To think NHS admin jobs are awful

[Whydoibotherto]

I hate my job. I’m a lowly band 3 administrator in a large London hospital and the work keeps getting piled on. I now have to complete triaging forms with patients which involve detailed medical questions, stuff like “can you get an erection”, “can you ejaculate”, “do you feel suicidal”. A job a band 4 health assistant used to do.

On the one hand I have quite serious responsibilities - I managed our reception staff when we had some, manage patient complaints, manage our referrals, manage the clinic diaries, arrange home visits etc but now I also have to sit on reception and answer our call centre phone system as our 3 receptionists left and will not be replaced.

Had a meeting yesterday with my manager who confirmed I will now be doing all of my own work whilst sitting on reception full time. It’s not possible!!

All this for lowly sum of about £21,000 a year and I work full time for this.

A few staff have been signed off with stress and despite me saying this will end up happening to me if they don’t get in some more staff, they just don’t care.

My daughter lives in Australia and I had requested some annual leave in April to visit and my request has been declined due to no staff. They will not even consider bank staff to cover. So basically I can never have time off.

I am looking for a new job. The NHS really is an awful place to work, they do not value their staff one bit.

I hear you OP very similar story here! Have a degree too but doing an obscene amount of work with lots of responsibilities yet earn less than 23k. I keep seeing people on these thread saying move to civil services or finance admin etc but I can’t find any available jobs in these sectors maybe as I’m not in London.
people doing far less than me are getting paid a lot more elsewhere and it isn’t fair I can’t even afford to buy a house o didn’t think this would be my life at 40!

Crapness of job aside, you shouldn’t just be getting £21k? What’s happened to your London Weighting? You need to follow up on that if it’s not added on as they’ll owe you a fair whack.

Tbf I’d go off sick and look for another job. Ppl take advantage of sick in NHS and do it multiple times. I mean, if you can’t do your job and are understaffed I can’t see that they would sack you. Just do what you can.
I work in an admin role for NHS, as a secretary and I find it piss easy work where I am and quite fortunate in the dept I work. I am band 3 and on £23k though. I work in a small town in Yorkshire so surprised you are on only that with London being a more expensive place to live. I would defo look at working elsewhere.

I had the audacity to take a week off from my band 4 admin job, had to work until 7pm last night and wake up and work 7 until 9 this morning to get all the work done so I could sort of relax when I was away.

Our ward receptionist is the most important person on the ward. We hate it when it's her day off. Nurses are replaceable, she's not! She's a band two and it's an absolute scandal. Our useless play specialists get paid more than she does. She should be a four.

I’m a band 2 NHS admin in a mental health trust and it is absolutely dire.

I’m also actively looking for another job.

Lots of senior managers off work due to stress, so all the work and decision making gets trickled down to the band 2 admins. Which is bizzare.

I’m also expected to do my work whilst sat on a busy reception. We have a high turn over for bank staff too so I’m continuously having to train them up on our systems and when they realise the job is too much they leave and the cycle starts to train up a new one.

The whole NHS is fucked. It’s corrupt at the high levels. I have no idea how clinical staff are coping. Because if admin can’t cope, how the hell are our nurses and health care professionals 😥

Disgraceful, yet unsurprising.

They don’t value you. The NHS doesn’t value any of it’s staff.

On the one hand I have quite serious responsibilities - I managed our reception staff when we had some, manage patient complaints, manage our referrals, manage the clinic diaries, arrange home visits etc

This is band 4 level admin! They are taking advantage of you. You would easily get a band 4 role in a different trust, or even a different team in the same trust. The team I work for (community based) is busy and sometimes stressful but basically supportive. And we've had difficulty recruiting band 3 admin recently (south east not London).

Do you have supervision / 1:1s? you need to tell your manager this is not sustainable.

Hi OP,

I can sympathise, also a Band 3 for a major London hospital and totally inundated with work and responsibilities well past my banding.

Can I just ask, have you ever queried why you're on £21k a year for full time? I earn just over £25k on a band 3 wage. Are you not being paid your London weighting? Definitely something to look into and would be a small improvement financially in your pay.

Hope it improves for you!

Have you asked for a pay band review? Managing staff is normally not a band 3. Speak to HR about how much you are doing in the role

As others have said, look at the civil service and sign up for job alerts. I was a band 4 rota coordincator and lasted 3 months before I had to escape. I joined the civil service and now earn over £10k more than I did at the nhs for a much less stressful job with incredble 27% employers pension contribution.

That's ridiculous. I'm civil service, and we are DESPERATE for Band 3 admins, paying the best part of 25k outside London. OK its not amazing money but we have good working conditions and noone is refused leave. I dont suppose you're anywhere near Aylesbury, are you?

What’s your degree/masters in? What did you do before? Am sure there is something better than this job!

Ever since Agenda for Change was brought in, responsibility levels have risen, pay for the same level of responsibility has fallen. It's completely ridiculous, and it has hit hardest in admin. I left last year without a job to go to because I was burning out at band 5.

Add on top of that the fact that the NHS has been starved of funds for 13 years and that there is a recruitment crisis on and what you get is unfilled posts and worn out staff. Before I left, I spent 6 months doing the jobs of 3 people because the other two posts couldn't be filled despite repeated advertising runs.

Look at Local Government/Council Admin Roles (Business Support). They pay more and working in NHS means you will have great transferable skills which will be particularly useful for an Admin Role within Childrens or Adults Services.

have a look at some charity admin jobs here

I'm not saying your job doesn't sound awful, and I'd possibly be going to my union about the annual leave issue.
But if you're in a large London teaching hospital you're earning at least £25838 if you're outer London with less than 2yrs experience. No London band 3s earn £21000.
It's still not great at all, but don't make it sound worse than it is.

Have a look at the Environment Agency, several admin types jobs at the moment and a couple in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion your NHS would make you brilliant for. Most admin jobs are WFH unless you want to go to a local office very similar benefits as working in the Civil Service.

Can I ask why NHS a trust managers are paid a huge amount and big pensions , some more than the PM and yet they don’t seem to be dealing with this at all ?

Salary: Band 2 (£21,814 - £23,820

Salary: Band 3 (£23,914 - £25,808)

This is Scotland but it definitely looks like you are being paid at B2 level.

Irrelevant really since your are definitely working way beyond Band 3 level

Having worked for the NHS, I can say that the local council treat you about a hundred times better. I would look there. Your skills will be transferable. Not only are you valued and treated with respect, people get promoted and progress.

Because the politicians want to improve NHS "efficiency" by cutting admin costs.

I was in a hospital last week. There was no one to cover the receptionist’s lunch so she put a sign up, bought her lunch and then came back with it to her desk to have a “working lunch.”

How can this be acceptable?

Another hospital worker was waiting at the clinic too and told me that there was no money to pay for a temp to cover. Bloody outrageous.

Having worked for 28 years in Civil Service I love my Band 3 NHS Admin job! It's your department which is the issue, not the role itself. You definitely need to look in to the London weighting you should be receiving and go to your Union about being denied annual leave x

I haven't read the full thread but in around 2000 I can home from uni for the summer I did some temp admin work. At a hospital in the Breast Clinic. My job was to book the referral Appointments and trigger the letters. I had to read the letters and decide when the patient would get their appointments. The urgent ones would be booked with a * .

It was awful making those decisions.

In top of that of, was in a tiny room in a Victorian hospital near the medical records team. they wouldn't speak to me and I had to vacate the room at 10.15 and 12.30 as they had their "tea-break" and lunch in there. They were really awful to me!

Can't believe it really. Needless to say I did about a week and didn't go back!