elderly people who cant manage with cards are able to access hot drinks and food during a visit (my Dad with dementia, for instance, can only cope with cash, which I withdraw for him).

No I don't think so. Providing staff have access to a kettle and a microwave then going to Costa on your break is a choice. Everyone's time is precious and no one is at a hospital because they want to be.

Gosh that stopped years ago in my hospital. I always see our CEO in our kitchen making his own tea.

(For those of you wondering why his PA isn’t making it, we hybrid work these days so she isn’t in the office every day)

No, the answer is for the atrocious coffee shop business to sort the queues, full stop. Tiered service levels just lower the bar and make it ok for businesses to give crap service to some people for full price.

We need to stop being doormats in this country and rejecting poor service.

It's a great idea in theory, but I practice I just don't see how it would work.

Say you're in the queue as a patient/visitor/ companion/whatever. There are 3 NHS staff in front of you, you're in position 4. All good. Person 1 gets served, you're now in position 3. But 2 more NHS staff come in, you're back in position 5. Time passes. You're now in position 2. But wait! 6 NHS staff come in. Sorry! Back to position 8 you go. You finally get back to position 2 again, before getting bumped back by another 2 people. You've now been queuing for nearly 10 minutes and are exactly where you were when you started.

Now say you're the parent of a 6 year old autustic child inpatient. You're not being fed as you're not the patient. This is the only place you can grab a sandwich and a drink. You know your child will be OK without you for maybe 20 minutes tops. So back you go to the ward. No food for you today unless someone takes pity on you and slips you a couple of custard creams.

A stressed out, hungry junior doctor who may make mistakes has far more serious consequences though.
I don’t work in the NHS so have no axe to grind. I do expect our medical staff and those who assist to be able to access food and drink in a reasonable and timely manner. I obviously would expect this for all employees but this thread is about healthcare workers.

No I don't agree. Surely they have staff facilities. There are lots of reasons patients need to be quick. I actually think there should be separate canteens tbh

Staff should have fridges and tea/coffee making facilities for there breaks. But paying for fancy coffees isn’t really a service employers should feel obliged to facilitate for staff. (Could even be seen as unreasonable of them if the shop makes profit that goes back to the hospital in some way).

Separate queues are a pain to manage and can build resentment and misunderstandings.

*their

I can't imagine a single town centre where the hospital cafe is closer to the shops than the actual high street cafes. Happy to learn though.

If you were walking from Queen Sq down Great Ormond St to say Lamb Conduit St, then the NHNN and GOSH would have iirc, the only cafes you would walk past, if you decided you were desperate for a sit down and coffee! We always see Ciao Bella, an Italian restaurant round the corner, apparently nearly always full of hospital staff!

What staff facilities? Most bring their own food in even the doctors but it's a 13 hour shift.... I think that's a good enough reason to grab a coffee or a bite to eat now and again. A day shift starts a 7am!

What staff facilities?

I have always thought staff canteens 24/7, sleep in rooms and nurses homes on site were crucial to looking after staff, to enable them to work most effectively round the clock - and getting rid of all these facilities has been a retrograde step!

But then, DH has been reading “The Secret Barrister” and from he says, the government has eviscerated the rights of the defendants in the criminal justice system; so it all seems to be a general strategy to save money, regardless of the resulting costs to those, caught up in the system as “collateral damage”?

And I’m sure turning up late to an appointment because you’d let staff in front of you would get short shrift
Why would anyone make themselves late for a medical appointment by queuing for coffee? If you're that pressed for time, you act like a rational human being and wait till afterwards 🤷🏻‍♀️

Definitely. Not staff but I want them well catered for as I want them to be happy working and not knackered or dehydrated when treating me.

Nurses living on site was less about their well-being and more about controlling what they got up to. Remember there was a time when nurses weren't allowed to marry! But the rest are good points.

Aren't there kitchen areas where staff can make themselves drinks? Or am I being hopelessly naive (I have worked in places where there was a coffee shop, so they took away the kettles to force staff to use it!).