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?”

@Pudmyboy not true. Its simply posters who do not know what they are talking about.

But you’re not going to get good healthcare without all of the back room functions supporting the front line.

Without knowing the job role and experience of every poster, this cannot be true

This post really is aimed at the lowest common denominator. People are meant to for example read Events Organiser, and think why should the NHS be organising events. OP does not say these are fundraising events for the NHS. The Events Organiser will have funding targets and the funding will be for specific things such as building a new specialist unit, or expensive pieces of equipment.
I don't really have any time for threads that are designed to appeal to the thickies.

The hand sanister is a nice example.

How would they know how many they have?

One way is to keep a database of them - even something as simple as an excel sheet. That excel sheet needs to be saved to a file server - so you need IT people to install and configure the server.

It needs keeping secure so that hackers cannot use it to 'jump' onto more confidential files so it needs patching and the security permsissions need setting up and then maintaining when someone joins or leaves.

Those permissions require a Active Directory to maintain them centrally so someone needs to build, configure and maintain AD.

You'll want to access that spreadsheet from your work PC so there needs to be a LAN/WAN network connection - they are different skills to server and AD maitenance so now you have at least 2 IT bods.

If you accidentally delete that excel file one day you're going to want to get it back without sending someone round counting sanitisers, so you need enterprise level backup solutions. That requires someone with the skills to be able to manage backup software which on the scale of a hospital is massively complex.

It will need storage to be be able to save backup copies. One copy is not enough, you will want version history which requires frequent backups and several copies. That a storage admin you need to build, configure and manage storage kit.

Those servers and storage all need housing somewhere where fire or floor (or just a hot day) won't damage them. So now you need to run a data centre or rent space in one. If you run one yourself it needs staffing 24/7. If you rent one, you need a contract negotiation.

All those IT bods need managing so that they have support and development - otherwise they are going to leave and someone else will come in who doesn't know the system as well and there will be no one to show them who knows.

They will also need their share of a HR system, development system, leave request system, timesheet system and maybe more. Each of those systems requires some of the same considerations as above, so the footprint grows bigger.

Assuming you want all this work to carry on even when people are on leave, you increase the workforce a bit more to provide that cover - and the footprint grows bigger.

Or, you know, you might skip much of that because it really does seem like overkill for hand sanitiser, and just ask Doug to pop round and count them every so often

@AddersAtDawn A lot of it IT records are patient records. So instead of having IT to manage the system, we could just have an admin person ring you every time to ask about your medical history before every appointment? Of course if you are very elderly or ill and forget to mention important medical info, then tough luck.

@AddersAtDawn Actually your example is really really annoying me. Asking Doug to pop round and count hand sanitisers every so often (say once a month?), takes far more time than Doug doing it once, saving it on an excel sheet, and saving it to the server. All those other tasks you state are for the server as a whole which has loads of medical info on it. One small excel spreadsheet is literally a drop in the ocean in terms of files. So if you divide up the time of those IT people to this one excel spreadsheet, it might equal 1 second. Far less time than sending Doug round to count sanitisers again because nobody could be bothered saving a simple spreadsheet to a server.

As I said, this thread is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I had one of these 'pointless' roles, managing a small team that was responsible for bringing in about £12m per annum in fundraising that my hospital used to fund specialist roles in medicine and nursing, as well as equipment purchases that that NHS could not otherwise afford and specialist patient information. We cost the trust about £185k annually, including on-costs.

I didn't manage the photographer, who was responsible for taking photos of disease progression to help doctors plan treatment. Also didn't manage the L&D or HR roles but I wish there were more of them to manage the many complaints about the senior consultants and surgeons.

Great doctors can be terrible employees, it turns out, because their very narrow expertise and experience does not lend itself to being excellent managers, leaders, or orgasational decision-makers. But I guess all is forgiven because their roles have a 'point.'

@invisibleflamingos yes we should just have cut your role because it was not a front line role.

I am admin at the NHS.

Full time, 5 days a week.

I could complete my job in less than an 8 hours day.

@LeaderBee where do you work? I want to know as I want to apply for a job. I had an admin role in the NHS and left as I was rushed off my feet. So where is it easy?

All those other tasks you state are for the server as a whole which has loads of medical info on it.

They shouldn't have. Clinical data should not be on file servers. If I started listing everything required to house and manage clinical data we'd be here all night. Now, clinical staff (often not being particularly IT security conscious) DO save clinical data to file servers, but that's a whole other topic

And I don't think Doug should really be sent round to count them in an ideal world - I was trying to illustrate (using the Doug example) how something like the NHS ends up needing far more non clinical staff than clinical. The hidden overheads of what seems simple, are huge. It probably wasn't clear but I was PRO using the IT systems to do this. But then, as you've probably guessed by now - I would be - it keeps me in a job

My guess is that someone has not kept a record as they were ordered and/or the function to query any ordering system for 'number of hand sanitisers' is not there and wouldn't give you the right answer anyway, because it wouldn't tell you how many had been replaced of decomm'd. And I bet my bottom dollar the ordering system has been replaced at some point - meaning the data is in different systems. The data on the old system archived off somewhere, requiring a full server restore just to access it. That kind of thing. So I can kind see how something as simple as the number of sanitisers ends up in just asking Doug to go round and count them to double check.

With the shortage of doctors, and logical outcome of paying them 35% more meaning you can afford 35% fewer of them

That's not logical (or even basic maths).

@Fizzadora

Fizzadora
The last few posters are eloquently defending the necessity of all those job titles, but have spectacularly failed to grasp that the majority of the population don't see the need for all that fluff and just want access to good healthcare (and know full well that the fluff is an invented construct to justify the continuing and unnecessary drain that the NHS has become)

Say you're a daily mail reader without saying you're a daily mail reader...

What this thread has shown is that lots of people have no idea how the NHS is or needs to be run to ensure it serves the population. Why would they? I don't know how TfL runs to make sure I can commute everyday or Sainsburys gets in all the food I want to buy.
So the public may not see the need for it. Because they have no idea what the need is.
Sack all those apparently fluff posts and John's nan may find she has to wait a hell of a longer for her knee replacement.

If you were managing a fund raising team how would you be privy to patient complaints, which are highly confidential?

I was privvy to employee complaints, not patient ones, which are managed separately. I hope that helps.

Hahah! Nice try, management. :-P

Management is also admin so the poster might be admitting to being a nhs manager paid for full time hours and in reality having only enough work to fill 8.

I am front facing clinical role. 2nd Career.

Have worked in private sector in an organisation similar size but completely different sector.

On my average day I can see 25 things that could be changed to save money, do things better, be more efficient, give a better quality of care. Make staff happier and their working environment better. All in all improve things on a micro and macro scale.

After about 6 years in my new job, I stopped mentioning them or making suggestions for my own mental health. I pleadged to work hard for families I support and stick to that. I do not put my head above the parapet.

The differences from the private sector are:

1. Tenure. You can't fire anyone.
2. The culture of long term sick.
3. Lack of performance related pay.
4. Poor quality managers. Moved on when incompetent. Replaced by similar. Busy work (not referring to vital departments who get shit done, but to managers, see my previous posts).
5. Old clunky IT systems and having to make do. Sticking plaster over sticking plaster.
6. Outsourcing everything to shit services... so we can't even turn our heating off at the end if winter so it stays on well into summer.
7. Lack of decent facilities (above example, no thermostat, no timer = heating stays on all weekend).
8. Excruciatingly slow decision making. Meetings about meetings about minutae
9. A culture of inertia.

10. Acceptance of all of the above. Because it grinds you down. And you can't do shit about it. See me as example.

It’s not just the seemingly pointless roles though, there are plenty that should be there but don’t do what you’d expect, nursing teams that have a manager who never actually sees a patient but then have an advanced practitioner that does, whereas once over one person effectively did both jobs for example

@MBappse There are major issues with outsourcing so much to the private sector that is then poorly delivered. My DH worked for the NHS, got fed up with the volume of work, and left to work for a private company that deliver both NHS and private work. He has been totally shocked at how shit their service delivery is to patients. He says he sees staff delivering outdated treatments and having poor patient confidentiality and respect. He is now trying to get back into the NHS.
The NHS IT systems are by all account shit. Because everything that is overheads has to be done as cheaply as possible, all because of people like the OP.

Wrong. Teams needs specialist admin and managerial support who can pick up and run with any queries that come in.

Lordy lord. Not all admin is the same.

In a previous life, I did work in an organisation that 'centralised admin' (before my time). 3,500 staff delivering a diverse, complex and often high-risk range of services, over 20+ sites, with 'centralised' admin. It was a disaster. Turned out that 'admin' knowledge and skills are a bit more specialised than people think.

So eventually the 'centralised admin' was decentralised and split up differently across the organisation. However that too was done quite badly.

Someone who'd worked in a literacy-heavy admin role for 20+ years was redeployed as a payroll administrator (because you know, all admin is the same...). That person struggled because they had a (non-declared, as it turned out) disability that limited their numeracy.

The whole thing was a bloody shitshow and sapped no end of management time, and goodwill from all directions, and cost tens of thousands of pounds to resolve, just with that one individual - never mind the years of chaos that it caused generally.

Because - you know - anyone can do admin, right?

People can't have everything. Earlier in the thread, someone was complaining that their manager was from a different profession. From your post, the nursing manager has been given the role of just that, so they can focus on managing the team, along side an advanced practitioner who can focus on complex clinical need.

You are absolutely right OP.
The NHS management structure needs a complete overhaul. when I worked as B3 admin, there were so many B$, 5 and 6 above us and I really have no idea what they did.
We used to say that if all the B5 and 6’s (admin) were binned off, it would save so much money and would make absolutely no difference to the running of the team / department
The other thing they do wrong is allow clinicians to become managers. They generally are just not suited to the role. One of our B6 clinicians took on a B8 management role simply because she wanted the money, she was absolutely hopeless at the job, was never available to us for queries etc.
I know I am being rather broad about this, but this is my experience in the team and Trust I worked for.