To wonder why healthcare is so short staffed.

[malificent7]

I'm a new-ish AHP and starting a new job in September. It will be my 2nd role since graduating. I'm not in nursing but I am aware of the stresses of that job.

I do like my role but have experienced some bullying but most people have been lovely, the pay is ok, the pension is good and there will always be jobs in pandemics and recessions. The degree course was especially interesting.

Of course I have some idea why there are staff shortages and subsequent workload but just wanted to gather your thoughts and see if my suspicions are correct.
Would also be great to hear from people who actually did leave and reasons why.

We lost 12 in one week to a local supermarket paying better.

I’m a senior AHP. We’ve not been able to recruit properly for ages.

I think it’s partly as people want fully remote jobs. We offer hybrid but that’s not good enough apparently.

Burnout
People retiring
Trusts unable to replace the staff lost to the above

Why do you want to know?

I heard recently that over 1000 OTs who qualified in last few years are either not working or are in non OT posts. They introduced diverse placements a few years ago which have been very successful but difficult to then recruit to traditional OT posts.
We probably need more part time posts to entice working mums back to work. Or rotational posts are all full time which is not very flexible.

I want to know as I'm curious, especially as I work in healthcare.

i'll be graduating next year as a junior doctor, and will be taking home around £12-14 an hour after 5 years of training and graft. people my age with similar grades and academic performance to me at school/uni are making double and triple that! it often does not feel worth it for the amount of time, money and effort you put in compared to other careers for 'high flyers' (i love the job and content so will stick with it but still)

Shit pay
Overwhelming responsibilities
Lack of emotional support
Inept and inefficient management
Absurd bureaucracy
Inflexible shift patterns
Incompatibility with family life
Poor treatment from patients
Despicable treatment from management

I’m surprised you work in health care and really don’t know. I think you must be a reporter/journalist but I’ll bite.

My husband earns almost double than I do managing a restaurant (works very hard around 40hours a week, qualifications at GCSE)

I’m at management level working on a 40 bed critical care unit with 15 years experience… GCSE, A-Levels, diploma, degree, hours and hours of continuous professional development…

Thats one reason, there are many, many others.

I think its a perfect storm of a load of stuff isn't it

healthcare was always under pressure because of underfunding, over management and over population

then Brexit meant understaffing got worse

then Covid mean pressure got worse

underfunding continues means not a very attractive job

loss of staff means that there is huge pressure on the remaing staff which means in turn its a harder job to tolerate mentally

look at it this way if you are working as one nurse in a place where there should be six nurses, you can't do your job properly because your over stretched, your overtired, you feel like you are letting everyone down (when its not your fault), you have no colleagues to support you and so on. extreme example but smaller versions of this are happening every day on every ward

this means more staff don't enjoy their work any more so will leave for something less stressful and where they feel they aren't failing.

more leave so more pressure on the remaining ones and its a downward spiral\

all of the above piling in together.

and an excessively large population that is increasing and being encouraged rther than discouraged.

For every 30 new midwives that qualify, 29 leave.

Because I'm short the work is very hard, it's stressful and we're overworked and under paid.

Your relatively new, we’ll come back to this is 20 years time and see how you feel then.

Pay does not always reflect responsibility and level of accountability
LacK of support
Pay isn’t always that great and the banding system is shit and does not value experience. You have to climb the ladder quickly, do it very slowly like me and you get a pittance of a payrise when you go up a band because you were top of the previous band.
Unsocial hours
Not always enough flexibility
Endless responsibility.

I came home from work in tears today, the level of responsibility I have feels unsustainable and I am usually very resilient.

It's shit. I've been nursing 13 years. I work in a niche area where retention is slightly better but we are constantly short staffed due to sickness/mat leave and we are pushed to continue maintaining the same level of care. 4 of us are going on mat leave this month which means 7 on mat leave in total plus 4 off long term sick, so instead of reducing beds to make it safe, they are plugging the gaps with agency and newly qualified staff. This is an area that offers intensive care, it's not appropriate at all. The stress that we are under is leading to burn out. Even when we are full and closed, we are still accepting admissions.
Days off it's constant WhatsApp messages begging for staff to pick up extras and reminding you how short staffing is ready for your next helllish shift.
Unpaid breaks are more and more scarce. Im 30 weeks pregnant and only got one half hour break on a 13 hour shift on Sunday instead of the 2 unpaid half hour breaks I'm entitled to. We often finish late. It's relentless.
It's always been the same but its worse at the minute because we are having massive issues with supply of equipment, medication and consumables which makes the job harder. Stuff just isn't available, including essential kit.

This sums it up perfectly. Your post is a little naive OP. Slightly disingenuously.

I am no journalist but I am considering my future options. I got a 1st for my uni course and feel that I could put it to good use earning more in a relatedd field but I do love my chosen field...it's the conditions that concern me.

The " getting treated like shit by management" rings true for me.

Related*

Most patients are nice but the horrible experiences really stay with you.

Constantly worried about hundreds of peoples’ health/life, even during out of work hours.

The targets are always changing, due to new evidence about safety/cost saving/green agendas on top of just trying to do the basics.

The pressures with lack of staffing means I’m being pushed to work in ways outside my competence and it’s exhausting having to constantly push back and affects working relationships.

I’m paid plenty but I DREAM of a low stakes job. One where the worst mistake has negligible consequences.

After ten years of hearing it'll be better when x,y,z happens and it never being true, I left a job I thought I would love and do until I retired.

I am so sad about it but it was damaging me. I am not sure I'll ever feel ok about it.

I think the high stakes worries me the most tbh.

12 years of a bastard Tory government, worse than Thatcher quite frankly.

It's hard work, underpaid for the level of responsibility (yet some people disagree and think we get paid well - would like to see them pull off a nursing shift), often staffing levels are dangerous due to not enough staff, many jobs are unsocial hours and childcare doesn't cover it

Not clinical but the dark side (management)

for me and my peers:

• under resourced


• under paid


• over worked


• too high expectations (ie “here’s an hours notice to provide a detailed plan for cancer improvement and we’re going to hold you to whatever you commit to”, what do you mean you haven’t done it? Also within this hour have you gone round the wards chasing discharges despite not being clinical, several other more competent, qualified people have already been round doing the same thing).


• bullying from more senior colleagues


• constant fire fighting


• No job satisfaction


• not enough staff


• not paid for overtime

and for my clinical colleagues, the above x100 plus the added terror of a mistake could harm a patient!

i complain, a lot. But never to my clinical colleagues because I don’t know how they come in every day. They’re heroes.

The nhs recruitment process has so many challenges for people that have had a more unconventional career background (self employed for instance) Particularly their very stringent referencing requirements.. often difficult to obtain for eg , sahms . Also the amount of time to train in an academic setting whilst not being paid, with few options to fast track.
The apprenticeships are a good start but hugely competitive to get places.

The NHS is an institutionally abusive employer. Senior management seem to be able to float between roles, never taking the consequences for failure, collecting golden hellos and golden goodbyes and bonuses and gongs from Her Majesty. Those at the coal face are never allowed to feel as if they're doing a good enough job. Meeting performance targets results in tighter targets. An effective working department will be punished for its success with "efficiency savings". Systems and regulations and procedures seem to change every five minutes. Frustration at not being able to give patients, for whom we DO care, the sort of treatment we would ideally like to give them and the constant worry that we'll make a mistake due to exhaustion or trying to juggle multiple tasks. There is little official support if something goes wrong and there will always be someone prepared to stick a knife in your back for no reason other than to entertain themselves. Pay is down in real terms and we turned up, masked and gowned up, and worked during the pandemic and those Thursday claps is the only reward we've ever had. Is that enough?

(Recently left the NHS workforce after 36 years and currently very angry about some of the things I've experienced or had to do over that time.)