Thursday 10 April 2008

The wonders never cease


It's getting better, it's our best year ever, but is it really? If these things were true then why would the majority of staff be so disillusioned with life and so frustrated at the poor standard of care that they see delivered left, right and centre.

As Dr Crippen points out, why would 25% of student nurses be quitting before the end of their training? After all nurses are not paid that badly, there must be something else at play here. Maybe it's to do with traditional nursing not being valued, and that there is now much more reward in becoming a bullying clip board wielding nurse manager.


74% of staff think they are not valued by their employers


25% think NHS trusts do not see patient care as their main priority - 29% are undecided


78% think the communication between staff and managers is poor

The Healthcare Commission has found out a few interesting facts, three of which I have reproduced above. The facts all fit with one explanation of events. Typically the managers like to pretend that the communication problem is the fault of clinicians, anyone who has worked on the ground will tell you that the problem stems from managers refusing to listen to staff because they have no power to do anything other than enforce what has been ordered to them from 'above'.

'Above' is typically the Department of Health that is lead by Gordon Brown and his cronies. Hence what hope have local managers got when they either enforce the DoH's orders or they listen to local opinion, thus ignoring the DoH's top down command and making it hugely likely that they'll be out of a job pretty damn soon. 'Stalinist' is an over used adjective but it describes the NHS very well indeed, Barry Monk describes three clinical cases very neatly that perfectly encapsulate how our government's top down control freakery has produced an incredibly useless Stalinist end product. This is progress, somehow I think not.

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