Too often I find myself frustrated by wilful inaccuracies or editorial political bias in BBC news but the link below is to an accurate and important article. For once it is an objective article about nurse numbers (there will be a similar trend with doctors) in the NHS and not a sensationalist and inaccurate one - laying the problem on Brexit or privatisation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42653542
The public - the nation should be very concerned about what is happening in the NHS. It is on a downward spiral. Why is it happening? It is happening not because the Tories are not committed to the NHS but because they have offered shocking and inept leadership - primarily in the person of Jeremy Hunt.
Jeremy Hunt is the worst type of leader. He is duplicitous. He lies. He uses weasel words. He is gloss without substance. He is loathed and despised by the workforce and there lies the problem. He has broken the workforce. His propaganda has been too good.
Doctors and nurses know decisions made have not been in patient interest - and therefore not in theirs - because they are not sustainable - but he has forced them through and many of the public (who believe they can have it all) have supported Hunt. The inevitable - the sh-t is now hitting the fan.
Here are two examples of what has gone wrong :
1) In a stretched NHS Hunt forces Junior Doctors to accept the principle of 7 day elective care. They know it is unsustainable because the NHS is already struggling to offer 5 day elective care. Hunt forces it through by battering Junior Doctors into submission. He lies. He says Junior Doctors are being misled by their union - that they do not understand what is on offer. (a ridiculous and insulting thing to say to some of the countries most intelligent, talented and vocationally caring young people). But he wins. He forces the new contract on them. But it is a pyrrhic victory - because the junior doctors and all the other NHS workers - nurses, paramedics and consultants who supported them - were right. 7 day elective care was and is unsustainable - unsafe - dangerous - because the resources are not there - cannot be there in the short and medium term.
At the time of the Junior Doctors dispute and every time since Hunt says he is going to provide 1000's of more doctors and nurses. Those in the NHS know this is impossible - why? - because the trained people do not exist. It takes 6 or 7 years to train a doctor! Of course Hunt's team have been plundering the world trying to buy in foreign doctors and nurses but there are language and qualification issues. It is also expensive. It turns out there are retention problems too for the same reasons our own doctors and nurses are leaving. It has not been the answer and it is probably immoral anyway.
2) CQC - and the inspection regime. Inspections are no longer primarily about observation but about a paper trail. The CQC mantra - if it is not written down it didn't happen. Nurses are continually filling out charts - fluids, food, pressure etc etc. This is very time consuming. It gets in the way of actual care. It is demotivating when you are working hard - long hours - trying to do the right things as a vocational carer - but being told you care is no good because you haven't filled in a chart. How do you think nurses feel? PS - when you think about it what does a tick in the box prove - other than the box has been ticked. Does it prove real considered care. The accumulated time taken up with ticks in boxes for every patient every hour of the day must be manifest.
So what has happened. The commitment of doctors and nurses through their professionalism and vocational calling has been abused by Hunt and to a large extent by the gullible public. (the public praise doctors and nurses for the job they do but they do not listen to what they are saying).
Most doctors and nurses do have a vocational calling - they do not do what they do just for the money. But everyone has a breaking point.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42653542
The public - the nation should be very concerned about what is happening in the NHS. It is on a downward spiral. Why is it happening? It is happening not because the Tories are not committed to the NHS but because they have offered shocking and inept leadership - primarily in the person of Jeremy Hunt.
Jeremy Hunt is the worst type of leader. He is duplicitous. He lies. He uses weasel words. He is gloss without substance. He is loathed and despised by the workforce and there lies the problem. He has broken the workforce. His propaganda has been too good.
Doctors and nurses know decisions made have not been in patient interest - and therefore not in theirs - because they are not sustainable - but he has forced them through and many of the public (who believe they can have it all) have supported Hunt. The inevitable - the sh-t is now hitting the fan.
Here are two examples of what has gone wrong :
1) In a stretched NHS Hunt forces Junior Doctors to accept the principle of 7 day elective care. They know it is unsustainable because the NHS is already struggling to offer 5 day elective care. Hunt forces it through by battering Junior Doctors into submission. He lies. He says Junior Doctors are being misled by their union - that they do not understand what is on offer. (a ridiculous and insulting thing to say to some of the countries most intelligent, talented and vocationally caring young people). But he wins. He forces the new contract on them. But it is a pyrrhic victory - because the junior doctors and all the other NHS workers - nurses, paramedics and consultants who supported them - were right. 7 day elective care was and is unsustainable - unsafe - dangerous - because the resources are not there - cannot be there in the short and medium term.
At the time of the Junior Doctors dispute and every time since Hunt says he is going to provide 1000's of more doctors and nurses. Those in the NHS know this is impossible - why? - because the trained people do not exist. It takes 6 or 7 years to train a doctor! Of course Hunt's team have been plundering the world trying to buy in foreign doctors and nurses but there are language and qualification issues. It is also expensive. It turns out there are retention problems too for the same reasons our own doctors and nurses are leaving. It has not been the answer and it is probably immoral anyway.
2) CQC - and the inspection regime. Inspections are no longer primarily about observation but about a paper trail. The CQC mantra - if it is not written down it didn't happen. Nurses are continually filling out charts - fluids, food, pressure etc etc. This is very time consuming. It gets in the way of actual care. It is demotivating when you are working hard - long hours - trying to do the right things as a vocational carer - but being told you care is no good because you haven't filled in a chart. How do you think nurses feel? PS - when you think about it what does a tick in the box prove - other than the box has been ticked. Does it prove real considered care. The accumulated time taken up with ticks in boxes for every patient every hour of the day must be manifest.
So what has happened. The commitment of doctors and nurses through their professionalism and vocational calling has been abused by Hunt and to a large extent by the gullible public. (the public praise doctors and nurses for the job they do but they do not listen to what they are saying).
Most doctors and nurses do have a vocational calling - they do not do what they do just for the money. But everyone has a breaking point.
- Many doctors and nurses are demoralised - even broken - because the NHS is not providing them with the time and resources to offer the good care they are desperate to provide.
- Many doctors and nurses have a shocking work life balance. The hours they are being required to work and intensity of it - might be manageable over the short term - but it is not the short term. It is day in and day out and they do not believe Jeremy Hunt will help them. They believe he lies and exploits them for political reasons only and they see no end to it.
- All this would be hard to take for doctors and nurses - but it is made worse because they said it was going to happen with Hunt's 7 day elective obsession. It has happened and they are the ones left trying to handle the self inflicted carnage.
- To top it all health care professionals are aware of the bloated management structure carried in the NHS - for ever in meetings and on fat salaries. Reading there will be more specialist HR courses to aid recruitment and retention of nurses just shows how much is wrong in the NHS. The NHS does not need more HR or more managers.
Consequently breaking point is reached. People start leaving. Staff start going on the "bank" because they can establish a more tolerable work life balance. Experience is lost. New recruits do not have the experience and leadership to cope. The ones that remain are worked even harder. They start to leave. Care implodes. This is what is happening.
Jeremy Hunt has abused and insulted the intelligence and vocational commitment of the experts in the NHS - doctors and nurses. They are the ones at the coal face too. Hunt can talk about "our NHS" - the NHS "we love and believe in" but he has offered shocking - crass - probably immoral leadership for political and career expediency. The NHS is sinking and that is terrible - for both staff and patients alike. It is very very worrying and disturbing.
The solution. Get back to basics. Easy said - but there needs to be a truthful and honest dialogue between the care professionals, the government and the public. Somehow politics needs to be taken out of the debate. The government and the public need to start listening to what doctors and nurses are saying. They are saying it because they really care - but everyone has a breaking point and they are entitled to consider their own health and life too. They do not do what they do to be abused on a daily basis. Give them the proper resources and a half decent structure to do their job. Respect their professionalism instead of paying lip service to it.. Then they won't leave. Simple.
PS. Many NHS staff believe that what is behind Jeremy Hunt's (Tory) leadership of the NHS is a wilful and political strategy to grind the NHS down into failure in order to be able to replace it with a US type insurance based system. I do not personally subscribe to that but it just shows how bad Jeremy Hunt's leadership has been. The staff think he wants to destroy the organisation he is meant to be leading.
PS. Many NHS staff believe that what is behind Jeremy Hunt's (Tory) leadership of the NHS is a wilful and political strategy to grind the NHS down into failure in order to be able to replace it with a US type insurance based system. I do not personally subscribe to that but it just shows how bad Jeremy Hunt's leadership has been. The staff think he wants to destroy the organisation he is meant to be leading.
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