NHS Fail

Faustus said:
I'm afraid Dolph if they had to re-evaluate pay and conditions then the staff would be entitled to a bumper pay rise and much better working conditions and no I'm not kidding. Most PSW haven't seen a pay rise since 2008 and their conditions are dreadful.

Have you seen the average A&E on most nights of the week?
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The NHS is chronically underfunded across the board. There are potentially some middle-management types who are surplus to requirements, but I'm certainly now doing a job that's above and beyond my pay scale (keeping note of this in the hope I can get re-banded!).

Where I work we have recently advertised externally for 2 data warehouse developers. Despite being advertised twice, there have been no suitable applicants. It appears the sort of people we want are expecting to get paid more than the NHS is prepared to pay for these roles.

EDIT - The 2 roles were advertised as band 7 (£31K-£41K). Looking online it appears a BI warehouse developer should be expecting something like £45K-£55K.
 
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Faustus said:
I'm afraid Dolph if they had to re-evaluate pay and conditions then the staff would be entitled to a bumper pay rise and much better working conditions and no I'm not kidding. Most PSW haven't seen a pay rise since 2008 and their conditions are dreadful.

Have you seen the average A&E on most nights of the week?
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To put some flesh on the bones of the above our neighbour who works for a city HR firm was asked to prepare a wide ranging report for a Trust (I can't say which) on staffing, pay, and working conditions.

He told me he was absolutely shocked both by the level of responsibility given to quite junior members of staff and the abysmal pay. As for conditions he likened them to a third world employer. He was quite genuine when he said he would never again call public sector workers. He like most of us believed much of what we have been fed in the press for decades - simply not true was his verdict. BTW - the report when presented to the Trust was quietly shelved.
 
Billies Bangers said:
To put some flesh on the bones of the above our neighbour who works for a city HR firm was asked to prepare a wide ranging report for a Trust (I can't say which) on staffing, pay, and working conditions.

He told me he was absolutely shocked both by the level of responsibility given to quite junior members of staff and the abysmal pay. As for conditions he likened them to a third world employer. He was quite genuine when he said he would never again call public sector workers. He like most of us believed much of what we have been fed in the press for decades - simply not true was his verdict. BTW - the report when presented to the Trust was quietly shelved.
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The thing is though that that again does nothing but highlight the shocking management prevalent.
 
Minstadave said:
But they'll always go with the rank amateur solution, it'll still cost millions but rather than getting IBM/MS etc we get some small company's pilot software which isn't fit for purpose and doesn't talk with any of the other systems which are hashed together and decades old in some cases.
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Oh how I can confirm the above in spades - I'm not at liberty to confirm where but my next door neighbour's employer (public sector) now has three separate computer systems none of which can talk to the other. The government has spent millions on them and yet they have to print documents from one system and manually enter the data into the others. You really couldn't make this stuff up.

Penny wise and pound foolish so the saying goes. Had they spent just another 10 million they could have had an all singing dancing system that would in the end saved time and money.
 
The NHS is a monopsony employer. If it was a free market then employment costs would rise significantly.

E.g. The government imposing a contract on junior doctors? Never would happen in the private sector. Individual doctors would negotiate contracts suitable for them and costs at unsocial hours would rise significantly.

Dolph conveniently forgets this.

It is this ability, as well things like keeping cost of medicine down that makes the NHS one of the most cost efficient in the world.
 
muon said:
The NHS is a monopsony employer. If it was a free market then employment costs would rise significantly.

E.g. The government imposing a contract on junior doctors? Never would happen in the private sector. Individual doctors would negotiate contracts suitable for them and costs at unsocial hours would rise significantly.

Dolph conveniently forgets this.

It is this ability, as well things like keeping cost of medicine down that makes the NHS one of the most cost efficient in the world.
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That is not how things have happened when all other state owned structures have been privatised. The 'race to the bottom' is a better description of the pay and conditions. Private companies then whine about the payments they are receiving and get more for producing the same service they agreed to or lesser service. The rail fiasco is a classic.

Dolph would argue against the NHS or similar structure merely because it is State owned and has unions in it's structure. No matter if that structure was successful he would be against it.
 
Dis86 said:
Yet they're heavily unionised - why aren't the unions helping?
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This is a very good question. The duty of a union is to protect it's members and to fight for their rights. But if you look at the specific health unions a great deal of their remit is also protection of the public from the members. So effectively their is a conflict of interest and the professionals are paying for a service that is largely there to benefit society over its members. Let's take the case of nurses; this is very strange because the NMC is there to protect the public and yet the RCN also takes this on along with working as an educational clearing house.

It's also in their natures and this runs through the cultures of the profession. Let's take nurses again (makes sense there are more of them) by and large they are not there for career they are there because they want to care for people and I don't think it would be unfair to say they have a need to be needed. That is their psychological makeup. Naturally, people take advantage of this and you will more than likely always get such people to work more for less and at shorter notice.

I think it is completely unacceptable that society deems it fit to run such people into the ground. When the likes of Dolph then just berate their work well tbh it ****es me off.

IMO there is something drastically wrong with society when people will pay £80 per hour for a gasman, £30 per hour for their kids to have piano lessons and yet they will quibble to pay post-graduate educated highly specialised intensive care nurses above £15 per hour.
 
Completely agree. However I think one of the causes is people are starting to see the nhs as a massive, bloated beast and don't want to give more money to something that already throws it away. Sadly this means that it doesn't go where it's needed.
Just look at how many ridiculous failures there have been of major projects - costing the tax payers billions.
I have a friend who works in IT support for them and I've posted a fair few of his daily encounters on here. The waste and inefficiency is staggering.
He also concedes that for what he and his colleagues do that they're paid too much.
 
Yep that is the case but these problems are caused at the top and those positions are largely political appointments and nothing really to do with the NHS. It's like blaming soldiers for the actions of the Ministry of Defense.

I should also point out GPs being private does not help at all. Now that was a concession made at the formation of the NHS to get it actually happening but it does cause problems. You get the primary point of call not answering to the main body - that is a not a criticism of current GPs who now have been screwed by an extrapolation of this which they largely didn't want - they just want to see and help patients not push paper.
 
We're completely in agreement. I've recently been applying for senior management positions within the organisation and despite me being highly qualified, experienced and having a proven track record of excellent project and operational management I can't get so much as an interview.
Getting a bit sick of it I had a chat with a friend of my father who used to run the north east ambulance service. The first thing he said to me was if I'm applying for a senior position and I don't know anyone above me i can forget it. He said the whole organisation is rife with nepotism and cronyism.
 
Dis86 said:
We're completely in agreement. I've recently been applying for senior management positions within the organisation and despite me being highly qualified, experienced and having a proven track record of excellent project and operational management I can't get so much as an interview.
Getting a bit sick of it I had a chat with a friend of my father who used to run the north east ambulance service. The first thing he said to me was if I'm applying for a senior position and I don't know anyone above me i can forget it. He said the whole organisation is rife with nepotism and cronyism.
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So they do learn from the private sector then.
 
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