Pointless NHS Roles

[ChanelNoFive]

I am an ex-NHS worker. (Department administrator)

Is it unreasonable to think there are so many pointless corporate/non-clinical roles within the NHS. Mainly high up and middle management roles. Examples:

• Events organisers
• Workforce & Organisational Development Leads
• Strategy Leads
• PR/Photographers/Marketing
• Improvement and Culture/Diversity teams
• Roster coordinators
• PMO

Obviously there are non-clinical roles that are essential for the runnings of the NHS. But are a lot of them really needed? I remember seeing all the high up corporate staff thinking “what exactly do you actually do?”

In my experience in the NHS projects are rarely delivered on time and as for properly well when staff on the ground feel once again that their time is being taken from their actual jobs I am not sure they are always implanted properly

I think what this thread has highlighted is the disconnect between those that make the changes and those who the changes impact their work

Not unreasonable OP... I've worked with various public sector organisations. Frequently duplicate pointless management roles. Obv private orgs have their own issues...

Those of you who don't get the need for dedicated Diversity roles are clearly uneducated and part of the problem. This country remains as prejudiced as it because of people like you.

What do diversity managers actually do?

What does unmanaged diversity look like?

My organisation got rid of diversity managers on th basis it should just be integral to everything HR officers role to be aware of diversity.

They were excellent at supporting me with my disability

Everyone has a title these days, it's visibility and technology that highlights it whereas previously it wasn't obvious.

If the OP had done any of these things she might have appreciated being recognised.

It could have been done by a cleaner for instance or a member of staff already in that clinic. Surely there's a better and easier way of recording the number of sanitisers in a room than having a person walking round and counting them.

30 years ago, my DC was born with a cleft lip requiring surgery. I can remember sitting in a clinic appointment where no less than 8 clinicians were present. One of the (two) consultants asked if it was OK if they took a photo of my DC. I waited for one of the 8 to pick up a camera, instead of which we all stood/sat twiddling our thumbs whilst we waited for the photographer to arrive. I left wondering why none of these highly trained medical professionals (including 2 surgeons) were incapable of operating a camera!
I assumed that the age of camera phones would have got rid of NHS photographers but seemingly not!

As a volunteer patient experience rep in a former life, I have attended many meetings at hospitals and wondered WTF half of the people there were being paid for - spurious job titles and seemingly clueless about the projects they were working on!

were capable

30 years ago I imagine the difference in quality between a professional photo on a decent camera and a snap on a personal camera was tremendous though.

Clinicians can't just go around taking pictures on their personal phones!! Have you ever heard of medical in confidence information. I agree you shouldn't have had to sit waiting for a photographer, but you have to have processes in place to ensure that things aren't accidentally or purposefully shared outside of the medical record.

When our trust takes pictures of patients they have to be take on a trust encrypted device that uploads the picture to the patients medical record and only the medical record. It can't legally be stored on any other device.

This is a perfect example of how people don't understand the reasons for things and only see it as a negative.

How would you have felt if the clinician took a picture on their own phone and someone, somehow saw it and shared it taking the piss out of your son's medical issues?

20 years ago was a NHS sparky, team of 4, if the other 3 were off, I covered their work easily.

I always finished all my jobs by lunch time and was told off by the FM department head for making waves.

This man had a smoking shelter built for him and his pals, that is where he was always to be found if not in a meeting.

He had 2 FM managers and 3 admin for 12 operatives - completely overstaffed!

I work for an electrician now, one owner and me - he's working on site most of the time and I manage the 5 sparkies easily - including routing, quotes, invoicing, answering the phone, inbox, materials, accounts and payroll.

Bet others have similar stories - angry my tax pays for such waste, along with the early retirement pensions.

In my experience, these roles free up clinicians to do the jobs they are actually qualified to do.

In the Trust I work for those much maligned 'diversity roles' have helped disabled and ethnically diverse people access health services and improved outcomes in these patients for the first time ever.

So unless you think it's a good idea for nurses to do their own payroll, I think we need to look at these roles sensibly and not with an agenda.

With all due respect, there was a lot of waste 20 years ago but with the advent of Foundation Trust status, which made Trusts accountable, and the stringent cuts of 'back office waste' under the austerity years - there isn't nearly as much to cut back on now. Every job has to be justified and most Trusts outsource their facilities and estates maintenance teams entirely.

I think that if you don’t know what they do then you are being unreasonable because if you don’t know what those roles do, how do you actually know they aren’t needed? Some might not be needed, but for example workforce and OD is quite an important role. Same with PR. Same with culture and diversity.

@GoogleWhacking I wasn't suggesting that photos would be taken on personal phones. IPads (or their equivalent) seem to be widely used in hospitals now. I assume they are hospital issued and more than capable of taking a photograph.

I’m a strategist within an NHS trust. Within my team we do a bit of actual strategy - what will the Trust look like in 5-10 years and how will demand change (eg because of population growth and demographic change) therefore what do we need to plan for. We also do strategic planning for things which will lead to big change like Net Zero and the impact of AI and digital changes. If the trust is doing any major capital projects, eg new buildings or major tech implementation, my team will do the modeling to work out how many beds and staff the new building will need, or what investment and benefits the tech will lead to (so should it be bought). We also have an amazing little team who do ad hoc projects which require brainy, creative people to help problem solve. This means we spend less on outside support but also means that clinicians get help solving problems and don’t have to do it themselves and can get on with being clinicians.

We work with outside organisations like primary care, community trusts, and research organisations. We make sure that as much as possible there’s a joined up approach to patient care across organisational boundaries.

We also do planning, so how much money and people do you need to deliver the predicted activity for the next year.

The NHS is a £180bn business with 1.6m patient interactions per day. An operation of that size doesn’t run itself. As previous posters have pointed out the evidence is that it’s under managed not over managed. I love my job but it’s definitely a “real” job!

Are you me?! This was my exact experience working in a CCG. Meetings to arrange meetings, all had secretaries who were twiddling their thumbs other than booking meetings! It was absolute chaos as well.

@pootlingalongagain

They come along (only in the day time) and point out things already mentioned in the plan. Things like “repeat the gas in 1 hr” what would be more helpful is if they wrote that, did it themselves, chased it and informed whoever is looking after the patient.

I’ve read recently the purpose is for audit. They will code conditions and this is directly linked to money the hospital gets. So in that way they could be helpful, but why duplicate work in terms of the plan ?

Spot on

The NHS carries a lot of passengers, problem is, if you give them the boot, that's a lot of people out of work, a lot!

And no government is brave enough to do it - if they did it would release millions for paying useful staff more and development.

Middle management is what is destroying the NHS, its a fast growing aggressive tutor that needs to be cut out quickly.

I think sometimes the OP is correct t but Ive I've heard plenty of admin bitching about management or development roles because they don't really understand the job.

You sound like a passenger to me, get off the bus.

But if a government was actually brave enough to kick you all out, dish out the P45s what would you do?

Don';t worry, it won't happen!

I’d probably get a job in consultancy doing the same stuff but for a lot more money when it became apparent that this work does need doing whether you have a substantive team to do it or not…

Presumably to order some more. Do you think the fairies restock them? That won’t be her sole job

Rostering managers are needed. It’s a very poor use of consultant time to be sorting out shift patterns.