The Alice in Wonderland world of the NHS
Here’s a little story I heard today, first hand from the people concerned.
A Primary Care Trust is going through a structural reorganization because it has run out of money. (Even though on the 1st April it is to “merge” with another Trust and will probably go through something similar again.) Morale is at rock bottom. The basic grade administrative/clerical workers are being made redundant. Meanwhile, the highly paid Managers remain.
These admin workers are people like clinic clerks. Most of them are married women working part-time because of their family responsibilities. Those who are being kept in employment are being allocated to different clinics, at some distance from their homes; are being told that they are no longer part-time, they must work full-time, and similar changes. Then they are told if they don’t like it, they will have to leave without redundancy. They are told there can only be one person in each clinic each day.
And the result for the patients is………………….. There are some clinics without receptionists at all on some days. There are Health Visitors, District Nurses, Chiropodists, who are not receiving any ‘phone calls from patients because there is nobody to answer the ‘phone at the clinic. There are patients ‘phoning the clinics whose calls are just not answered. There are elderly patients walking some distance to the clinic to renew their hearing aid batteries, and finding no staff present to give them to them.
These, bear in mind, are not GPs’ surgeries; they are PCT-run NHS clinics.
Meanwhile, on one day recently all the health visitors from across the PCT area were summoned to a meeting. It turned out to be a training afternoon, and was conducted by some trainers hired in for the occasion. And the subject - how to keep a tidy desk.
So the health visitors were taken from their real work for a whole afternoon; their patients were not seen; and the PCT which has no money to pay its staff spent money on hiring in a couple of trainers to teach health professionals how to keep a tidy desk.
What an Alice in Wonderland world we live in.
