NHS Admin:Doctor Ratio

[Runningforitall]

As the title says! Wondering if this is 'normal'. I'm in my first NHS hospital admin post in a team of 82 doctors/consultants etc. There are 4 of us PT admin and one admin manager who usually WFH. Workload is unsustainable, keeps getting piled on (with the expectation it seems almosr admin should wipe the clinical staff backsides lol). Is this usual? My friend works in another Trust in admin and does not have the same experience.

Bizarre, but the NHS is like that. I’ve worked in teams where the clinician: admin ratio is roughly 3:1 which seems crazy to me too but what can you do 🤷‍♀️ I guess the logic is that clinical staff are more expensive so ideally admin will take on all the work that doesn’t strictly need to be done by a clinician. But the NHS systems are rarely very efficient.

Maybe keep an eye out for a job in another team or trust?

We have 37 surgeons and my Admin team should have 10 (me as the B5, 3 x B4 & 6 x B3) but we have been approx 50% understaffed for the last couple of years. It's incredibly difficult to recruit as the money isn't great, the stress and responsibility is huge and the applicants are poor

I finally have 3 new B3 starting in the next month and I'm hoping that will mean I can actually do my own job rather than trying to cover the work of 4 people, working ridiculous overtime and hardly seeing my DC in an effort to stop the whole thing falling apart

It varies a lot. Some trusts have really cut back on admin, there are whole teams (not consultants) with no admin now so clinicians do all the admin as well as clinical work.
So definitely worth shopping around and looking for trusts who still invest in admin.

Thank you @ErmentrudeTheCow , @polkadotpixie and @Astromelia . Our team is apparently at full capacity in terms of staffing which I find incredible. I understand staffing is not great in the nhs but having so little staff and with admin being expected to do absolutely everything short of the cleaning seems ludicrous.I will be looking elsewhere in the Trust I think. I work hard and am suitably experienced but not willing to run myself into the ground.