To ask why people think it’s okay to abuse NHS staff?

[notafanofthisanymore]

I’m NHS admin. I just got a call through to me and I was the wrong person to help, but as it was a simple query (think where to go as opposed to anything medical), I tried to help the patient.

I understand that having health issues is stressful. But I’ve just been called a useless thick bitch and told that my job is the reason the NHS is sinking, because I told this patient something they didn’t like. I was then told that if this patient died on the way to their appointment it would be blood on my hands, and I should hope they don’t.

I’m just baffled. I was polite, answered this person’s question and got abused because they didn’t like the answer (having to go somewhere else for something they needed). In what world is this acceptable?

It does make it worse, because we are trying to help people in the NHS. I know retail staff do too, but someone telling you which aisle to find things on is not quite in the same ballpark as someone staying a hour after their already-long shift finished to help save your life from a pph.

By the time a patient finally gets to speak to someone, they've probably already called several times, got answerphones, got "number disconnected", been passed from pillar to post by other staff, etc. They're stressed and frazzled.

The NHS is an absolute nightmare to try to get to the one person you need to speak to. No one else knows who that mythical person is, so they just randomly give you different numbers, mostly to fob you off and make you someone else's problem.

My DH has a "little black book" of names and numbers from his 9 years of being under cancer treatment, and even he struggles most months to get to speak to someone as the staff keep changing departments, numbers suddenly become unavailable, he sometimes leaves a message of "person x's" answerphone but doesn't get a reply because person x has left or changed dept of their phone number has changed, so no one even listened to his message! He spent the entire day on Friday trying to resolve a problem that was with a different dept, but linked to his cancer - must have made a couple of dozen phone calls to different people, being passed pillar to post, and then mid Friday PM, everyone had gone home, so it was a wasted day. He's started again this morning, but still not spoken to anyone - just a constant round of leaving a/phone message and phone ringing out not being answered (again several different numbers).

I have sympathy for NHS staff being abused, but can also see why so many patients have reached the end of their tether by the time they speak to someone, especially when that person can't help and just fobs them off too!

It’s not ok to be rude, but at the same time I myself had a very stigmatising experience in hospital as a very vulnerable young adult. I didn’t lash out at anyone, but nobody was listening to me and I didn’t have anyone to advocate for me.

As I said, rudeness is not ok but your experience of staff are simply trying to do their jobs, is not always the experience of patients, especially if they have vulnerabilities. I do appreciate that some people are just short tempered, but I also think it’s a bit narrow minded to wonder why arguments may occur and feelings run high.

Yes I am afraid seeing the patient as a problem rather than a patient is a result of some of their policies.
Eg. Go home ? Why not today ? With beds . The patient in a bed becomes a problem. And that pervades the attitude towards the patient.

The other problem is the tussle as to who is in charge of anything. Nobody seems to know.

yes , done on the information sent before , signs in the waiting room , on the consent form etc but still arguing what they ‘don’t want to’
it’s exhausting- and a shift in attitude that people think the rules shouldn’t apply to them . I know my teacher friends get the same from parents - the attitude that the rules shouldn’t apply to them

NHS worker here and I can see both sides. In my job I do my best with limited resources. People dont get the service they need in a timely way and frustration borne out of stress happens. I try not to take it personally.

However I have been diagnosed with a potentially life limiting condition myself now and it has been a catalogue of serious errors from start to finish. This has had me in tears multiple times from fear, frustration and sadly mistrust of the system. I can well see how someone can snap over a seemingly small thing when actually this is the last in a long line of awful errors and miscommunication

It doesn’t make it worse, both are equally bad. No one deserves to be abused at work regardless of their job, there’s not a ranking for oh if you have a less helpful job it’s not as bad.

Sad but true. My DH has suffered the same with his long term cancer treatment. Some of the staff are utterly awful.

Nail on the head. A lot of NHS staff don't care/understand what the patient has gone through just to be on the phone or present in front of them. They don't appreciate the previous wasted/cancelled appointments, the numerous unanswered phone calls, etc.

People in general are angrier and more aggressive since the pandemic. It seems to be a global thing, not unique to the NHS or even the UK. Staff in public facing roles are noticing it, in every country. I don't know what's causing it, could be it's the bounceback from lockdowns where for several extended time periods none of us properly interacted face to face with everyone we would have normally encountered, or whether it's something about the covid virus itself maybe similar to how long covid appears to cause neurological changes. But there is a shift that's happened.

Well, the endless requirements on staff to be ever ‘more understanding’ of others, while working in poor conditions and on minimum wage, facing poor progression and ridiculous costs to stay employed on higher bands, will result in more staff leaving.

And don’t tell those who work there that it’s all ok because ‘they chose to work there’. It does not justify abuse. Plus women don’t have a lot of choice of workplace in some parts of the country, it’s not even nurse or teacher now it’s nurse assistant or teaching assistant. Or cleaning, retail staff or prostitution.

“Staff, be more caring or else you get sacked” is just pushing us ever further down that doom spiral towards socioeconomic breakdown.

Personally I think it's because crap service has become the "norm". It was acceptable during the lockdowns, etc., but has stubbornly become normalised. Long delays, mistakes, etc are far more common these days. Maybe some of that is working from home, maybe some because of staff reductions, or poor training, etc., but customer service has nose dived since 2020 and customers are less tolerant as a result. Whether it's the NHS, shops, utility providers, banks, etc., customer service has worsened.

Yep, I spent an hour trying to organise patient transport for someone this morning despite it not being my job and patient transport saying they needed to speak to the patient. The patient wasn’t taking no for an answer and said if I didn’t sort it, they wouldn’t be coming in. Eventually I got patient transport to agree to speak to the patient but they’re not meant to. It’s things like that that just waste our time.

(I’m on my lunch break before anyone asks why I’m on my phone!)

It’s not just the NHS though
I got called a stupid bitch because I didn’t have an MOT slot available. Go to another garage then! It’s general customers everywhere
i had one woman reduce me to tears on the phone as I had made a human error (a small one) and she was still screaming at me when she must have heard me cry before I ended the call

Off the top of my head, I'd say that when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s there was more respect for authority, but it often wasn't genuine respect, it was out of shame and fear of the consequences if you went against authority. Matrons were dragons for a reason. Teachers and headteachers aimed to be in charge, not to be everybody's friend. If a child stepped out of line, teachers, neighbours, shopkeepers, parkkeepers, policemen (and I do mean men), members of the extended family and even complete strangers would tick them off (at a minimum), and once the parents got to hear of it they would do the same.

By the time I was in my teens, a lot of that was going. Huge social changes were going through giving more power to the young and the marginalised. There was a growing feeling that people in authority were often acting hypocritically and/or abusing their power (e.g. the Profumo affair), and many of the decisions they took, which were adversely affecting others, were morally wrong (e.g. the Vietnam War).

I think what this has led to is people who previously would have taken their anger and frustration out on their families behind closed doors feeling emboldened to being horrible to complete strangers as well. They know there will be no comeback.

@Badbadbunny Yes I guess that's true. A lot of organisations stripped down the parts that make things run smoothly for customers and found that they were making more money or, in the case of public sector, spending less money on staff costs. So just kept it that way. Websites designed to minimise contact and hide phone numbers etc, it's all about keeping customers at arm's length. Well after pandemic was over it was very common to hear recorded messages about unprecedented times.

I absolutely understand. I’ve been on the waiting list for years before, suffered horrendously and been miserable because of it. My nan died due to NHS negligence.

But at the end of the day I recognise that the admin person on the end of the phone can do absolutely nothing about it. I give them the respect they deserve as a human being because it’s not their fault!

I have been in hospital for the past week. In all that time I have seen only one patient be rude to the staff and they were elderly and very confused.

On the other hand, while most of the nursing staff have been lovely, I have seen quite a number of instances that have absolutely shocked me. Some i have reported already (having discussed with a family member who is a medic). Others I will report when I get home

• changing an elderly patients nappy then not washing their hands and giving the patient a drink
• ignoring a patient with cerebral palsy who was repeatedly shouting for help - the staff were only a few meters away. In the end I pressed my buzzer to ask why they weren't going to him. They went to him and I heard them tell him off and tell him they were busy . They weren't. There were three of them in a huddle chatting about their holidays back home (they were right next to my bed)
• when I spoke family member who is a Dr about concerns about my care they said I needed to escalate and to ask to speak to charge nurse or doctor. I asked my nurse (nicely, explaining my worries) and she told me that it "wasn't possible" for me to speak to someone else. We used the Martha's rule phone number and thankfully things swang into action very swiftly - but then the nurse wouldn't talk to me at all while she delivered my care
• seeing patients be barked at by a nurse who administer their medicines very roughly so they were choking. Two days later with different nursing care and they are looking so much more healthy

I’m very sorry that this has been your experience but how does any of this justify abuse of admin staff?

I agree with you.

Rude people are everywhere and it’s getting worse.

It doesn't excuse it but it explains it. Patients/family are often at the end of their tether with it all. Perhaps NHS staff need to start formally complaining internally about co-workers etc who are either incompetent or lazy, or about management failings. Far too much "patient blaming" going on rather than co-worker blaming.

No, I’m sorry but it doesn’t. When I’m being abused by patients and getting pressure from the higher ups I can’t be rude to patients. If you can’t be respectful on the phone, make the phone call at another time.

Im an NHS podiatrist and we often get abuse. The main reasons are usually mental illness and frustration.
We have a lot of patients who work full time because they have to whilst dealing with horrible illnesses and having to wait years for essential surgery and who are risking losing their jobs and homes as a result.
Sometimes it just all gets too much and they explode as nobody seems to be doing anything for them.
Thats fine if you are face to face as you can deal with it quickly and calm them down but on the phone you are talking to a faceless person so they just get angrier.
Most people dont behave like this under normal circunstances.
The NHS is a tinderbox waiting to go off because the waiting lists are getting longer and longer and something needs to be done about it.
I just dont take any of it personally because its not directed to me. I just happen to be there.

I wasn't saying it does. I was just saying the only "abuse" I have seen while in hospital has been directed at patients not the other way round

That’s not the setting I’m speaking about though