Alder Hey Hospital Enquiry

[Cos]

Croppy
nice to see somebody taking a balanced view.
I work for the NHS and feel undervalued and harrased most of the time.
Im thinking of moving into the private sector to be able to spend more time with patients
and earn
more money for less antisocial hours.

I'm going to be shot down in flames for this, but here goes, the NHS is overly stretched, why do these nurses, and I say nurses as they do most of the hands on work and caring. It is ok for the doc to come around and say this that and the next thing but, put it this way give them a white coat and they think they are invincible. It makes me really angry, that the nurses get the raw end of the deal male or female, as they are both as capable as each other at administring care and recovery.

If Tigger doesn't mind being shot down in flames then neither do I - I've gone private. There, its out - my shameful secret. And it is shameful that in 2001 in order to get a doctor to have time to sit down and talk to you as a person, you have to pay for it. Its wrong, its not ethical in the overall scheme of things, but its a fact of life. I'm not prepared to sit and wait months and years to see a specialist when my child's health is at stake, I've even heard of people going to France and beyond in order to see specialists. It took 18 months to get an appointment to see an NHS specialist for my daughter, by which time she had seen a specialist privately, been treated and recovered by the time they got round to us. Never ever again. Before you yell at me that not everyone has the money, neither did we. We cut deep to the bone on every penny in order to pay for the whole thing and now have medical insurance which is worth every holiday missed, every night out lost and every sacrifice. Cos, is there no mechanism at all in place for a doctor/nurse etc to refuse to work longer than their shift? How do they make you stay on shift - is there no contract of employment or grievance procedures in place? Why doesn't anybody listen to the staff if they have these complaints? Do you remember last year in the flu epidemic that Lord Winston's mum lay on the floor in an NHS hospital refusing to be treated privately with him standing impotent near by - if he cant do anything, who can?

Cos, would the private sector really be a better place to work? I've only had experience of the NHS as a patient and it's been pretty mixed, but that has never seemed to me to be the fault of the kind and professional (but exhausted and overstretched half the time) staff I saw. I spent 10 days on a postnatal ward recovering from an elective c-section that went wrong and in all that time I only saw one gratuitously unpleasant person. I was quite a "needy" mum in that I was pretty ill for about 72 hours and was determined to make breastfeeding work, but I think I conveyed my appreciation to the staff because I was treated really kindly throughout. Some of the nursing assistants did the odd agency stint at our local private hospital and said that the only difference was the patient toilets were cleaner.
I'm with Croppy on this one - why don't the NHS and the government listen to the people at the sharp end - the staff and the patients...

Tigger
i think you are being a bit hard on the medical staff. Our hospital has at last implemented a goverment policy to pay doctors who regularly work in excess of their contracted hours an (fairly small)intensity payment. Apparently they thought 30% or so would get the payment but almost 100% of the consultants in the trust are eligble.
Kia the doctors usually are't compelled to stay on duty but my husband often has tostay late to finish operations or just to do paperwork which if he leaves at the right time is still there the next day. he also has to go in early to teach juniors before his official working day starts. you could say he should'nt do it (I frequently do ) but believe it or not he, like most of my medical colleagues has a social conscience and is pretty dedicated to the nhs
Marina
I do have first hand experience of the private sector is the hospital and yes it is a better place to work. Little things like having a safe convenient car park, clean toilets and regular 9-5 hours and time to spend with patients actually make the work environment so much nicer.

Cos, I can see your point of view if you think that complaining would merely make things worse in the short term, but surely if everyone made written complaints, things would have to improve in the long term. The NHS itself admits that its complaints procedure is designed to improve NHS services. It is not a question of the govt listening or not to medical professionals.

Ever since we came to Berkshire, we have had sub standard health care, but most of it I have not complained about.
But I will not tolerate being shouted at like a dog by a doctor simply because she feels that she can get away with it because there is such a dreadful shortage of GPs. This sort of behaviour is a result of the crisis in the NHS, but as long as patients put up with it, nothing will improve.

Cos, i was under the impression that as a nurse in the private sector you are treated as a glorified hand servant to the doctors. At least in the NHS you have more responsibility and respect! Besides its the movement of NHS staff to the provate sector that is one of the main reasons there is a lack of staff. The state trains them, and the private sector steals them. Don't do it!!

Lil
i'm not a nurse though actually in the private sector the nurse have more autonomy not less. i was'nt trained in the nhs - i paid for my own training in ireland . There is not a shortage of trained health professionals there is a shortage of trained staff who want to work for the nhs - most of my quailfying group now work in unrelated industry or IT jobs. The NHS will have to treat staff properly to keep them.

Cos, I stand corrected! What do you do in the medical business?

Lil
I'm a radiographer on an MRI scanner. Today i go to work at 2 and finish at 9.30 pm. Although it lovely to have the am off i miss kids teatime and bath time and hubby has to leave work at 5 all week to let our nanny go home on time. this weeekend my husband and i are both on call so its musical chairs with the kids. My standby rate for the day on call, to be available to go in immediately to work, so i have to be sober, near the hospital and have a standby babysitter if husband is called too , is eleven pounds after tax, and about fifteen pounds extra /per hour if i'm called. husband ia a doctor, so no pay for being on call. all in all the babysitter grosses more than us for the weekend. I hate to moan, and its only every forth weekend or so our duties collide, but i'm sure you can see why i'm going to quit.

The problem is not just that the NHS is grossly understaffed but the public are not always very considerate about how they use this precious resource.
My sister is a doctor, just working on what's called her GP rotation now to become a GP. She has spent 3 years doing house office jobs in hospitals and her A&E experiences often leave her with a great deal of annoyance with patients. On evening shifts the majority of A&E patients will have alcohol related conditions - not very serious just puking, passing out etc. People go in with a vast number of very minor injuries (an overstatement) and she ends up putting band-aids on grown men's fingers. She believes that on most days less than 40% of "patients" should actually be in the A&E department.
Medical wards are clogged up with old people. Most of them do not need to be in a hosptial but there is no where else for them to go and no one else prepared to care for them.
When my sister was a junior house officer she worked the most appalling hours and she knows that she couldn't think clearly after a 36 hour shift where she totalled less than 10 hours sleep. I think as Mums we can all recognise the serious effects of sleep deprivation.
I don't know what the answer to the problem is - obviously huge numbers of staff need to be recruited but maybe ordinary members of the public should be better educated about how to deal with minor problems: small cuts, bruises, small burns etc to keep the burden to a minimum.