To think giving me one day a week actually isn’t ok?? Or AIBU?

[wpur]

DH works away in the week and on Saturdays he has to do ‘admin.’ He is high up in the NHS and prior to having dd he did always work Saturdays in his office room in our house. I wouldn’t see him pretty much all day.

Since having dd he had to relocate for work, this was not his fault and he has taken the best job he can. It is not possible for him to come home in the week, it’s too far and would be pointless anyway as dd is long in bed before he gets back. No point me relocating with him as I have all my family nearby and his contact is only fixed for 9 months… then the search will begin again for another job.

He has started coming home late Saturday night (after dd is in bed) and then staying all day Sunday until she has gone to bed. He relocated for work when she was 6 months and she’s now 17 months. I am sick of doing everything alone. He has said I can take the entire day on a Sunday to myself, either go out alone or we all go out as a family, or he will do entertain her all day while I am in the house doing my own thing etc.

I feel like this is unacceptable and he should be back late Friday night to help on Saturdays too. He says it is pointless as he can’t avoid the Saturday admin work and he would just have to do it when back at home and it would take him longer to get through it. He thinks giving me a day to myself a week is sufficient in the circumstances. AIBU? I am so fed up and angry that I genuinely don’t know if I’m being unreasonable.

@whatsappdoc I'm confused, Are you the OP? I'm just wondering how you know his shift times?

A lot of 'admin' can't be done by anyone else. The only person who can write/dictate my clinical assessments is me or a junior colleague under supervision. The only person who can verify my clinic letters, referral letters and other correspondence is me. The person with ultimate responsibility for the investigation results and treatment planning for the patients under my care is me.

'Admin' is frequently used as a broad term to cover anything where we might be able to sit down to do it.

Having efficient Admin colleagues as part of a team makes the team much more efficient overall, as does having any other experienced and efficient team members, but it doesn't remove those responsibilities from clinicians.

Additionally, Admin posts are frequently under-staffed and under-resourced. The days of permanent or temporary consultants being guaranteed 'having' access to a dedicated medical secretary just for their work are fading into the distance. And I don't 'have a secretary'. I work with Admin colleagues as part of a multidisciplinary team. If I started going around claiming ownership they'd very quickly (and deservedly) put me in my place.

I would definitely let him take the baby for the Sunday and you have the day off. As this is a temporary contract I think your going to have to persevere but this is clearly not working for you. Before you had the baby was it made clear that you would be doing most of the childcare and that him working away was a very likely possibility? I wouldn't be happy with this arrangement either, your living as a single parent 6 days a week.

I think he should be home on Friday night to spend some time with you and have ( prepare ) breakfast, lunch and dinner with ye on Sat, he can do admin from home on Saturday,

Otherwise you might need to put up with this situation for the moment until the contract ends and then say you won’t be putting up with it in the next job

Let’s see. Exercise together, take baby to the park or zoo, have a picnic lunch, go to a sports bar and watch a game, watch favorite movie, play some music and dance around the house like nobody is watching, go out for ice cream, visit friends, play board games, take a bubble bath together, read to each other, or sit silently and read on your own, make dinner together and then clean up together, followed by lots of cuddles. Those are my suggestions.

@MyrtlethePurpleTurtle Exactly - the "do the paperwork in the evenings" was a particular corker. "He should do his paperwork from home" was another good one. Try working with three different patient record systems, plus path and radiology, plus the work desktop environment, none of which work properly remotely. Many require dual factor verification, and individual systems automatically log you out after 15 minutes of no input (and no, that's not changeable).

but usually recorded on a dictaphone in my experience on ward rounds, for his secretary to type in the office.i really think this admin is an excuse, sorry.

i know, and they certainly arent done on saturdays when secretaries etc are not working.

Clinical admin is a thing. Dictating letters, signing letters off, responding to clinical emails, reading letters and results, taking action based on those letters and results...yes, you do it with the support of admin staff, but it's still there and can't be done by non-clinicians. My speciality is catchment based (i.e. my potential caseload consists of anyone referred from a specific geographical area) which means, I suppose, in theory I can be asked for advice about any member of a population of 40,000 at any time.

It is substantial enough that it isn't an extra thing you do unscheduled in your own time, it is timetabled according to need. And if you don't have enough, within your contracted hours, you take it to job planning.

For example, I had 1.5 sessions (6 hours) for clinical admin per week. Then someone resigned and left. The number of patients that I could receive emails, letters and results about massively increased. I now need 2 sessions for clinical admin. As a result there are difficult choices to be made -lose teaching and supervision time, cut back on a clinic (and patients wait longer sadly)- it's tough but I can't be responsible for the lack of resource in a massive organisation that has been used as a political pawn for the past 20 years. I can only do what I can do, and if one task unavoidably grows, something else must stop.

Secretaries type up reports etc, Clinicians still have to dictate them, refer on etc

She says in the OP that he was working from home every Saturday for a long time before he took on this new contract. This would suggest that at least one Trust had fully functioning remote working, so it’s not exactly outlandish to query whether he can do any of the work for his current post form home.

@misteek You can absolutely dictate whenever. It's mostly digital and you hook it up to your laptop whenever you like. You can do your clinical admin whenever.

The issue is whether he is choosing to work on a Sat or accepted a contract or job plan to do so. The OP is entitled to some say or discussion if he has accepted something out of the ordinary, which is a 10 session consultant job (9-5, 40 hours per week).

I don't think you understand what clinical admin is, if that's what you think it entails. Ward round documentation is one small part of it, and whatever is dictated and typed then needs to be reviewed and verified later by the clinician, so a quick dictation on the go isn't even the entirety of that small part of clinical admin.

Oh, and where I work, we absolutely have Admin support available on weekends.

The admin should be in work time, not family time. He needs to learn to manage his time or realise he is not up to the job. He’s neglecting you and your family

Very fishy.

@Psychonabike In med, you often don't have the choice to drop a clinic or whatever. Other people choose your workload. Attempting to change that is often seen as a personal failure.

@misteek That's a tiny part of it. You don't need admin support at the time you are reviewing letters etc. I approve many late at night or on weekends, and the letters just sit and wait for them to be printed on Monday. That's presuming I have someone to do that stuff - often we are so undersupported, I'm sending a lot of faxes myself.

@2Noope No, completely normal in the NHS. Honestly, people have no idea.

I think he should look for a new job locally - a demotion probably - and why wait 9 months? He can choose to not be "senior" and be able to see his family. He lives away and sees his wife and child one day a week. Not worth it. If he doesn't make his family a priority there is no guarantee that the next job won't be "more senior" aka more work, and even further away. You have a small child. He needs to live at home and work a job that allows a reasonable work life balance. If you split up he can't even be a weekend dad because he is working. His priorities are all wrong. Is he paying rent and bills elsewhere? If so surely that uses up a load of his salary?

Did your husband then get a month or two at home to rest and reconnect with you and his children?

OP's husband is wanting to spend one day a week at home, Sunday, with travel back to work where he lives away also eating into that day I expect. This is on an ongoing basis - at least 9 months and could be a lot longer if he chooses to continue in a similar way when the temporary contract ends.

OP's husband doesn't work on an oil rig he works in health and I think he should be able to find a job that allows him to lay eyes on his family more than one day a week.

@Winter2020 Being less senior does not mean less work, and it can mean less control over your shifts. It can also mean a 50% pay cut. Changing specialities can mean going back to junior positions, with more living away from home and no control over your shifts or holidays.

I would guess that there's this carrot being dangled in front of him. "Complete this 9 months, and you might be lucky enough to get a job close to home that you have a little control over".

Yes, it's health, it shouldn't be that easy, but it's how it is.

*that way, not that easy

IF he can't change his working pattern and be more present then if it were me, I'd work less hours, put dc in nursery an extra day so I could get some time to myself, get a cleaner if I didn't have one already. Throw money at the issue to make your life easier seeing as you are the one doing 99% of the childcare.

Presumably your DH earns a decent wage judging by the level of work that is required, or why else would be be sacrificing his entire life to it? He is a husband and father but only in name... I would want a decent trade off in terms of salary and lifestyle to make up for the set up you have.

I don't know his contract, but if he walks away mid-contract, he may never be employed in that specialty again. The world of locuming is pretty well connected, and it would quickly come out that he'd done that - and then nobody will be keen to attract him. Even if he decides he needs to give up on progressing his career at this time, he still needs to see out his contract or he may well not get another one.

Many locum contracts include accommodation options, so he probably won't be paying much towards that.

All those people saying do the admin in the evening…with a demanding clinical role, you’re tired in the evening! You have very little brain power left. I’m sure he’s not finishing at 5pm every evening so it’s probably only a couple of hours he has to cook dinner, maybe exercise (I know a lot of mumsnetters think exercise is a self indulgent waste of time and not something parents should do), maybe relax and watch telly (some relaxation time is needed in a day even if just 30 mins), go to bed.