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.

I really feel that the healthcare service could get their numbers up with making the degree a little easier.

Do away with the blasted essays and dissertation (that caused a woman I was studying to attempt suicide as she failed it twice)
Do patients care if their nurse can write a glowing essay with Harvard referencing?! No they bloody don't
The course should be about human biology and drug calculations and emergency procedures not research proposals
Shift patterns are so bad.
Bring back term time for parents or single parents who cannot do nights and weekends
And don't get me started on the pay 🤬🤬

It's heartbreaking really. I did care work in the past and that was gruelling and pay was even worse!

Poor pay, poor conditions and a crap work force. Bureaucracy and lack of autonomy. Virtually no ability for a department to adapt to it's workload.

I've worked in private and public sectors and whilst private sector has its stresses you can move company and know it is likely to be different. Private businesses can get rid of crap employees who don't pull their weight. Decent private companies will expand and collapse their work force to meet demand. In public sector, particularly healthcare and statutory services, if you have 50% of your workforce they still have to do 100% of the work otherwise people die. You end up with serious burnout because of it.

I'm talking like for like roles e.g. both need a genetic degree and x years experience or both roles are admin. Not talking private Dr Vs NHS Dr etc.

For example, I work out of a dilapidated building with currently no working toilets and limited running water. We pay for our own tea, coffee, mugs, milk, cutlery and bought our own kettle and fridge. I'm a project manager and on around £40k, so not a bad salary, but I'm doing 2.5 people's jobs and working the hours to evidence that. We get maybe 1 or 2 applicants per job, and they are usually lacking experience or not qualified for the job. I wanted to make a difference, I wanted to be part of the solution to societies ills so took a public sector role. We offer no incentives to get people to stay when they leave despite knowing we can't recruit to fill them, there's no negotiation on salary, there's no benefits beyond the pension and sick pay.

My old job - same salary, fancy city centre office with cleaner, free tea and coffee and filtered water on tap, negotiable pay rises based on performance. There were times I worked waaay over my hours but when it became evident my role had grown to more than one person's ability, we recruited. When we didn't get suitable applicants we increased the starting salary and benefits package and offered better pensions and maternity packages. When staff handed in notice if we felt they were good we would offer incentives to stay. We valued the work force.

The NHS and most public sector is essentially operating like a minimum wage business and expecting excellence. It's not going to happen.

I'm going back to private sector!

What do you currently practice as?

I've 3yrs experience as an AHP. Still have an unsafe case load (about 30 people more than I can cope with), no support when I started and no one to learn from, which means for every single patient I have to go back to the evidence base so my interventions are bombproof but take time to put together. This means I mostly work 50hr weeks. I rarely see my 10yo in the week, and tend to pick my teenager up from activities at 9.30 on my way home.
I'm still here because I'm stubborn and I can see that eventually it will be better. I also now have good management. Most sane people would have quit months ago.

I’m a nurse (band 6) earning 39k if I was full time. I work overtime most days (unpaid). I don’t have the IT equipment I need for my job. The IT equipment I have doesn’t work. I regularly have extra tasks added that need completing but never had anything removed or that can be delegated in my speciality. I dream about work and my to do list. I go on leave and come back to more work as we don’t share caseloads. We have 5 desks in out office for 17 members of the team.

My husband earns 60k, is qualified to the same academic level as me. He works 9-5 with no overtime ever. He has all the equipment he needs for work and it works. He regularly gets thanked for his work and small rewards or bonuses for pieces of work. He isn’t stressed ever as can say no to work when he has more important work and stops taking on pieces of work when going on leave.

Im currently looking to leave to work for a company like my husbands.

NHS manager here. Completely disengaged senior teams who haven't spoken to a patient in years and lost sight of the real reason we all come to work.
Expectations of additional work without additional resource - there is no other profession where if we don't do everything we need to, people will clinically suffer. The pressure of that and work expectations is not valued or even regarded.
Oh, and bloody cost savings come March. They let us have an overspend on essential COVID incurred costs then ask us to recoup the overspend in the next financial year by cutting back. FFS

This with bells on.
Can I add the bullying culture that seems to be ignored.
And if you say something, you're the bully.
And if you whistleblow you loose your job.

@Jolinar the running joke in our trust is the only thing that works is the staff.
Every shift is a blue Peter moment, I'm surprised with don't have double sided sticky tape lying around in the clinic room.

Yup. This about covers it.

I’ve worked in various roles in the NHS for approximately a decade and a half across various trusts and sadly this list is a recurring one.

I finished in the NHS in an admin role just after the very last full lockdown we had. Working during the worst of it was pretty grim but what finally pushed me over was the complete lack of accountability management had for their staffs well-being. My role was completely computer based I.e perfectly suited to wfh, but instead I was put in a small room converted to office space with eleven other people which was used as a high traffic corridor to equally stuffed offices. We had to have Skype team meetings at our desks like this ‘because of covid’. It was absurd and any questioning of it was slammed down with the force of Thor.

On top of everything else listed above that was enough to make me run as fast as I could as soon as I could.

I’d never say never, but things would have to be really bad for me to consider touching the NHS or that particular Trust again.

I have just moved into the independent and charitable sector as a senior ahp after twenty years. Once you move the pay scales you spend your time on compliance/ management too much. I was lucky to see two kids a week. I had remote flexible working and no shifts so a cushy number if you like. But all the joy was sucked out managing staff. Even when I saw patients usually the most complex presentations I did not have the head space to work out what they needed. Loving having time to clinically reason again. Not deal with staffs problems - I was reported to be an excellent line manger I just didn't get joy from it

Pretty obvious I would say...

• stressful
• under-paid in many roles
• useless management
• abuse from patients/clients
• government that does not support the NHS and wants to privatise it
• Covid
• Staff recruitment problems means higher workloads for existing staff.

I worked in mental health until recently. Never again! It came to a point where I felt really unsafe and I had useless managers. I admire anyone who is sticking to healthcare/social care jobs but it just was not for me.

The NHS has got a terrible reputation for bullying, especially in ward based jobs. Not even a good pension would tempt me back there.

Under paid and over worked, sums it up.

Worry and feeling like you don’t have enough time to do a good job - because there are so many patients and few staff.

then more people leave and it makes it harder for those remaining.

Burnout. I left nursing for precisely this reason. There is no support whatsoever for the mental pressures you are put under and after a tough situation, there is no debrief or time to process it because you are too busy. Eventually you cannot do it any more.

I wouldn't go back.

All of the above.

Plus, turning the question round to why do so many people need healthcare, a huge part of the picture lies in the demographics of an ageing population with ever more complex comorbidities and stressful living conditions. Not to mention the mainstream media ramping up unrealistic expectations on the part of patients all the time.

All of the above, especially a Tory government and a lunatic Brexit.

Oh, and I also strongly suspect you're a journalist just from some of the phrasing you're using. Which one of the AHP professions are you in??

Bullying culture
People who are bullied get burnout and leave
The bullies are rewarded and promoted to more and more senior positions
There are of course policies on bullying but they are not worth the paper they are written on. HR always back the senior manager in any disputes.

I strongly believe there should be more collaboration across the NHS. Middle and senior managers should be mentored, reviewed and physically attend an equivalents role in another Trust on a regular basis.

There’s a lot of stagnation, nepotism and little empire building going on from people who’ve spent years building their own echo chambers unchallenged.

Amongst the lower bands there’s a lot more movement between roles and opportunities to build a wider perspective. Not always but then I would say that’s facilitated by the above inadequacies of middle management upwards.

I was assaulted quite seriously by a patient.
That time was one of many over the years and it was just one too many.

On top of what previous posters have very honestly listed, this was the end for me.

For my decades of dedication, for an impeccable sick record, for working 50-60 hour weeks for 2 years during the pandemic, i and all of my colleagues received a pay cut and a coffee mug to thank us.

I’ve never looked back since leaving.

I'm leaving private to go back to the nhs for a bit to revitalise my skills. Nothing worked well...it, equipment etc. Better, more up to date kit in my new place. I might go back to private but they had NO support at for newly qualified staff like me. Doubt it will be hugely different but at least the kit is brand spanking new.

I knew healthcare was exceptionally poorly paid and I chose another path. While the pay remains bad they can't really expect people to flock there.

I'm an AHP. I love my job - I retrained in my late 30s and adore it. But my team is collapsing. I have to wonder if it's me, if I'm impossible to work with, when in September I will be literally the only band 6 left in post in my small team.

Our manager had to leave 18 months ago and the person who took us on has spent all that time trying to recruit a replacement on a temporary contract. Not surprisingly nobody wanted that. They have finally said they will put out a permanent post. What a waste of time. In the meantime we just have to try and manage the service ourselves which is exhausting.

I think the simplest issue is housing costs- the wages aren't bad for the area but housing is stratospheric so it's very difficult to build a life in this area.

I would definitely say do your band 5 training, get experience. But pick your team and your manager carefully.