To think the NHS is bloated with unnecessary management while frontline staff - doctors and nurses - are overworked and overpaid?

[AlertBird]

It seems like every time the NHS is in crisis (which is always), the conversation turns to needing more funding. But where does that money actually go? It feels like the system is overloaded with layers of management, bureaucracy, and admin roles that don’t directly contribute to patient care, while the people actually keeping the NHS running - doctors, nurses, and other frontline staff - are stretched to their limits and underpaid.

I’m not saying all management is useless but has it gone too far? Shouldn’t more of the money be going to patient care and those who actually treat patients rather than creating more high-paid managerial roles?

AIBU to think the NHS has become a bloated system where too many people exist just to justify their own jobs?

Yep I think these are precisely the kind of pointless jobs that people are referring to. I saw a role for an inclusivity manager paying 70k!! The job description was vague as you would expect and this is what people are angry about. Of course there needs to be a lot of administrative roles in the NHS but these made up/pointless jobs that only exist to fill some kind of quota need to go.

This. So much of the NHs is an inefficient process and unwillingness / inability to modernise.

and also the tenders govt agencies get for building systems are always so garbage.

one admits it fully. He likens it to our benefits system. Whereby it isn’t his fault, he’s just playing the game. The others think they are important, one way more so - obviously all from a mere outsiders interpretation.

But I do think they are paid far too much in comparison to the people on the ground doing the more valuable and needed work.

This - our local Diversity something or other (can't remember his precise job title), was lovely, getting out and about, building links with hard to reach communities.

People seem to get triggered by the word 'Diversity', but it's about removing barriers to services so people can access them - which is surely a good thing!

I was talking about the council with sick pay.

The firing procedure is the same as the private sector but it's rarely carried through hence why there's do much dead wood.

I’d love you to expand on this and explain your reasoning, because I can’t believe that some who works for the NHS actually has so little understanding of how it works.
Please come back and tell us more!

There is sooo much crap spoken about the NHS , and so often by those with plans behind the scenes, or some idiot who says their sister in law saw it in her part time job (probably not a very connected one).

i agree @Lickityspit

I think technology is a big issue.

When I was pregnant, I was assessed as high risk.

I filled in my original answers on Badger notes. Then was asked them again at the initial midwife appointment. She put me on the high risk pathway, and gave me the Blue Book. The blue book did not include the right appointments for my pathway.

Some appointments appeared in Badger Notes. Some appointments were sent by letter. Some were booked in person and did not appear either by letter or app. Ditto for test results.

I occasionally left my blue book behind because it seemed to have no function except for illegible scrawling. I was berated for this - what if I fainted and nobody knew I was pregnant? They might root through my bag for medical info, obviously.

At 37 weeks, my blue book had disintegrated and I was given a new one.

38:5 - emergency admission for preeclampsia. I read the new blue book and noticed for the first time it has an additional screening quiz to the previous, showing that I more than meet the threshold for preventative aspirin.

The factors for preventative aspirin are there in the first fucking set of screening questions? It would be the simplest thing in the world to build this in to the programme.

I haven’t read the whole thread yet but really wanted to offer perspective on this. I am a boots on the ground NHS admin-med sec.

The wrongly booked appointments-our systems don’t always link up (in our trust there are currently 5 that I use on a regular basis that don’t talk to each other, 2 for imaging, 1 for outpatients appointments, 1 for inpatient stuff and 1 for physio…..none of these systems cross over into the other).

The glaring spelling errors, we do our best, and I am pretty good with spelling and grammar but some of my colleagues are not so good. We currently have 300 odd letters waiting to be typed in our service alone, on top of all the other work we have to do and with probably 300-400 or so patients being seen each week in clinic this number never goes down (there are 5 med secs in our team). We are just trying to bash them out as fast as we can.

The entirely different medical condition-we just type what our consultants dictate…we do not have the time to check each one to make sure that the diagnosis dictated is correct.

The admin staff are as overwhelmed with work as the clinical staff, and most of the time we are just trying to keep our heads above water.

Really because who is going to coordinate our outpatient waiting lists? I’m a med sec and I’m damned sure I don’t have the time to do this in my working week.

Do you work in the NHS? Can you expand on this point?