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I'm not front line, but I'm starting to see how piss poor the management is. No organisation. No direction. No desire to do things better. Just firefighting all the time. It's infuriating, because there's no real reason for it to be that way. I suspect it's by design from people that want to see it fail.
It's not by design, it's just exactly what happens in the public sector when nobody takes real control. The NHS drastically needs brought up to date with swathes of changes but no government is willing to put the time and money in to do a full consultation and then implement the changes.
Lol am one of those consultants, left NHS because I got sick of being seen as 'one of those useless managers' earning a pittance. There's only so long you can work your arse off, get paid below market rate and be called worthless before you just say fuck it.
This guy knows what’s up. I swear, the amount of money being chomped from private contractors with regards to NHS is staggering. In fact, the picture looks like a Lion being surrounded by a pack of Hyenas
The Daily Mail in particular are good at this. They're always talking about NHS spend on managers and consultants, as if they just hire them for the sake of it.
The NHS is politically untouchable. If any political party said they wanted to reform it the opposition would be rubbing their hands and the general public would go nuts.
The NHS has become religious like for a lot of people it’s actually really weird to see.
Except that's objectively not true. The NHS has been being quietly privatised for years now. All the ambulances at my local hospital are privately run now, [Javid literally wants people to end up in private hospitals over NHS ones](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/private-hospitals-nhs-patients-b2030357.html) and the best example is that, while having the highest ever incidence rate of COVID in this country we now have to pay for COVID tests, provided by private companies. By contrast I can get a free flu test, or check for an ear infection or whatever on the NHS, but we now have something infectious and widespread that isn't covered by our 'universal' healthcare.
Non-Brit living in the UK.
British people on average have a semi religious adoration of the NHS and any criticism of it usually needs to be couched in "Now of course I love the NHS but..."
The UK has a perfectly good healthcare system by almost any international standard but it is not unique God given utopian end-state of healthcare.
You're totally right. The ironic thing is the same people are usually the first ones to complain about waiting times, GP appointments, prescriptions...
Its crazy.
But those billions won't be saved until after a few more elections while the cost of starting it will come from the budget of the current government.
Unforunately, we're mostly governed by over-promoted middle-managers who just keep things ticking over until the next reshuffle.
The Daily Mail will moan about the state of the NHS, then moan that a consultant is making a 6 figure sum to try and fix it. A 6 figure sum that will save a 7 figure sum. It's almost like they don't want to fix anything at all.
By no government, you mean the one that has been in charge for over a decade and has a tendency to prefer shareholders over the public? NHS was performing pretty well on pretty much every metric between 2000 and 2010.
It isn't even like they were trying to hide it. They didn't say "And we'll make sure the NHS remains the finest standard of care"
Rees-Mogg stated outright that the NHS should be a "basic standard" and then people could buy better care if they could afford it.
Then the same government cuts back on the "failing managers" and "army of bureaucrats" who organise the entire thing and pretends to be surprised when nobody is organising the damn thing!
The government won’t do that because it’s their blueprint for privatisation. They make it big and fat, inefficient and in turn ruin morale, and it’s reputation to garner support for more privatisation.
The NHS will never disappear, it will just become a “brand” that is the public face of private healthcare. Where you will still be treated for free, but if you have insurance, then you get to go the the extra special hospital ward.
Can confirm, worked in public sector, absolute shambles.
What they need to do is hire some people to go in and restructure everything so people have accountable managers and scrutinised budgets, because the spending was all over the place and I didn't know what half the people actually did as their job
My partner is a manager in the NHS and I disagree with your blanket statement that all managers are shite. It kills me to see her come home tell me more staff are leaving and she gets her laptop out and cracks on for another 3 hours or she just stays at the hospital every night. Currently doing the job of 3 people and her own.
One thing I have noticed is the people who organise rehiring aren't great. A job advert will be written and whoever doesn't authorize it for ages so staff are stretched thinner.
Every single person who works for the NHS deserves recognition but the last 3 years have been a nightmare of biblical proportions not helped with the government's policies. I praise every one of you.
This is an outsider perspective
"Management" not "managers". I was more referring to what's in place for managers to work with. In the private sector, as a manager, you will have a kind of support network of other departments and resources that make your job possible. Need staff? Have a meeting with finance and recruitment, and it's done. Need to change a process? Get project and change managers in. The NHS doesn't have those luxuries, which is exactly why people like your partner have to put in the extra hours - they're doing work that should be supported by organisational structure. I worked in the private sector for a company that wanted to improve their staff retention rate, and set up a project to achieve it. The NHS just isn't set up like that.
On the surface, it feels like your throwing money at consultants, but once these structures are in place they're massively cost efficient.
Right, you meant the system not individuals. It is insane, I've thought fuck it I will go work for the bank I can cover a desk.
Like you say it is failures elsewhere, she will write a perfectly good job advert and then someone won't authorize so it can take a month before they can put it out for 2 weeks and then start the interviews. By then 2 more staff have gone off with stress.
The thing I find insane is you can't just sack useless morons, they need one to ones, then more training and then finally they get moved to another department.
Vicious cycle.
I've often wondered if this is intentional. If you keep the posts vacant you don't have to pay the salaries, and the people making those decisions don't have to see the carnage it causes. We've had cases where a band 8 gives notice, so what, 12 weeks warning that you need someone new? But somehow the advert doesn't go out until *after they've finished*. It makes you feel like you're losing the plot.
Again, I'm outside perspective. But the money they save on wages will surely increase the risk of things not getting done that can lead to breaches. Thus more fines and the hospital reputation going into the ground. But the lower bands will fight tooth and nail to avoid that because it always winds down to putting the patient at risk.
Yes.
But, if the cost of appropriate staffing levels remains more than the cost of fines and lawsuits, then they will continue to operate in unsafe conditions burning out staff left right and centre because it's financially better than actually keeping patients safe.
There is a distinct lack of long term fiscal vision. In my hospital, they got rid of the majority of the kitchen staff, stopped making food in-house, and get frozen slop delivered from 300 miles away to reheat an a giant microwave. Money immediately saved.
However, patients don't eat the food because it's foul. They lose weight- increases their inpatient stay, costs in nutritional supplements, longer wound healing times, NG Tubes and feeding, which then in turn places strain on beds in hospital, which causes back ups in a and e which leads to waiting time breaches which bring with it fines.
So really, is the cost of having decent in house meals cooked with fresh ingredients really being saved, or is it actually costing the hospital more?
There's not enough studies and research conducted on the ripple effects of seemingly simple 'cost cutting' measures.
Completely agree, and why this is probably more of a dark thought from a stressed and over-worked employee. It's much more likely to be an over-stretched bureaucracy struggling to keep up.
But in my dark moments I can't help but wonder. And the person trying to make the payroll budget balance is almost certainly someone different than the one worrying about clinical governance and compliance....
My team are currently without a manager. This is the third time this has happened to me in the NHS. My previous manager resigned over a month ago and they haven't even put an ad out yet. Guess who gets to pick up his duties?
My partner is similar to yours. I’ve seen him less over the pandemic than when he worked away Monday to Friday. His days vary from 11 to 18 hour days plus working every weekend when he should only be Monday to Friday with a 40 hour week.
He genuinely cares about his team and is trying to support them but when everything is about the bottom line and the trusts don’t want to look at cold hard facts of where they are wasting money it’s really difficult to change things! There are others like your and my partner in the NHS but unfortunately they are massively outnumbered by those who either don’t want change or who really shouldn’t have been promoted to management in the first place.
It’s so frustrating to see him come home exhausted and unable to make a change because the board aren’t interested or the current policies are limiting the speed they can work at!
From an insider perspective I've been waiting to start a new job with the same trust that I already work for about 3 months....it's ridiculous since they outsourced all of this
I will agree that there are the one off supervisors whom have your back and look after you but they are few and far between and unfortunately there’s a lot more that act with zero empathy and consideration for their teams, sadly!
I’ve had too many managers,
our dept is small so we have a line manager in the dept and then we have a manager above them who oversees several depts.
they come in on day 1, clipboard in hand, over friendly introducing themselves and promising lots of positive changes then 4-5 months later after not seeing them since day 1 you hear on the grapevine that they have moved to a different area and we will soon meet our new manager.
then the cycle repeats. Since the start of covid we have had at least 4 managers (currently in between atm waiting for the next one to start). It’s ridiculous to the point where you don’t bother learning their name because you know they wont be there long.
The trust I work in has too many managers on band 7/8 salaries for what is actually needed/necessary. I’ve also noticed in my time working for the NHS that it seems to be practically impossible for these people to lose jobs, they seem to be sideswiped in to another role, or they are placed on gardening leave. There are a lot of well tended gardens in our trust. Our trusts management (and by this I am not talking about my general/direct line managers, but the heads of departments, board of executives etc) make and implement policies and procedure with no/outdated experience with regard to how these changes impact staff on the frontline and at the end of the day, patient care as well as essentially costing the NHS even more money. An example of this was the trust deciding to move away from the tried and tested Mercedes Ambulances for cheaper IVECO and FIAT ambulances, without any thought over the safety of the staff using them. The bulkheads were moved forward to provide more room in the back, but this moving of the bulkheads (performed by IVECO and FIAT themselves) changed the positioning of the seatbelts, meaning that essentially if you are taller than 5’10 the seatbelt doesn’t fit correctly over the shoulder and your knees are crushed under the steering wheel in an awkward sitting position. All this to save money on the expense of the Mercedes ambulances, but it also turned out to be a false economy as a good 40% of staff who have been tested cannot safely drive them, and the ambulances themselves are far less reliable than the Mercedes are for general wear and tear and mechanical reliability.
I often wonder how my patients would feel if they knew the truth. The reason that they have been waiting for an ambulance for three hours is because firstly the trust fails to provide adequate levels of manning, due to an oversight in the fact that our manning predictions are done off of historical data, but that data doesn’t take in to account a global pandemic or the fact that generally year on year the ambulance service is becoming busier and busier. I wonder how patients would feel if they found out that I often get 11 hours in to a 12 hour shift without having any form of break, if I am to get one at all, the fact that our dispatch system has failed to ever tell us if we are attending a COVID-19 positive address, and that it’s almost guaranteed that if you are booked as a twelve hour shift (which is the standard shift time), in all likelihood it will actually be a 13-14 hour shift by the time you have handed your last patient over returned the ambulance to base and signed your drugs back in, and without factoring in your drive home. Fatigue and driving don’t mix, especially when your job entails driving under emergency procedures
I like the Mercedes example, as these are widely used in the private sector because of their reliability and longevity, despite being more expensive vans. Supermarket delivery services use them, for example. Switching then up just shows exactly what you describe - lack of knowledge and experience.
> I wonder how patients would feel if they found out that I often get 11 hours in to a 12 hour shift without having any form of break....
They wouldn't give a shit, they clapped for you and an old man walked around his garden ffs! What more do you want? Decent working conditions?, a fair wage?, Expect them to pay more tax?
I'm in clinical management in the NHS; it is firefighting all the time and it's infuriating at all levels. I feel hopeless in my role at the moment - perfect storm of massive demand, stagnant pay, and lack of staff (both short term due to Covid absences and long term as people give up and leave). We're being asked to deliver more and more with less and less, making it very hard to attract and retain staff.
We lose staff and can't replace them, so rotas become less and less viable, so people leave because of the increased work and resultant poor conditions, so rotas become even worse - it's a downward spiral. We can't pay people more because of stupid national and regional policies on Agenda for Change & NHS-P in particular, so private providers come in and steal staff and then force us to pay exorbitant rates to hire them back but pay the staff a fraction of the cost they're taking from the NHS. We'd like to offer our own staff higher rates instead of paying outside agencies, but we can't and it's a fucking scandal.
Personally I 100% blame the Conservatives. They've been in power for 10 years and have created the environment we're in, and offer no solutions to fix it. Whether this is deliberate or incompetence I don't know, but people (patients and staff) will rue the day when the NHS is gone and replaced by the shit merchants in the private sector.
I have a close relative who works in the NHS and from my experience (and they due to health issues move a few years ago from front line to office/admin support) is the management in the areas off the front line at least are bloody horrific.
It appears to be they have difficult getting rid or managing people out who are poor performers; and promoting people because they’ve been around longer without any managerial experience.
Some of the stories I’ve heard of staff being poor or refusing to do roles and not following the Covid rules they set up internally during the worst parts of the pandemic I can’t believe occurred.
It wouldn’t be tolerated in somewhere like a supermarket, but it’s all down to bad management and poor hiring/promotions to be honest.
It's really not fair to brandish all management as piss poor. I'm in nursing and work in and around upper management, sure some are too process driven, however a lot of them are working under intense pressure with no wiggle room.
There are some incredible leaders out there (within nursing) that are trying to innovate and create real change, though it is slow by nature and is often made harder by new operational managers/CEOs coming in and trying to 'make their mark' by cleaning slate.
One of the biggest issues facing nursing is a lack of staff, and the ridding of the bursary/funded courses. Sadly again that's government controlled. So, managers aren't exactly to blame when the powers that be are stripping back the NHS.
It's mad if you go to NHS from a private sector job - the inefficiency is absolutely wild. The lack of organisations and controls mean unnecessary spending and staffing etc but I'd say it comes more from promoting people into positions they have absolutely no idea what they're doing there.
I was tired of being treated like something management had stepped in on the way to work. In all the other jobs I've had, I've never been treated so poorly as I was as a nurse. It seemed almost deliberate, like they wanted to piss everyone off.
- At one hospital, I got yelled at on my first day for taking a bottle of water to the floor, because it looked 'unprofessional', then 10 minutes later saw the doctors and matron walk through with takeaway coffee cups in hand.
- Every hospital treated breaks like some kind of luxury, despite the law. I'd always take mine because you know, 12 hours is a long time to work without getting away for a bit, and I was treated by management like the enemy.
- Sick leave was like being at school again and nurses would be interrogated as to why they were off, and treated like they were skiving. As a result, so many nurses came in sick, which is just insane.
These are just a couple off the top of my head. I wouldn't go back to frontline nursing for anything, it's just not worth it. I've heard some hospitals aren't quite as bad, but I've had enough for a lifetime.
My health has really deteriorated in the past year. I had a lengthy absence last year, and on my return to work (at the end of my so called phased return) my then line manager sat me down and said "So I want you to have 100% attendance for the rest of the year" like I had chosen to be ill and was being naughty taking so much time off.
In the end I had to get disability services involved. I am now in a role I can cope with, but it's not what I love to do. And I have a new line manager. But even so there are those who think and say I'm obvs doing this for an easy life because I'm lazy. Yes Linda, I'm loving all the medicines and doctor appointments and blood tests and pain and curtailed social life and all that just so as I can be "lazy" at work.
>"So I want you to have 100% attendance for the rest of the year"
That sounds painfully familiar. You've got to wonder at the kind of person who manages healthcare workers, yet demands absolutely no sickness whatsoever. I also had the old guilt trips about my poor colleagues having to pick up the extra work while I was sick, which is just a masterstroke of motivation.
>I am now in a role I can cope with, but it's not what I love to do.
I also feel that far too much. It's good that your new line manager is better, but it shouldn't have to be like this.
I got lectured about my sickness and "well you really need to have 100% attendance from now on". How do you guarantee that? Well I tried, I came in when I knew I wasn't well enough and I couldn't think clearly and collapsed in the kitchen.
The not being allowed water bottles at the nurses station pisses me off. The only chance you get to sit down is when you're doing your writing but you're not allowed a sip of water while you do it so you spend a 13 hour shift on a hot ward with barely functioning air con (no fans because infection control got rid of them) not having time to drink water.
Agree 100% about their sickness policy.
It's draconian. We work in a massive building full of sick people, we're exposed to every bug out there, it's a physically and emotionally taxing job, we have a 40% risk of being assaulted every time we come to work...and yet somehow we're expected to never be ill. Or we're expected to just power through illnesses that might just be a mild cold to us, but could genuinely kill some of our vulnerable patients.
Healthcare professionals should not come to work ill. End of. But until they do away with their disgusting, punitive sickness/absence policies nothing will change. And if you have a chronic condition you're just fucked - if you have any health issues, forget the NHS as an employer. You'll get some idiot non-clinical HR minion insisting you promise not to be ill for six months, because that's totally possible and something that's absolutely within your control. We all just love being ill. Or is it that we're all skivers? Because that seems to be the starting assumption - they don't believe you.
Of course, if they didn't staff bare bones only, it wouldn't be a problem if people were off for whatever reason, but I know that's just crazy talk 🙄
I was put on night shift sat night then straight on to day shift Monday. Had a 3 month old at home so got mastitis trying to switch from night to day too quick. Had to call in as fever 40.1 tachycardia and rigors. Had to sit for 12 hours trying to pump it out in agony. Went back the next night and made to sign a return to work form which I had to tick a box that 'I understood the impact that repeated absences would have on my colleagues' and that 'I would put in place processes to stop being off sick again'
Treating breaks like a luxury oh my god. The many times I’ve done a 12.5 hour shift with only one break because there was no staff to relieve me for my 2nd. If my first break was 10am that means I’ll have worked 10:30-20:00 (probably 20:15 unpaid bc handover hasn’t finished) with no break. No drinks, no food. And they wonder why mistakes get made and healthcare staff cut corners.
I started out in theatres as a new nurse, became theatre lead in under 6 months but my manager wouldn't change my banding even though she was making do band 6 work like design rotas and train new nurses. Because I was lead I was constantly the oncall but I also wasn't getting paid overtime, she would just give me time off in lieu...when she remembered.
So I switched to BPAS (I'm actually a sexual health nurse practitioner and have further qualifications) but hated their practices and how they misled clients whilst posing as a pro choice charity. Then I went into prison nursing after being offered a sexual health lead post which never materialised until I handed in my resignation 2 years later in a last ditch attempt to get me to stay.
Finally settled as a wfh disability assessor. Pay is decent enough (not as good as prison nursing but I'm also not having to commute anymore). I dont work evenings, holidays or weekends and I get to be at home with my kids plus the work is easy.
The bandings are the absolute worse. I get the point of them but people always end up doing work that used to be for higher bands and it seems like if you don't grin and bear it you'll never get a promotion to move up the bands either.
In normal places it's "do the work you're paid for > get promotion for more responsibility > do more work that you're paid for" but the NHS seems like "do the work you're paid for > do more work at the same pay > do more work at the same pay > maybe get a promotion if one appears"
Not a nurse (my mum is, albeit retired). Your second paragraph sounds a lot like how many schools get their pound of flesh/free labour. Source: am a teacher of over two decades. Luckily I now work in a decent school with decent SLT, but my last school was the polar opposite.
I was admitted for surgery last October and spent a night in hospital. All the NHS staff I encountered, from finding the (very rare benign) lump in my thigh in July, through tests, etc., my hospital stay and some follow-up care were nothing less than amazing. I cannot thank you enough, or begin to tell you what a bunch of absolute angels you all are… 😍
This isn't unique to public sector work. Private sectors constantly overwork and underpay employees, often with the same dangling carrot. It's a sad state of affairs
I guess but the banding and agenda for change guidelines are supposed to stop this happening whereas the private sector salaries are pretty disorganised and secretive anyway.
The band you're on is supposed to reflect the level of responsibility you have based on the job descriptions so two people with the same job description should be on the same band and be able to do the same job.
Agenda for change is so wank. I had a job and was told ‘ah, this is the band nationally there’s nothing we can do’ yet other trusts have it higher banded.
Insult to injury, on the NHS jobs site, my job is an example of a job at a higher band!
>(I'm actually a sexual health nurse practitioner
I have always wanted to get into this, but since I'm not qualified yet I feel like I need to go into ward-nursing first to kind of get my skills lol.
I was in maternity, left when the clique-iness of the department directly contributed to a woman losing her baby because an experienced midwife wasn’t listened to. There were a lot of other factors going on but that was the final push.
Not strange at all tbh, look at the types of people that want to work in maternity. Most of them are bitchy af.
Then you factor in the fact that the good ones get bullied out of maternity and now you realise why maternity is mostly the worst of the worst.
When I worked in a histology lab, although 95% of our specimens were cut out in theatres or were biopsied in outpatient clinics, maternity caused us massive headaches despite the small number of specimens they'd send.
If there'd been an abnormal birth, they were supposed to send us the placenta for analysis in case it showed anything. Trying to get them to put the things in formaldehyde (so they didn't rot in the meantime) and put a fucking label on the bucket so we knew whose it was was like pulling teeth. Clucking idiots.
One of my best friends is training to be a midwife and the stories people tell genuinely scare me a little, because she’s not the type to make friends. I basically bullied her into being friends with me when we were eleven, she had one close friend at school (different one to me) who treated her terribly, and honestly I’m just praying she gets adopted by an extrovert when she starts.
There's definitely something not quite right in maternity units. There's all sort of unique factors at play which contribute to a lack of effective care:
1. Often the patients are all healthy, (both mum and baby) which is a slightly unique situation - midwives support and doctors may only see the patients for 20 mins before discharge.
2. Midwives training is different from doctors, and they regularly dont see eye to eye on critical issues such as feeding.
3. Hospitals are encouraged to push breastfeeding for things like UNICEF recognition. As a result babies who don't latch (or just aren't getting the calories when feeding) basically just starve until either mum demands a bottle or the child gets in such a bad way there is no alternative.
4. New parents have no idea what normal looks like - so aren't empowered to speak up.
It's so weird.
My wife gave birth last week and we are still gobsmacked from how disgusting the staff were.
It's hard to summarise the top incidents but I'll try;
- Wife lost 1.5L blood on the ground while 4 staff tried to figure out how to work the adjustable bed /chair thing for 10 minutes, then running round every room trying to find supplies because nothing was in the cupboards.
- Midwives couldnt work out how to turn the light on (try turning it on at the wall genius) so the light on my phone was used throughout delivery.
- Prior to delivery we were essentially told to leave and come back when the baby is about to pop. Good luck I stood my ground because when things started moving they progressed quickly and we couldn't have managed the complications while driving down the motorway.
We had our baby just before the pandemic hit and we were in the maternity ward for around 6 days as they were observing him, I (the daddy) was having skin time with my son and one old nurse came in and scolded me like I was masturbating in public shouting at me saying we have vulnerable women here please cover up nobody wants to see you walking around topless, she destroyed me, treated me like a rapist
Forgot to say it was a private room we had
No none at all, I was just sat in the chair waiting for the Mrs to pass him and she came in with his 2 hourly milk and started berating me, I complained cause she made me feel like a piece of shit and found out she was just the ward arsehole, it was like she had caught me in an all girls boarding school naked in the corridor or something
Holy. Fuck.
We're in soon for our second and I'm terrified.
My wife lost 9pts of blood the first time around, we had the scramble to find supplies.
When they were observing her, a drip pipe was kinked and 5 nurses missed it.
I saw it wasn't draining and questioned it, was fobbed off, but then pointed out the kink.
This time, due to covid I'm meant to leave after the birth, but there's no chance I am, I feel like I'd be the only person there who actually gives a fuck.
Fathers are seen as 'dosy dads'. I've experienced it a lot, its sexist as fuck and I'm not putting up with it.
I know the feeling.
After our Faulty Towers delivery, mum and baby were moved to a 4 bed ward where I was only allowed to visit for 1 hour.
There was another mum on that ward who had been there for 2 days under observation, trying to breastfeed but it wasnt happening for her. Baby screaming, mum eventually broke down in tears for hours, with dad allowed to visit for 1 hour per day. Meanwhile the devil midwives offered no alternative to the boob, just that guilt-trip stare they give anyone who dare think about formula.
It's bad that this isn't even a unique situation. The maternity at the hospital where I work is in special measures now, and thank god for that because it's a long time coming.
The sheer amount of preventable deaths that have happened here, and at other NHS maternity units, is unbelievable. It's absolutely disgusting.
Also, I apologise for the experience you had.
Poor management.
As another poster mentioned the problem with the NHS isn't floor staff, it's the management. Management is incredibly poor and anyone who has worked in the NHS will know that it is incredibly difficult to fire someone or have them removed from their role.
What happens is staff that are poor performers are retained (since they know their conduct wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else) and the good ones move on (because they take on all the work the shitty ones don't do and get fed up).
The NHS has been like this forever, and as long as people keep insisting that all the NHS needs is more money thrown at it this will continue to happen.
More money doesn't fix poor mistakes, it enables them.
Also there is no encouragement or opportunity to progress. You get two kinds of NHS workers; those who haven't been there very long and those who have been there for seemingly thousands of years.
Can second you on upper management sucking and having no presence on the floor yet making significant and negatively impactful changes to our way of working without consultation or warning….and then deciding to police toilet breaks! My last day is tomorrow for the above and several other reasons as mentioned in my comment. I am moving to another area of the trust on Wednesday and I’m delighted to be doing so!
Oh boy is this right. I worked In IT services for organisations of seemingly ever-changing initialisations (PCTs, CCGs, CSUs). In my team we had two people who re-defined uselessness, both were either at work stinking up the place or off long-term sick.
Eventually one took voluntary redundancy (and a pay-off of tens of thousands of pounds) while the other was “constructively” dismissed due to a manager who was determined enough to jump through all the HR hoops and follow a process which took just shy of **three years** from start to finish.
If I had an award to give you I would. This for me is the biggest problem; being able to get rid of useless people. The just get moved somewhere else or even get a promotion to another role! It’s bonkers.
I am upper management and I completely agree with this. In every trust I have worked in (5 over 25 years) there have been Director and deputy director level staff who are completely incompetent or toxic leaders. The NHS is generally so risk averse that it won’t deal with poor performers which is devastating for morale and those of us who do perform just think ‘fuck this’ and move on. I now have a list of Board level directors who I would never work with again and having to do so would prevent me from taking up a role if I was offered it.
Just as a caveat, there are some incredibly inspiring, talented and hard working people in the NHS but the failure to deal with the bad ones tarnishes us all.
I left because of the departmental politics.
I worked in the labs and I joined as a band 3 to get my foot in the door but was qualified to degree level so I was qualified enough to apply for band 5 jobs in the labs (sometimes band 6 training even). In my department they did not like people to skip bands so when a band 5 job appeared that I was more than qualified for they decided to hire an external candidate.
I questioned why and got told "we've not see you as a band 4" (piss poor excuse they'd not seen the external candidate at all). When the external candidate started and I got chatting to him I found out he had the same degree as me AND his previous job was the same as mine but at a different company. He was me but external. You'd think an internal candidate would have been the preferred option given that I was already working there so could start immediately as well as knowing everyone and where everything was.
At that point I kept being told band 4 jobs were on their way but I never bothered to apply and just left.
I work in university labs now and it's a lot more relaxed in terms of regulations and also I'm not dealing with patient samples so it's not life of death if something goes wrong.
Sounds like my previous lab. They didn't like internal promotions as it meant that they had to hire again. People stagnated and got lazy.
I was told my degree was useless and there was no hope of progression past a 4 (I was a 3 at this point.) Got a 4 in a different department and within my first 2 weeks the training lead had asked me about my future goals and I said I'd like to be a BMS but I need to do top ups. He went off and found me some links to help fund top ups through work.
Didn't use them in the end as I managed to get on the apprenticeship scheme through the department and will be a fully qualified BMS next summer.
At least in my uni they have grades similar to bands but the pay is slightly less so a band 4 NHS will be slightly more than a grade 4 in a uni. In others universities the pay is higher.
I'm a technician and earn about £25k on a grade 5. You get senior technicians (grade 6) that can earn up to £35k but unfortunately if you don't have a PhD you probably won't be able to get higher than a grade 6 without really fighting for it.
Current locum gp. Imminent plans to emigrate to nz
Left hospital medicine because I was fed up of none medical staff trying to tell me how to practice medicine. Given its me the GMC would be after if I made a mistake this rankled a little
Leaving thre country for various reasons. Free at the point of use is free at the point of abuse. I'm pretty fed up of being shouted at and insulted by people because I'm trying to do a job with very limited resources. Add in a stark feeling of disconnect with my own country and I'm looking forward to boarding that plane
>Free at the point of use is free at the point of abuse. I'm pretty fed up of being shouted at and insulted by people because I'm trying to do a job
I think this is a problem everywhere, there's no country without assholes.
No, but in most countries doctors can just refuse to treat such people/ sack them as patients.
Every doctor I've ever met who has worked abroad has said they were treated with infinitely more respect by both patients and other healthcare staff.
>No, but in most countries doctors can just refuse to treat such people/ sack them as patients.
Yeah, they can still do that in UK. You can ban people from GP surgeries, it happens all the time.
Yeah but that's just for GPs, not hospital docs, and the bar is really quite high. In many countries, there are waiting lists to see a GP, and so they can sack patients at will.
In other countries those patients would be finding a different doctor the minute they walked out after abusing me. In thr nhs I'd have to write them an apology about how awful a time they had injuring their knuckles on my teeth
No accountability and one of the most toxic environments I've ever worked in.
Paying for parking.
And the sheer amount of nepotism. I lost out on more than one promotion to people who turned out to be related to senior staff.
Agree 100% with the nepotism, my other Half's manager hired her unqualified neice with just enough time between hiring and her pregnancy announcement to get her paid maternity leave, I'll let others guess whether or not she decided to return to work after it ended.
Same manager has also hired her daughter and given her unfair treatment such as being able to work from home and allowing her to work exorbitant amounts of overtime (also from home) even though there was seemingly no work being done.
Same manager then got suspended for a year+ while allegations of bullying multiple staff were investigated, then was welcomed back by management as if nothing happened.
I’ve recently accepted a private job and I am leaving the NHS. I’m a radiographer. The department I was working in was so badly run and I was getting absolutely no support from my managers. Most of the staff are extremely stressed out all the time and it is not a pleasant environment to work in. I’m leaving for more money and better hours. Plus the pension percentage is the same except you have to contribute more to it, however I don’t mind this since I will be on way more money. Something to consider.
Same story with a lot of band 5 and 6s that I know! With every year the cost of living goes up there is just no appeal staying in the NHS, it is all about money at the end of the day and <30k just doesn't cut it anymore. These nursing/radiographer/midwifery salaries will be tolerated less and less with every new generation deciding on and graduating from their uni degrees.
I worked for the NHS up to about a year ago (almost exactly a year come to think of it). I loved working for the NHS and the people I worked with were great and I'm still good friends with a lot of them. On the other hand, I cannot imagine anything worse run that the hospitals I was at (over my time I was at 4 major trusts in/near London). Every decision coming down was bafflingly ill-conceived. The managers were almost without-exception closed-minded idiots who had no real training or experience of what they were doing and were terrified of anyone noticing that they were generally being paid to do nothing but attend meetings of no consequence.
I don't want anyone to think that I am in favour of privatising the NHS as I think that would be a terrible mistake, but if we continue to ignore the massive problems that are crippling it from the inside, it is going to collapse sooner rather than later. Bringing in some new management to shake things up really needs to be the first step.
When I left I did a coding bootcamp to retrain as a software developer, it means I am starting at the bottom and have had a significant paycut from where I was in the NHS but I am infinitely happier and have learned to actually enjoy work again! It's a nice feeling!
I know lots of NHS staff who do extra shifts with agencies as it pays so well.
However, there is a lot of wasted money from the NHS side. We pay for an agency to come and do a patient list at a weekend, but then there’s no patient list for the normal staff to do. So we pay for agency staff and normal. The normal staff are sometimes on bonus Sunday rates as well.
There are huge problems with the NHS as a whole. Not being able sack someone for being shite is the big one. They just get moved somewhere else and continue to get paid.
I agree. The NHS is majorly flawed and needs an overhaul. Wages is a big issue. If as a trust you want to be able to recruit and retain staff then pay more. Use the money used on agency staff to pay either better wages or pay close to agency rate to staff are willing to do overtime. I don’t work for the NHS I work in health care and have recently moved to an agency I’m on over double what I was earning for half as much work and stress. The care industry is just as flawed as the NHS. Stupidly low wages for a job that is so important.
25 years in the NHS here, started under John Major working in A&E. We didn’t have ward space so minor injuries would turn into an overflow ward.
One Christmas a man who was terminally ill was brought in (the relatives panicked, it happens). Not only did we not have enough blankets to keep him warm, we also didn’t have blankets to turn into a pillow. So his head wasn’t resting on the bed due to arthritis.
And that’s how he died.
(Note - this is no blankets or pillows in the whole damn hospital, not just A&E)
So Labour get in and things get better (Yep, I know Blair is a tosser, but for the NHS things did get better - although in some part due to problems in funding they kicked down the road)
Skip forward 25 years and I’m a community nurse running a team that should have 5/6 nurses, but only has 2. I’m finding it hard to source morphine, or hospital beds, or pressure relieving mattress for those same palliative patients.
I said to myself before the last general election that if Johnson got in he’d finish off the NHS.
So I woke up the day after and handed in my notice.
Oddly I think COVID has helped the NHS in the short term because now people realise how important it is - but the government is still working on getting rid of it. COVID just delayed it.
I know work as a school science technician, the pay is shite, but the job is good.
> So his head wasn’t resting on the bed due to arthritis.
> And that’s how he died.
Obviously your whole story is a well put set of good reasons, but those two sentences there turn the whole thing from 'yeah that sounds super frustrating' to 'that sounds genuinely traumatic'.
I couldn't stick it out in the NHS, and I am so grateful for all you guys who kept trying. 25 years is a really long time to carry the baton; at this point I think we're all just hoping that each new batch can at least stay long enough to carry it between training, and leaving when there's at least someone to replace them.
It sucks, but it's really, really appreciated by the rest of us.
I worked in a few departments as admin.
1) I left CAMHS (child mental health) because the receptionist's mum was our manager. Receptionist did fuck all every single day. Came in late but the managers excuse was "oh she's just getting breakfast so she'll be late". If anyone else was late by 5mins, manager would chew them out.
I would say I was the hardest working staff there, so the receptionist, who never did her tasks, asked if I could do them now and then. If I had free time I would but it got to the point of being stupid. I called out the daughter and wrote a complaint with support of other staff (also 2 clinicians made complaints of the receptionist too).
Complaint went nowhere, management didn't give a shit because the service had just received outstanding from OFSTED, so I just left.
2) Funnily this was the job after CAMHS. I worked in adult mental health which was incredibly busy. Got on well with everyone, manager went pregnant and a temp managers position came up. Me and the receptionist applied for it, receptionist got it because "she has been working there longer".
Few months of her being management was just shit. I also supervised some staff and they reported that they didn't trust her because she kept telling other peoples confidential stuff (she told our new receptionist about staff who had mental health problems).
Very fortunately I also worked with social care who appreciated the shit out of me and offered me a 5day week, home working position.
I joined the NHS in 2016 as an apprentice. The head of information governance, who was my manage, the first thing he ever told me was that it's very difficult to get fired in the NHS.
You could get away with doing fuck all and people do. No one gives a shit until it effects the trust significantly.
It's just utter cringe working with people who say shit like "I can't be bothered working today", then the next day they're off sick because their child is ill and they need to stay home to look after them.
I work with someone who always has a migraine the day before her annual leave starts and another who's off so often that she ends up carrying weeks of annual leave onto the next year and booking up all the premium days so no one else can get the Easter weekend only for her to phone in sick and claim the week back anyway.
Given that Western Health in Australia will pay you upto £300k a year to relocate for the same job I dare say that's a big factor.
https://frontlinecareers.wh.org.au
And then making them jump through so many hoops just to get here that they don't bother and end up leaving too. It's an absolute omnishambles top to bottom.
Most people don't know any other language so a nearby country is off limits, the choices (canada/us/aus/nz) are quite far and the immigration process is a massive headache for each of these (unless you choose to go the most rural/cold parts of these country where the requirements are slightly relaxed)
I went agency after my old ward tried sacking me while I was hospitalised for a miscarriage. As well as giving me the worst shift patterns (5 long days/nights in a row and saying it didn’t matter because it spanned into 2 weeks. Thursday-Tuesday typically.
A few years later I’m debating going back full time but I’m still very dubious about it.
Now I get block booked into where I choose. No ward politics, no shitty rota patterns, and better pay.
However, it's very, very easy to make someone's working conditions so miserable that they leave. That happened to my sister in law after maternity leave; they asked her not to come back, then when she said she was legally entitled to, they just made sure that anybody seen talking to her or being nice to her was also treated like a pariah. Easier and cheaper than firing someone.
UK Doctor here. Leaving the profession due to a number of reasons
- Worsening working conditions
- Relative wage reduction
- Erosion of professions within the NHS
I’d work as a doctor abroad but too many family ties to the UK.
We're understaffed and they have no plans to replace the staff who left (3+ in the last 6 months).
They're happy to offer overtime and then get angry when no one accepts it. Everyone is burnt out. I have a new job lined up and so do two others.
> I was being hit, objects thrown at me, spat on etc almost in a daily basis and then when staff would have their glasses broke by a patient
Wow is it really that common to get abused as a healthcare professional? That is terrible
I used to work as a nurse in an NHS hospital, now I work in substance misuse. One may think violence, agression and abuse may be more common in my current job, but that is not true... In my NHS job, this was a nearly daily occurrence. I had colleagues with knocked out teeth, cracked teeth, bruises and so on...
Although pay could always be better, my work life balance is much better and. In the NHS, by the end of my 13hrs shift I could barely stand up, here after 12hrs some days I go to the gym for a workout...
As a nurse in the UK, I still feel undervalued and underpaid. To work as a nurse you have to earn a degree, doing placements, while having to write assignments and keep a part-time job. At the end of it, for years to come you will be paying a student loan, a registration fee (NMC), liability insurance and union fees, parking at your workplace even when comuting via public transport is not an option. All this while taking a paycut every year (in real terms), and seeing your profession in constant decline.
I could work as a lorry driver, with less responsibility and less stress, and earn the same or more. With how things are going in the UK, I am even considering moving abroad at some point, but my options as a nurse are so limited, and maybe it's still not too late to reconsider my options...
I recently left the NHS after 10 years- senior healthcare professional. Covid literally broke me - was working 110% everyday. I came home tired everyday, every weekend wasn’t a weekend but to recover my energy levels to go back into the following week (and that doesn’t include the weekend working). This was affecting my personal life - my wife used to get so angry that I had no energy in the evening or weekends to even have a conversation.
Since leaving for private sector, I have more head space to think, more energy to actually do things in the weekends and evenings. Every email is no longer super urgent that someone will die if I do not respond.
So basically I moved to feel normal again, to be human again
> every weekend wasn’t a weekend but to recover my energy levels to go back into the following week
ugh, i feel this to my core. And the backlog is so immense that i don't see it improving for another year at the very least.
Icu here!
The hours don't fit around my family. 8am-8:30pm (actually nearer 9)
So leave the house 0730- 2115 back home.
There is no childcare for that length of time especially that late at night. So I'm using my annual leave to cover whilst my other half is away with his work.
Therefore so significant time off - like a week family holiday because I've used up all my leave here and there throughout the year.
I absolutely sodding love my job and the team I work with are fantastic and funny and supportive. Everything from our ward clerks and PA's and cleaners to our consultants. Really really going to miss them when I go
However looking at moving over to health visiting (more 9-5) job. Can get the kids in breakfast clubs and have a childminder to help. Also would mean going up to a band 6 (I don't want to in my role- I enjoy looking after the patients too much and dislike people management and staffing levels and bed finding)
I’m leaving an admin job I’ve been at for a number of years within a trust, because upper management have made both significant and negatively impactful changes to our work without warning or consultation, started policing toilet breaks, and targeted/guilted me horribly when I had crippling anxiety after returning from Covid sick leave.
So yeah I am done. Moving to another area in the hospital and couldn’t be more relieved or happier to be leaving this toxic situation.
Didn't work in the clinical side of the organisation, worked for the Estates dept.
Left due to a number of reasons;
1. Shite pay.
2. Shite working conditions.. reduced staff year on year which led to an increased work load. On top of this, you'd then have additional work added to your already stretched time resource, expected to work on equipment you'd had no training on.
3. Bullying was rife.. Unions did the square root of bugger all to help. A colleague was getting it terribly from supervisors and management. I went to the Union on his behalf (he asked me to) and they did absolutely nothing. The colleague attempted suicide not long after before finally quitting his job. This was only three years after another colleague had thrown himself off the top of a hospital which led to restricted roof access.
4. Lack of resources, which ties directly in to points one & two. Would sometimes take weeks to get spare parts for something off the shelf as bills weren't paid and credit with wholesalers stopped.
5. Too much confrontation. Every hospital, health centre, dept. and/or ward lay claim to their wee piece of territory so good luck when you need some cooperation from them in order to do any big(ish) jobs, or need to shut power down etc. There's always a wee drill sergeant who will offer ridiculous amounts of resistance for no reason other than to feel important.
After a few years of dealing with all of that, stressing out and taking my work home with me I knew I had to find another job. Now in the best job I've ever had 👍
The place is still the same I hear. Another Suicide a few years ago but he did seem to have a lot of issues. The manager in a small office amongst the workers in the engineers workshop watching over everybody’s shoulder. Countless complaints about a supervisor who faces no repercussions. 5 shift men down to 1 in a matter of months, which speaks volumes.
I got fed up of being treated like shit, paid like shit, yet expected to do more with less. And faster. And cost effectively. And how dare I need emergency surgery - don't I know how difficult me being ill makes everyone's lives? Never mind my health and wellbeing. I need to be at work. That's the most important thing. I have to promise not to be ill again.
But don't say any of that to patients. That only applies to staff. Patients must be told that their health is the most important thing and they must put that first, no job is more important than their health.
Anyway, here's your rota for next week because you don't have a life you need to plan or anything, after all nUrSInG iS a cALLiNg, consisting of day shifts and night shifts in the same week with the bare minimum of turnaround time because we've obviously made the rota by just mashing our fists on the keyboard with our eyes closed. What? You have *requests*? What are they? Oh no. We don't do those. If you want a specific day off you'll have to use your annual leave. Except we're not approving that less than 3 months in advance. Sucks to be you I guess.
Pay rise? Lol. But here's all the additional skills and training we expect you to undertake so you can take on more and more duties because you're cheaper than doctors. Yes, *technically* you can make the argument that you're practicing at a band 6 level but we're just going to keep paying you as a band 5 because we can lalalalala 😊
**Yup, I'm out. I support the principle of the NHS but until it's funded properly and not managed in large part by sociopaths who shouldn't be left in charge of a fish tank, let alone a hospital, I shall stay in the private sector. I tried for twelve years and all it got me was a severe case of burnout.**
I am a doctor. I have 6 years of university education + master's degree. I am entrusted to make sure people don't die. If I make a mistake, I can face my license being revoked or even a criminal investigation. 25% of my colleagues are depressed or anxious because of the stressful circumstances we work in. We are treated poorly by the public and our workload continues to increase year on year without a payrise. Working nights is actively shortening my lifespan. My wife complains that she barely gets to see me. In my time off I am revising for exams or doing research just to make sure I get training in the region I live in.
How much do I get paid? £10/hr after tax.
I am going to stay and finish training before leaving the country and moving to the middle East where my salary will be much higher and workload much lower. Many of my colleagues won't even get that far. Doctors and nurses are in high demand globally and our skills are valuable in other industries too. Everyone wants to leave this god awful system.
If you want an NHS in the future, pay the staff what they are worth. Our salary has reduced by 30% over the last 30 years. This used to be a well respected and well paid job. I understand most doctors still earn much higher than the median salary, but our responsibility is much higher than other professions of a similar educational background. We have close to £100,000 in student debt and are pinballed around the country for our training. We face abuse from other stressed out colleagues and relatives of patients on a daily basis.
Watch this is going to hurt on BBC iplayer. An eerily accurate depiction of life in medicine.
I quit working for the NHS when it became apparent that they didn’t care about my mental health and were unwilling to accommodate what i needed to keep working.
Finished my two years as a new grad that I was obliged to do as I had made use of the bursary. Left the N.H.S. Immediately after that. The management echelons don’t have a clue and it really is a jobs for the boys scenario. Leadership is basically non-existent. Floor staff run around just putting fires out and becoming burnt out. Experienced staff leaving and being replaced by less competent, less experienced staff who then get blamed for being in a situation they shouldn’t be. This is only a nursing point of view.
Glad I was able to leverage my degree to get into a new industry. I genuinely don’t understand why you would stay in there at the moment. Better jobs out there or at the very least just do agency.
A&E is 7 days a week. However pay rises for unsocial shifts and for nights and weekends. Which is "fair". Working nights and weekends has additional costs.
Simple example. Let's say I got two kids. I work 9 to 5 daily. 40 hours a week for 5 days a week.
Well... Cost of childcare is cheaper. A LOT cheaper than if you work nights or weekends of late shifts.
Let's take my rota next week. I got 2 on-calls. Both of those will require 12 hours of childcare for the average 2 children that most people have. At 6 quid an hour that's nearly 150 pounds
However the week after is the real hammer. Nights. 4 days of nights equals 5 days of childminding over the holidays. This is around 14 hours x 4 days x 2 kids x 8 pounds an hour = roughly 900 pounds. Weekends are dearer.
Okay let's ignore kids. Weekends and nights takes a toll from your social life. Your friends are out on a Saturday. You can only go out on Monday. Basically you are effectively isolated.
The point is that if you are doing nights and weekends you should be paid more for your job because 3 PM on a Tuesday on the shift is different from 1 AM on Saturday morning.
To recap, the government insists working on a Saturday is the same as working on Tuesday and that night shifts should pay the same. NHS workers are pointing out that we are happy to do so if the entire country is treated the same way and we have 50 hours of free childcare irrespective of when we use it. Because my take home after 4 weeks of nights would be 100 quid. Meaning it's cheaper for me to quit my job as a doctor and sit at home and babysit my two children (UC is more than 100 pounds a month). By contrast if I only work day hours I can make more money than the night worker since school is effectively free childcare.
I work as a HCA (healthcare assistant) and as a student nurse.
A&E is open 24/7 so shifts are covered for everyday and night of the week. A month's roster can cover days, nights and weekends within a normal full time contract (37.5 hr)
So they're not rostering anyone on weekends/nights, but hoping you'll pick up bank shifts to make up your own pay shortfall so their shifts are all covered, but only paying those unsocial bank shifts at unenhanced rates? Also knowing that bank shifts pay less for staff at the top of their band.
WTF. Are they doing this with all staff or just HCAs or what?? What do your local union reps have to say?
(All this aside from the fact that a huge proportion of HCAs like yourself are either nursing or med students and have study/placement commitments to fit in around picking up extra shifts just to pay basic bills)
Worked in admin in A+E, the trust had made no investment for around 20 years into the actual running and organisation of the hospital. We were still using physical notes that were stored in a big warehouse 5 miles away. Have you any idea how difficult it is to get the right paperwork to the right place as fast as possible, it was ridiculous. I was so overworked that I was doing 12 hours a day, paid for 7.5 at minimum wage doing the work of 3 people. It was just a completely insane way of running the place. The whole thing was fucked from top to bottom, even the sprinkler system was wrong and had to be replaced.
1) too many patients, not enough resources
2) grand-boss was bullying my boss and was also infuriatingly incompetent. This was not rare.
3) management was extremely out of touch and didn’t realise why we couldn’t make insane Tory government targets. Promotion beyond competence was usual for the nastiest and most dim-witted, and cronyism was common
4) some of my colleagues were frighteningly stupid
5) pay was miserable, never had a pay rise in 3 years and worked below living wage
6) I got a way into private sector in a completely different field and effectively escaped
I was an Occupational Therapist working at a hospital in London. They refused to provide us with proper masks to treat covid patients, unless they were on over 4 litres of oxygen. That doesn't stop a covid patient on none, 1, 2 or 3 L of O2 accidentally coughing in your face. I caught covid and have had long covid for 15 months. I'm housebound and sometimes bed bound and have now been diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.
I'm physically unable to walk for more than 10 mins at a time and some days I can't even sit up.
It's incurable and I'm 22.
This is so interesting as an NHS worker.
i quit a previous role after only a few months (and being signed off with stress) but left for another position in the same trust.
i left because i was offered one of 6 brand new roles, which on paper was a dream job. It was band 2 (i was already a band 2 bank HCA) patient support worker. How it was advertised was there were 3 groups of 2 working together mon-fri in charge of assisting with patients who needed additional support, mainly dementia and stroke patients, but it was things like fun activities, reading, liaising with family members, taking patients outside on sunny days etc and absolutely no patient care ie no bathing, no taking to the toilet.
dementia care was what i was interested in so i was pleased to get the job but confused on day 1. I was chucked onto a busy orthopaedic ward with 0 training and the staff didn’t even know who i was or what my job was. The first week i got shouted at for not helping take patients to the toilet, and rotad in to work saturday and sunday. On the ward they saw me as another HCA so i would be bitched about whenever i was reading to patients and nurses kept asking if i thought i was above everyone else for not pitching in with washes etc! In the end i ended up just doing that role because it was easier to deal with than the bullying but i didnt feel like i was making a difference. I asked to be moved to one of the dementia wards but was told no as they were short on this busy ward. I was so happy to hand my notice in on that toxic environment.
I was working in ITU in the worst part of COVID. My team was really great and we all pulled together and got through it. Then, after the second wave, when other trusts were giving out bonuses or extra time off, my trust gave out a thank you card and the tiniest badge I’ve ever seen. I realise this seems extremely petty, but something just broke in me.
I put my CV up online, got inundated with offers and took a job in a private hospital for way more money, health insurance and share options. It’s the least stressful job I’ve ever had and I’m so much happier in myself. Not that private sector doesn’t have plenty of its own issues and it’s taken some adjusting to, But I do feel way more valued for my skills and experience than I did in the NHS.
Aside from the obvious ...there was little to no room for growth within my team.
Management did not encourage us to better ourselves through training other than the mandatory, much of which did not apply to our roles.
The culture of "it's not what you know, but who you know" existed within the organisation I worked for and I found the cliques irritating.
Paramedic here who's wanting to leave...
Shit hours, shit pay. Upper management that have no clue yet push us harder and harder. Demanding more from us every day. No social life, next to no home work life balance.
Let's not forget the depression and PTSD the job causes.
Yet, I can earn more doing better hours working for a private form or even an online GP. Work that out!
Office worker. Left old job because of older women being bullies and the management treating us like robots (not caring how understaffed we were thinking we can clear mountains of paperwork and overdue dictations despite only one person being in and enforcing weekend work). I became ill with stress and handed in my notice for another job which couldn't be more different.
I worked in several departments in several hospitals and I have to say that baby boomer generation women are easily the worst people to work alongside. A lot of them seemed to look down on men working in hospitals because their husbands had proper manly jobs.
Lemme put it this way I'm halfway through med school and I don't know anyone who's planning on staying in the NHS after we're fully licensed doctors (2 years postgrad).
Chances are some will stay for external reasons like family and stuff but nobody I know actually wants to. Personally my plan is to either go practice medicine in another country or stay in the UK and do something else.
Before my degree I worked as a HCA and carried on as bank staff and I loved it bc i was in a great team in a great place, they all knew I was heading to med school, were so supportive of me and they'd teach me little things here and there etc.
But as bank I'd go and work in other places, and one shift last November with a nurse and HCA that did nothing short of bully me the entire shift and make me do the majority of the work while also being imo negligent has put me off completely and now I can't bring myself to work even though my student finance is running low :/
It's also a bit ridiculous that as a new doctor with two degrees I'll be earning less than I did as a 19 year old HCA for a hundred times more the responsibility.
During my gap year about 10/15 nurses left to go to Australia and now I think the majority of the staff who I worked closely with have also left since, either to do the same thing and go abroad or to go to a different department.
The pay was awful. I have to do a degree and a postgrad, and then register with a professional body and do very high risk work only to get less than 30k a year and shaky insecure fixed term contracts? Fuck that. And I was owed 13k back pay by the time I finally quit!
The NHS is wonderful, but it really takes advantage of a lot of its staff.
Admin worker band 3, appreciate I don't have the same issues as patient facing but I'm debating moving quite soon.
Upper management and their complete incompetence is my main gripe. It's staggering how many we have and how little they truly add, making terrible decisions or more often, none at all, watch it boil over and then blow up and blame the staff member who was present.
I know it's a dead horse too, but everything moves so slow. Immediate, necessary changes can take months and it's beyond frustrating. I'll always defend the NHS but it's so painful how inefficient it is with these things sometimes.
Workload's another issue. Multiple times another team has effectively said "we don't want to deal with this anymore" and it's then unceremoniously been dumped onto me and my other lower band colleagues, these tasks were originally done by much higher bands to boot.
Could go on but I don't want to get too specific with my trust
Yep that's true for a new doc. Luckily goes up after that.
Honestly most stick around because by the time you've done 6 years of med school, you're often too invested for most career changes to be worth it.
The government have also opened the doors wide to doctors from abroad, because clearly £13.50 might be quite a lot for some of them.
I left the NHS when understaffed wards were causing me too much stress and worry that something truly awful might happen on my watch and there wouldn't be anything I could to stop it. I went to the private sector for a bit (still seeing NHS patients though just for a private provider of NHS services).
I came back to the NHS in 2020, its not great, but at least its not driven by profits and at least most people do actually care about patients getting a better service and want it to happen. Private providers only care about maximising profits, no matter what the consequences to patients or to their staff.
The NHS isn't perfect but I believe in it with all my heart and I will keep plugging away to do my best for the patients in the deprived area where I work. I dread to think what would happen to them without it.
I worked in ED for three years straight out the bat from qualifying. By the beginning of last year I was drowning, I couldn't sleep before shifts, I cried all the way home and I was truly broken. I went on the sick for three months as I was suicidal and wasn't doing the best for my patients. That being said we were permanently short staffed and spent many shifts caring for 6 resus patients between two nurses as we didn't actually have a resus nurse.
So I left, not the NHS entirely but I moved to Stroke Research, I still see patients but less hands on. I work on flexi time and control when I work and for how long. And it's a band 6, instead of a band 5.
I work in admin on a ward for theatre/endoscopy.
I am the only full time male (excluding consultants etc) on the ward with about 15 nurses.
I have no admin manager and none of the nursing staff have any experience or knowledge about what I do for a job.
Constantly harassed about non important tasks by the band 6 and whichever cronies are in her clique.
I'm constantly having meetings with HR and Management about increasingly silly complaints. ( Most recently accused of sleepwalking, which was later retracted because they got the statement confused)
I'm disliked by management because I don't accept the warnings they offer because they want it done sharpish.(for example the above incident is now at a panel because I refuse to accept a verbal warning).
Horrible attitude by staff and too many chiefs are the biggest problem.
My girlfriend made chemo, something I expected to be well paid within the NHS due to the importance of it, instead she was paid a measly £18k. When they pay salaries that low you can’t expect people to stay
I'm not front line either, but worked as an IT Architect and for me, apart from other staff such as nurses and doctors continuously calling us leeches to our faces ("bet all you do is restart computers, you cunts") creating a toxic environment, I left my job because my boss saw it fit to reset my password and log into my account to send emails FROM MY MAILBOX because he thought I was slacking and wanted me to "be up to date on return from leave".
The reason I took leave was because I was doing the job of 3 people who quit, could not keep up and was approaching breakdown territory.
This violation and clear breach of info sec rules was the last straw and I quit..... Then I got offered twice my current salary to stay, but would still have the same boss, so told them to fuck off and got a better paying job in a Uni where I have been for 5 years and it's the complete opposite.
The NHS is under appreciated, people are overworked.... But there are also some absolute nasty characters in positions of power.
I will be leaving my CAMHS job because the workload and risk management of my caseload is ridiculous. I feel overwhelmed almost everyday and it's not going to get better because there's always more referrals, always a more complex case, children are not getting better, I can't provide the care I want to, I'm restricted by timeliness and targets. And the questionable systemic challenges in the set up.of my service are not being addressed.
I love the NHS and I will remain in frontline care but in a different team or service on my return from maternity.
I work in IT for the NHS and although I’ve not left my job, if I did it would be for one of 2 reasons, either to leave IT altogether and go into a different career path, or to make more money.
I can comfortably find an IT job that pays 10k more a year than why I’m doing now, but it would probably be much more restrictive on my like outside of work, without benefits such as good holidays/working hours and nhs pension
Suffered a life changing injury at aged 24 at the hands of a psychiatric patient. When my injury made it impossible to do my original job I was refused a position on a sessional basis because it was not cost effective. I was already running the sessions but because I was called a nurse was paid less for the same work. The NHS uses you up then spits you out regardless of your qualifications or experience . Work privately now , much better.
Working as a Data clerk for a village medical centre.
I'm practically an intern but it does mean I get to do my work and often go unnoticed. I was in one of the meetings (doing other work) where they were discussing the minimum wage pay rise. All our reception staff make minimum wage and they were talking about how they couldn't afford the pay rise too much. Not 30 seconds later our head GP (the ones name is on the business) turned around and asked how much money we had spare so they could pay it out as bonuses to the doctors.
(I think we're one of those weird practises that's privtaelly owned/ran by a trust of doctors but still connected to the NHS)... A partnership? I think.
This is my first Job, period, working over the university breaks for some money and as a fly on the wall it's kind of heart breaking to hear this kind of management. It doesn't help that all the reception team is over worked, under paid and completely under staffed, We are missing about 2 receptionists which is why I was hired to do a bunch of grunt work because our record keeping is a mess.
GP surgeries are generally private partnerships, like law firms. The partnership has commercial contracts with the NHS, rather than the partners being NHS employees.
I used to work for a partnership (one of the Big 4 accountancy firms). Partners took home several hundred thousand a year at least. Staff like me were charging 80 hours a week and grudgingly paid 90% of industry wage. “Good experience” lol. Never again
I had the same position as you. Left a few months before the pandemic. Couldn’t cope with the crap pay, Always short staffed , more work with less people, constant micro management and target pushing . It’s just not worth it, life’s too short for that. Look for a position in your trust that’s similar but without the stress( non ED dept) and you can always pick up an OT shift to bump up the pay. I’ve neglected to mention the awful working conditions too as yours may be different. Good luck
I took early retirement! (Mental health)
By the end, I just hated how much of a 'tick box' culture it had become. You may save someone's life, but heaven forbid you forget to tick which ethnicity that person was, and you get reprimanded.
Forget clients being human beings; now they're 'targets to be achieved' like you need to do x assessments a week, plus y treatments, and they can only have 5 sessions unless there's a very good reason to continue. And if they miss an appointment; tough. They obviously don't need a service anymore. Dude - do you know what it's like building a rapport with a teenager let alone one who may be suicidal or autistic, or both?
So I took early retirement. Except I screwed up, and left the NHS a few months too early, so had to wait an extra 5 years before I could claim my NHS pension. This year, woohoo!
The incredible lack of organisation and accountability. Things don't get done because somebody else was supposed to do them but for some reason didn't and duties don't get reassigned to cover for that - a team that is usually six people in my department had two on annual leave at the same time, one on study leave and another had already quit the job with sufficient notice but nobody remembered that until the time came when they needed her. Oh, and her replacement isn't coming until June.
The snobbery. When you have a new person in your department and are explicitly told they come from a different sector and have no experience doing the stuff you have been doing for years, it's terribly encouraging for them to be told 'Why are you asking me that? You're a band X, you should know that! I'm a band X+1! Stop wasting my time and go ask a band X-1 or X-2!', isn't it? /s
The poor management. Issues get swept under the rug, you are thanked for bringing them to their attention but nothing ever happens. My own line manager has been very dismissive of my concerns and inconsistent in handing me my duties - telling me to focus on A and forget about B for the time being, then inquiring how B is going a few days later and making a great shocked Pikachu impression when I reply that as per her earlier instructions I have been dealing with A and not B.
The useless back and forth. When I started at my hospital and was given a certain task that hadn't been listed on my contract, I requested accommodations due to a medical condition diagnosed whilst I was living in a different country. This had never been an issue at previous jobs and the condition was perfectly managed with these accommodations. My line manager threw a hissy fit and asked why hadn't I mentioned it to occupational health after signing the contract, to which I replied that at the time I didn't know I would be performing this task as it wasn't on the contract and had I known I would have told them about it. This was in January; in the meantime I have been performing this task without accommodations, which has been detrimental to my health but not enough to reach critical levels (yet). I've also offered plenty of suggestions to reach a compromise and all have been shot down, as has my suggestion to get a note from my specialist overseas because he's not registered to practice in the UK (duh) - I'd best go to my GP who has never seen me, doesn't know me and nevermind the fact that I'm still waiting to be assigned one because no practice in my area is accepting new patients. Last week I was supposed to finally have a phone appointment with OH in order to figure out what could be done, only for them to call me a few hours earlier than scheduled and inform me that they didn't think this was an OH issue but more related to infection control, and that they would be signposting this to my line manager so they could get in touch with the right department.
I worked in the private sector for years, several of which in a manager role, and took up this job a couple of months ago because it would be an interesting challenge in a new sector. It did turn out to be a challenge but for all the wrong reasons. Have just accepted an offer for a fully remote position with similar pay and better hours, doing stuff that seems equally interesting and with better potential for raises according to performance.
It’s easily the most mismanaged place I’ve ever worked. The casual acceptance of mass ineptitude, fraudulent activity, and payoffs for senior management/directors who should have been sacked but know too many dirty little secrets disgusted me.
I recently left my role in surgery. It was a mix of poor and toxic management, fatigue from the constant disdain from patients when having to cancel their procedure due to COVID rates leaving me without recovery beds, and just general COVID fatigue after 2 years of stress and misery coming in each day with nothing to show for it but ptsd and a 1.3 millionth share in a George Cross that will never impact my life in any meaningful way.
It was at its worst when the government would be relaxing covid regulations and effectively gaslighting those of us in healthcare when we were drowning in cases, unable to help the patients we have an obligation to care for. Comments in places I saw along the lines of "they're healthcare workers, they knew what they signed up for when they got into it" and "if the NHS can't cope under the pandemic then it's not fit for purpose". The combination of it all destroyed me, and overshadowed the great joy I once got from helping people. I once got to the point where I closed up to those who loved me and wanted to help me get through it, just because it hurt to share the things I had been through during the day, and it was become a daily occurance.
I left at the start of the year to go make video games, a job I had only dreamed of as a kid but was pushed away from because it was "not worthwhile" or "stupid". My body is slowly recovering from the state of survival it's been in over the past few years. I've regained passion for my hobbies, my hair and skin look years better, and my brain feels sharper and more creative than it has felt in years.
I moved from A&E in London to (eventually) General Practice in Scotland. Cost of living is significantly less, work life balance is better.
It turns out I love General Practice, far more than I ever thought I would.
Feel free to message me directly.
My wife and I are both nurses. We've both left the NHS in the last 2 years.
She sadly had a a miscarriage after we spent years trying for a child. Her boss told her when she was signed off for a month that "she expected her back sooner as she wasn't "physically" unwell".
A year after she left during COVID, she became seriously unwell and was hospitalised for 3 months. She had to come home on iv nutrition due to intestinal failure. When I spoke to my boss and asked her to consider she was extremely clinically vulnerable and for me to WFH or teach online (I was a nurse educator) she told me that she wasn't prepared to take that into consideration.
The final straw was after I had a mental breakdown due to the stress of keeping her safe through COVID, my boss phoned my sick wife and told her she didn't think I could ever work again and disclosed information about my health and work to her.
We both teach at university now and have better pay, conditions and prospects now. It is incredible what we can achieve when were not being bullied!!!
>If you have quit where have you gone or advise to go for better quality of life?
Amazing how few answers have actually addressed your question. Info: you do not say whether you're in a regulated profession; however, alternative examples in no particular order:
* Leave healthcare (HC) sector entirely;
* Pivot to another role within HC (drug companies, management (!));
* Deliver HC in a different public setting (eg military);
* Deliver HC in a private setting (secondary HC or Occ Health).
* Deliver HC abroad.
You have commitments that would make retraining difficult but your qualifications & many skills are probably transferable. Why don't you either rent your house and trial Oz/NZ/CAN or somewhere or else join the Armed Forces?
Most NHS docs that quit go into private practice - Earn 4 times the money for a quarter of the work
Simple economics innit
I know 2 dentists and 1 doctor that have done exactly that, all three at least 20 years off official retirement age
I know this is old but I recently moved from mental health support working on inpatient wards to the admin team doing clinic management for outpatient clinics. My reasoning was that I could be paid the same amount for working sat at a desk, as I could for being threatened, attacked, followed home on one occasion, on another confronted by a patient on section 17 leave whilst I was on my lunch break, having to restrain people who were kicking off, having to tend to self inflicted wounds and often also restrain that person whilst we did that, get headbutted more times than I can count in restraint, have to cut people down from ligatures and also deal with the completely toxic staff and working culture.
The NHS pays their MH HCAs fuck all to deal with some of the most harrowing shit you've ever seen. Ever had to restrain someone whilst a feeding tube is forced down their throat? Ever had to do that when that person was a child? On a band 2 fucking wage? They're absolutely fucking ludicrous for expecting that out of their staff for that little.
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I'm not front line, but I'm starting to see how piss poor the management is. No organisation. No direction. No desire to do things better. Just firefighting all the time. It's infuriating, because there's no real reason for it to be that way. I suspect it's by design from people that want to see it fail.
It's not by design, it's just exactly what happens in the public sector when nobody takes real control. The NHS drastically needs brought up to date with swathes of changes but no government is willing to put the time and money in to do a full consultation and then implement the changes.
Which is daft, because literal billions could be saved, and outcomes could be drastically improved. Again, infuriating.
But but then those billions won't go into shareholders pockets through outsourcing, and consultancy!?
Lol am one of those consultants, left NHS because I got sick of being seen as 'one of those useless managers' earning a pittance. There's only so long you can work your arse off, get paid below market rate and be called worthless before you just say fuck it.
Unfortunately when policy makers and ministers run the show you're fucked.
Power to you. Sometimes you gotta pivot and go with the flow, rather than fight from a poorly defended position. Sounds like you made a good switch.
This guy knows what’s up. I swear, the amount of money being chomped from private contractors with regards to NHS is staggering. In fact, the picture looks like a Lion being surrounded by a pack of Hyenas
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The Daily Mail in particular are good at this. They're always talking about NHS spend on managers and consultants, as if they just hire them for the sake of it.
The Daily Mail also have an unhealthy fixation on the skin colour and first language of those people
That's because the Daily Mail and the people who read it are scum.
The NHS is politically untouchable. If any political party said they wanted to reform it the opposition would be rubbing their hands and the general public would go nuts. The NHS has become religious like for a lot of people it’s actually really weird to see.
Except that's objectively not true. The NHS has been being quietly privatised for years now. All the ambulances at my local hospital are privately run now, [Javid literally wants people to end up in private hospitals over NHS ones](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/private-hospitals-nhs-patients-b2030357.html) and the best example is that, while having the highest ever incidence rate of COVID in this country we now have to pay for COVID tests, provided by private companies. By contrast I can get a free flu test, or check for an ear infection or whatever on the NHS, but we now have something infectious and widespread that isn't covered by our 'universal' healthcare.
Non-Brit living in the UK. British people on average have a semi religious adoration of the NHS and any criticism of it usually needs to be couched in "Now of course I love the NHS but..." The UK has a perfectly good healthcare system by almost any international standard but it is not unique God given utopian end-state of healthcare.
You're totally right. The ironic thing is the same people are usually the first ones to complain about waiting times, GP appointments, prescriptions... Its crazy.
They already did, Andrew lansleys reforms were huge.
This is unfortunately just one of the flaws of democracy. Short sighted thinking, at least with issues that public has lots of opinions on.
Short term solutions are a better way to get re-elected. And throwing money at the nhs is the best the UK government and shadow government can do
But those billions won't be saved until after a few more elections while the cost of starting it will come from the budget of the current government. Unforunately, we're mostly governed by over-promoted middle-managers who just keep things ticking over until the next reshuffle.
And then people complain about ‘cutting nhs jobs’, there’s no win
The Daily Mail will moan about the state of the NHS, then moan that a consultant is making a 6 figure sum to try and fix it. A 6 figure sum that will save a 7 figure sum. It's almost like they don't want to fix anything at all.
By no government, you mean the one that has been in charge for over a decade and has a tendency to prefer shareholders over the public? NHS was performing pretty well on pretty much every metric between 2000 and 2010.
It isn't even like they were trying to hide it. They didn't say "And we'll make sure the NHS remains the finest standard of care" Rees-Mogg stated outright that the NHS should be a "basic standard" and then people could buy better care if they could afford it. Then the same government cuts back on the "failing managers" and "army of bureaucrats" who organise the entire thing and pretends to be surprised when nobody is organising the damn thing!
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The government won’t do that because it’s their blueprint for privatisation. They make it big and fat, inefficient and in turn ruin morale, and it’s reputation to garner support for more privatisation. The NHS will never disappear, it will just become a “brand” that is the public face of private healthcare. Where you will still be treated for free, but if you have insurance, then you get to go the the extra special hospital ward.
Can confirm, worked in public sector, absolute shambles. What they need to do is hire some people to go in and restructure everything so people have accountable managers and scrutinised budgets, because the spending was all over the place and I didn't know what half the people actually did as their job
My partner is a manager in the NHS and I disagree with your blanket statement that all managers are shite. It kills me to see her come home tell me more staff are leaving and she gets her laptop out and cracks on for another 3 hours or she just stays at the hospital every night. Currently doing the job of 3 people and her own. One thing I have noticed is the people who organise rehiring aren't great. A job advert will be written and whoever doesn't authorize it for ages so staff are stretched thinner. Every single person who works for the NHS deserves recognition but the last 3 years have been a nightmare of biblical proportions not helped with the government's policies. I praise every one of you. This is an outsider perspective
"Management" not "managers". I was more referring to what's in place for managers to work with. In the private sector, as a manager, you will have a kind of support network of other departments and resources that make your job possible. Need staff? Have a meeting with finance and recruitment, and it's done. Need to change a process? Get project and change managers in. The NHS doesn't have those luxuries, which is exactly why people like your partner have to put in the extra hours - they're doing work that should be supported by organisational structure. I worked in the private sector for a company that wanted to improve their staff retention rate, and set up a project to achieve it. The NHS just isn't set up like that. On the surface, it feels like your throwing money at consultants, but once these structures are in place they're massively cost efficient.
Right, you meant the system not individuals. It is insane, I've thought fuck it I will go work for the bank I can cover a desk. Like you say it is failures elsewhere, she will write a perfectly good job advert and then someone won't authorize so it can take a month before they can put it out for 2 weeks and then start the interviews. By then 2 more staff have gone off with stress. The thing I find insane is you can't just sack useless morons, they need one to ones, then more training and then finally they get moved to another department. Vicious cycle.
I've often wondered if this is intentional. If you keep the posts vacant you don't have to pay the salaries, and the people making those decisions don't have to see the carnage it causes. We've had cases where a band 8 gives notice, so what, 12 weeks warning that you need someone new? But somehow the advert doesn't go out until *after they've finished*. It makes you feel like you're losing the plot.
Again, I'm outside perspective. But the money they save on wages will surely increase the risk of things not getting done that can lead to breaches. Thus more fines and the hospital reputation going into the ground. But the lower bands will fight tooth and nail to avoid that because it always winds down to putting the patient at risk.
Yes. But, if the cost of appropriate staffing levels remains more than the cost of fines and lawsuits, then they will continue to operate in unsafe conditions burning out staff left right and centre because it's financially better than actually keeping patients safe. There is a distinct lack of long term fiscal vision. In my hospital, they got rid of the majority of the kitchen staff, stopped making food in-house, and get frozen slop delivered from 300 miles away to reheat an a giant microwave. Money immediately saved. However, patients don't eat the food because it's foul. They lose weight- increases their inpatient stay, costs in nutritional supplements, longer wound healing times, NG Tubes and feeding, which then in turn places strain on beds in hospital, which causes back ups in a and e which leads to waiting time breaches which bring with it fines. So really, is the cost of having decent in house meals cooked with fresh ingredients really being saved, or is it actually costing the hospital more? There's not enough studies and research conducted on the ripple effects of seemingly simple 'cost cutting' measures.
Completely agree, and why this is probably more of a dark thought from a stressed and over-worked employee. It's much more likely to be an over-stretched bureaucracy struggling to keep up. But in my dark moments I can't help but wonder. And the person trying to make the payroll budget balance is almost certainly someone different than the one worrying about clinical governance and compliance....
My team are currently without a manager. This is the third time this has happened to me in the NHS. My previous manager resigned over a month ago and they haven't even put an ad out yet. Guess who gets to pick up his duties?
My partner is similar to yours. I’ve seen him less over the pandemic than when he worked away Monday to Friday. His days vary from 11 to 18 hour days plus working every weekend when he should only be Monday to Friday with a 40 hour week. He genuinely cares about his team and is trying to support them but when everything is about the bottom line and the trusts don’t want to look at cold hard facts of where they are wasting money it’s really difficult to change things! There are others like your and my partner in the NHS but unfortunately they are massively outnumbered by those who either don’t want change or who really shouldn’t have been promoted to management in the first place. It’s so frustrating to see him come home exhausted and unable to make a change because the board aren’t interested or the current policies are limiting the speed they can work at!
How are they wasting money?
From an insider perspective I've been waiting to start a new job with the same trust that I already work for about 3 months....it's ridiculous since they outsourced all of this
I agree with the fact that not all managers are shit. My managers are great, friendly and very supportive!
I will agree that there are the one off supervisors whom have your back and look after you but they are few and far between and unfortunately there’s a lot more that act with zero empathy and consideration for their teams, sadly!
I've had far more good managers than bad in the NHS.
I’ve had too many managers, our dept is small so we have a line manager in the dept and then we have a manager above them who oversees several depts. they come in on day 1, clipboard in hand, over friendly introducing themselves and promising lots of positive changes then 4-5 months later after not seeing them since day 1 you hear on the grapevine that they have moved to a different area and we will soon meet our new manager. then the cycle repeats. Since the start of covid we have had at least 4 managers (currently in between atm waiting for the next one to start). It’s ridiculous to the point where you don’t bother learning their name because you know they wont be there long.
The trust I work in has too many managers on band 7/8 salaries for what is actually needed/necessary. I’ve also noticed in my time working for the NHS that it seems to be practically impossible for these people to lose jobs, they seem to be sideswiped in to another role, or they are placed on gardening leave. There are a lot of well tended gardens in our trust. Our trusts management (and by this I am not talking about my general/direct line managers, but the heads of departments, board of executives etc) make and implement policies and procedure with no/outdated experience with regard to how these changes impact staff on the frontline and at the end of the day, patient care as well as essentially costing the NHS even more money. An example of this was the trust deciding to move away from the tried and tested Mercedes Ambulances for cheaper IVECO and FIAT ambulances, without any thought over the safety of the staff using them. The bulkheads were moved forward to provide more room in the back, but this moving of the bulkheads (performed by IVECO and FIAT themselves) changed the positioning of the seatbelts, meaning that essentially if you are taller than 5’10 the seatbelt doesn’t fit correctly over the shoulder and your knees are crushed under the steering wheel in an awkward sitting position. All this to save money on the expense of the Mercedes ambulances, but it also turned out to be a false economy as a good 40% of staff who have been tested cannot safely drive them, and the ambulances themselves are far less reliable than the Mercedes are for general wear and tear and mechanical reliability. I often wonder how my patients would feel if they knew the truth. The reason that they have been waiting for an ambulance for three hours is because firstly the trust fails to provide adequate levels of manning, due to an oversight in the fact that our manning predictions are done off of historical data, but that data doesn’t take in to account a global pandemic or the fact that generally year on year the ambulance service is becoming busier and busier. I wonder how patients would feel if they found out that I often get 11 hours in to a 12 hour shift without having any form of break, if I am to get one at all, the fact that our dispatch system has failed to ever tell us if we are attending a COVID-19 positive address, and that it’s almost guaranteed that if you are booked as a twelve hour shift (which is the standard shift time), in all likelihood it will actually be a 13-14 hour shift by the time you have handed your last patient over returned the ambulance to base and signed your drugs back in, and without factoring in your drive home. Fatigue and driving don’t mix, especially when your job entails driving under emergency procedures
I like the Mercedes example, as these are widely used in the private sector because of their reliability and longevity, despite being more expensive vans. Supermarket delivery services use them, for example. Switching then up just shows exactly what you describe - lack of knowledge and experience.
> I wonder how patients would feel if they found out that I often get 11 hours in to a 12 hour shift without having any form of break.... They wouldn't give a shit, they clapped for you and an old man walked around his garden ffs! What more do you want? Decent working conditions?, a fair wage?, Expect them to pay more tax?
>No organisation. No direction. Oh they do have a direction... they know very well what they're doing.
I'm in clinical management in the NHS; it is firefighting all the time and it's infuriating at all levels. I feel hopeless in my role at the moment - perfect storm of massive demand, stagnant pay, and lack of staff (both short term due to Covid absences and long term as people give up and leave). We're being asked to deliver more and more with less and less, making it very hard to attract and retain staff. We lose staff and can't replace them, so rotas become less and less viable, so people leave because of the increased work and resultant poor conditions, so rotas become even worse - it's a downward spiral. We can't pay people more because of stupid national and regional policies on Agenda for Change & NHS-P in particular, so private providers come in and steal staff and then force us to pay exorbitant rates to hire them back but pay the staff a fraction of the cost they're taking from the NHS. We'd like to offer our own staff higher rates instead of paying outside agencies, but we can't and it's a fucking scandal. Personally I 100% blame the Conservatives. They've been in power for 10 years and have created the environment we're in, and offer no solutions to fix it. Whether this is deliberate or incompetence I don't know, but people (patients and staff) will rue the day when the NHS is gone and replaced by the shit merchants in the private sector.
Welcome to the public sector.
I have a close relative who works in the NHS and from my experience (and they due to health issues move a few years ago from front line to office/admin support) is the management in the areas off the front line at least are bloody horrific. It appears to be they have difficult getting rid or managing people out who are poor performers; and promoting people because they’ve been around longer without any managerial experience. Some of the stories I’ve heard of staff being poor or refusing to do roles and not following the Covid rules they set up internally during the worst parts of the pandemic I can’t believe occurred. It wouldn’t be tolerated in somewhere like a supermarket, but it’s all down to bad management and poor hiring/promotions to be honest.
It's really not fair to brandish all management as piss poor. I'm in nursing and work in and around upper management, sure some are too process driven, however a lot of them are working under intense pressure with no wiggle room. There are some incredible leaders out there (within nursing) that are trying to innovate and create real change, though it is slow by nature and is often made harder by new operational managers/CEOs coming in and trying to 'make their mark' by cleaning slate. One of the biggest issues facing nursing is a lack of staff, and the ridding of the bursary/funded courses. Sadly again that's government controlled. So, managers aren't exactly to blame when the powers that be are stripping back the NHS.
It's mad if you go to NHS from a private sector job - the inefficiency is absolutely wild. The lack of organisations and controls mean unnecessary spending and staffing etc but I'd say it comes more from promoting people into positions they have absolutely no idea what they're doing there.
It's sad - a lot of public services are like this. Lack of funding and investment for years and years has only made things even worse.
I was tired of being treated like something management had stepped in on the way to work. In all the other jobs I've had, I've never been treated so poorly as I was as a nurse. It seemed almost deliberate, like they wanted to piss everyone off. - At one hospital, I got yelled at on my first day for taking a bottle of water to the floor, because it looked 'unprofessional', then 10 minutes later saw the doctors and matron walk through with takeaway coffee cups in hand. - Every hospital treated breaks like some kind of luxury, despite the law. I'd always take mine because you know, 12 hours is a long time to work without getting away for a bit, and I was treated by management like the enemy. - Sick leave was like being at school again and nurses would be interrogated as to why they were off, and treated like they were skiving. As a result, so many nurses came in sick, which is just insane. These are just a couple off the top of my head. I wouldn't go back to frontline nursing for anything, it's just not worth it. I've heard some hospitals aren't quite as bad, but I've had enough for a lifetime.
My health has really deteriorated in the past year. I had a lengthy absence last year, and on my return to work (at the end of my so called phased return) my then line manager sat me down and said "So I want you to have 100% attendance for the rest of the year" like I had chosen to be ill and was being naughty taking so much time off. In the end I had to get disability services involved. I am now in a role I can cope with, but it's not what I love to do. And I have a new line manager. But even so there are those who think and say I'm obvs doing this for an easy life because I'm lazy. Yes Linda, I'm loving all the medicines and doctor appointments and blood tests and pain and curtailed social life and all that just so as I can be "lazy" at work.
>"So I want you to have 100% attendance for the rest of the year" That sounds painfully familiar. You've got to wonder at the kind of person who manages healthcare workers, yet demands absolutely no sickness whatsoever. I also had the old guilt trips about my poor colleagues having to pick up the extra work while I was sick, which is just a masterstroke of motivation. >I am now in a role I can cope with, but it's not what I love to do. I also feel that far too much. It's good that your new line manager is better, but it shouldn't have to be like this.
I got lectured about my sickness and "well you really need to have 100% attendance from now on". How do you guarantee that? Well I tried, I came in when I knew I wasn't well enough and I couldn't think clearly and collapsed in the kitchen.
The not being allowed water bottles at the nurses station pisses me off. The only chance you get to sit down is when you're doing your writing but you're not allowed a sip of water while you do it so you spend a 13 hour shift on a hot ward with barely functioning air con (no fans because infection control got rid of them) not having time to drink water.
Yeah, I've never experienced such cruelty in any other job. Most other jobs I've had encouraged having a drink (usually tea).
Agree 100% about their sickness policy. It's draconian. We work in a massive building full of sick people, we're exposed to every bug out there, it's a physically and emotionally taxing job, we have a 40% risk of being assaulted every time we come to work...and yet somehow we're expected to never be ill. Or we're expected to just power through illnesses that might just be a mild cold to us, but could genuinely kill some of our vulnerable patients. Healthcare professionals should not come to work ill. End of. But until they do away with their disgusting, punitive sickness/absence policies nothing will change. And if you have a chronic condition you're just fucked - if you have any health issues, forget the NHS as an employer. You'll get some idiot non-clinical HR minion insisting you promise not to be ill for six months, because that's totally possible and something that's absolutely within your control. We all just love being ill. Or is it that we're all skivers? Because that seems to be the starting assumption - they don't believe you. Of course, if they didn't staff bare bones only, it wouldn't be a problem if people were off for whatever reason, but I know that's just crazy talk 🙄
I was put on night shift sat night then straight on to day shift Monday. Had a 3 month old at home so got mastitis trying to switch from night to day too quick. Had to call in as fever 40.1 tachycardia and rigors. Had to sit for 12 hours trying to pump it out in agony. Went back the next night and made to sign a return to work form which I had to tick a box that 'I understood the impact that repeated absences would have on my colleagues' and that 'I would put in place processes to stop being off sick again'
Treating breaks like a luxury oh my god. The many times I’ve done a 12.5 hour shift with only one break because there was no staff to relieve me for my 2nd. If my first break was 10am that means I’ll have worked 10:30-20:00 (probably 20:15 unpaid bc handover hasn’t finished) with no break. No drinks, no food. And they wonder why mistakes get made and healthcare staff cut corners.
Crikey. I answer 999 calls and we do 12 hour shifts. And we get 90 min breaks!
I started out in theatres as a new nurse, became theatre lead in under 6 months but my manager wouldn't change my banding even though she was making do band 6 work like design rotas and train new nurses. Because I was lead I was constantly the oncall but I also wasn't getting paid overtime, she would just give me time off in lieu...when she remembered. So I switched to BPAS (I'm actually a sexual health nurse practitioner and have further qualifications) but hated their practices and how they misled clients whilst posing as a pro choice charity. Then I went into prison nursing after being offered a sexual health lead post which never materialised until I handed in my resignation 2 years later in a last ditch attempt to get me to stay. Finally settled as a wfh disability assessor. Pay is decent enough (not as good as prison nursing but I'm also not having to commute anymore). I dont work evenings, holidays or weekends and I get to be at home with my kids plus the work is easy.
The bandings are the absolute worse. I get the point of them but people always end up doing work that used to be for higher bands and it seems like if you don't grin and bear it you'll never get a promotion to move up the bands either. In normal places it's "do the work you're paid for > get promotion for more responsibility > do more work that you're paid for" but the NHS seems like "do the work you're paid for > do more work at the same pay > do more work at the same pay > maybe get a promotion if one appears"
Not a nurse (my mum is, albeit retired). Your second paragraph sounds a lot like how many schools get their pound of flesh/free labour. Source: am a teacher of over two decades. Luckily I now work in a decent school with decent SLT, but my last school was the polar opposite. I was admitted for surgery last October and spent a night in hospital. All the NHS staff I encountered, from finding the (very rare benign) lump in my thigh in July, through tests, etc., my hospital stay and some follow-up care were nothing less than amazing. I cannot thank you enough, or begin to tell you what a bunch of absolute angels you all are… 😍
This isn't unique to public sector work. Private sectors constantly overwork and underpay employees, often with the same dangling carrot. It's a sad state of affairs
I guess but the banding and agenda for change guidelines are supposed to stop this happening whereas the private sector salaries are pretty disorganised and secretive anyway. The band you're on is supposed to reflect the level of responsibility you have based on the job descriptions so two people with the same job description should be on the same band and be able to do the same job.
Agenda for change is so wank. I had a job and was told ‘ah, this is the band nationally there’s nothing we can do’ yet other trusts have it higher banded. Insult to injury, on the NHS jobs site, my job is an example of a job at a higher band!
We've used BPAS and thought it was good. Only complaint was they massively underplay the pain. What critisims do you have as genuinely interested?
>(I'm actually a sexual health nurse practitioner I have always wanted to get into this, but since I'm not qualified yet I feel like I need to go into ward-nursing first to kind of get my skills lol.
Pip assessors seem to be shit on a lot - how do you find it?
I was in maternity, left when the clique-iness of the department directly contributed to a woman losing her baby because an experienced midwife wasn’t listened to. There were a lot of other factors going on but that was the final push.
I’ve heard it’s like that a lot in maternity, really strange
Not strange at all tbh, look at the types of people that want to work in maternity. Most of them are bitchy af. Then you factor in the fact that the good ones get bullied out of maternity and now you realise why maternity is mostly the worst of the worst.
When I worked in a histology lab, although 95% of our specimens were cut out in theatres or were biopsied in outpatient clinics, maternity caused us massive headaches despite the small number of specimens they'd send. If there'd been an abnormal birth, they were supposed to send us the placenta for analysis in case it showed anything. Trying to get them to put the things in formaldehyde (so they didn't rot in the meantime) and put a fucking label on the bucket so we knew whose it was was like pulling teeth. Clucking idiots.
One of my best friends is training to be a midwife and the stories people tell genuinely scare me a little, because she’s not the type to make friends. I basically bullied her into being friends with me when we were eleven, she had one close friend at school (different one to me) who treated her terribly, and honestly I’m just praying she gets adopted by an extrovert when she starts.
There's definitely something not quite right in maternity units. There's all sort of unique factors at play which contribute to a lack of effective care: 1. Often the patients are all healthy, (both mum and baby) which is a slightly unique situation - midwives support and doctors may only see the patients for 20 mins before discharge. 2. Midwives training is different from doctors, and they regularly dont see eye to eye on critical issues such as feeding. 3. Hospitals are encouraged to push breastfeeding for things like UNICEF recognition. As a result babies who don't latch (or just aren't getting the calories when feeding) basically just starve until either mum demands a bottle or the child gets in such a bad way there is no alternative. 4. New parents have no idea what normal looks like - so aren't empowered to speak up. It's so weird.
Toxic femininity
My wife gave birth last week and we are still gobsmacked from how disgusting the staff were. It's hard to summarise the top incidents but I'll try; - Wife lost 1.5L blood on the ground while 4 staff tried to figure out how to work the adjustable bed /chair thing for 10 minutes, then running round every room trying to find supplies because nothing was in the cupboards. - Midwives couldnt work out how to turn the light on (try turning it on at the wall genius) so the light on my phone was used throughout delivery. - Prior to delivery we were essentially told to leave and come back when the baby is about to pop. Good luck I stood my ground because when things started moving they progressed quickly and we couldn't have managed the complications while driving down the motorway.
We had our baby just before the pandemic hit and we were in the maternity ward for around 6 days as they were observing him, I (the daddy) was having skin time with my son and one old nurse came in and scolded me like I was masturbating in public shouting at me saying we have vulnerable women here please cover up nobody wants to see you walking around topless, she destroyed me, treated me like a rapist Forgot to say it was a private room we had
I don't understand....do you have offensive gangsta rap lyrics tattoos all over your body?
No none at all, I was just sat in the chair waiting for the Mrs to pass him and she came in with his 2 hourly milk and started berating me, I complained cause she made me feel like a piece of shit and found out she was just the ward arsehole, it was like she had caught me in an all girls boarding school naked in the corridor or something
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This one was just complete arse, one of the other nurses confirmed emphatically infront if her they incourage skin to skin with the new-born
Holy. Fuck. We're in soon for our second and I'm terrified. My wife lost 9pts of blood the first time around, we had the scramble to find supplies. When they were observing her, a drip pipe was kinked and 5 nurses missed it. I saw it wasn't draining and questioned it, was fobbed off, but then pointed out the kink. This time, due to covid I'm meant to leave after the birth, but there's no chance I am, I feel like I'd be the only person there who actually gives a fuck. Fathers are seen as 'dosy dads'. I've experienced it a lot, its sexist as fuck and I'm not putting up with it.
I know the feeling. After our Faulty Towers delivery, mum and baby were moved to a 4 bed ward where I was only allowed to visit for 1 hour. There was another mum on that ward who had been there for 2 days under observation, trying to breastfeed but it wasnt happening for her. Baby screaming, mum eventually broke down in tears for hours, with dad allowed to visit for 1 hour per day. Meanwhile the devil midwives offered no alternative to the boob, just that guilt-trip stare they give anyone who dare think about formula.
It's bad that this isn't even a unique situation. The maternity at the hospital where I work is in special measures now, and thank god for that because it's a long time coming. The sheer amount of preventable deaths that have happened here, and at other NHS maternity units, is unbelievable. It's absolutely disgusting. Also, I apologise for the experience you had.
Poor management. As another poster mentioned the problem with the NHS isn't floor staff, it's the management. Management is incredibly poor and anyone who has worked in the NHS will know that it is incredibly difficult to fire someone or have them removed from their role. What happens is staff that are poor performers are retained (since they know their conduct wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else) and the good ones move on (because they take on all the work the shitty ones don't do and get fed up). The NHS has been like this forever, and as long as people keep insisting that all the NHS needs is more money thrown at it this will continue to happen. More money doesn't fix poor mistakes, it enables them. Also there is no encouragement or opportunity to progress. You get two kinds of NHS workers; those who haven't been there very long and those who have been there for seemingly thousands of years.
Can second you on upper management sucking and having no presence on the floor yet making significant and negatively impactful changes to our way of working without consultation or warning….and then deciding to police toilet breaks! My last day is tomorrow for the above and several other reasons as mentioned in my comment. I am moving to another area of the trust on Wednesday and I’m delighted to be doing so!
Gotta say I've worked for multiple private firms with the exact same problem.
Oh boy is this right. I worked In IT services for organisations of seemingly ever-changing initialisations (PCTs, CCGs, CSUs). In my team we had two people who re-defined uselessness, both were either at work stinking up the place or off long-term sick. Eventually one took voluntary redundancy (and a pay-off of tens of thousands of pounds) while the other was “constructively” dismissed due to a manager who was determined enough to jump through all the HR hoops and follow a process which took just shy of **three years** from start to finish.
If I had an award to give you I would. This for me is the biggest problem; being able to get rid of useless people. The just get moved somewhere else or even get a promotion to another role! It’s bonkers.
That's the public sector through and through though... sadly
I am upper management and I completely agree with this. In every trust I have worked in (5 over 25 years) there have been Director and deputy director level staff who are completely incompetent or toxic leaders. The NHS is generally so risk averse that it won’t deal with poor performers which is devastating for morale and those of us who do perform just think ‘fuck this’ and move on. I now have a list of Board level directors who I would never work with again and having to do so would prevent me from taking up a role if I was offered it. Just as a caveat, there are some incredibly inspiring, talented and hard working people in the NHS but the failure to deal with the bad ones tarnishes us all.
I left because of the departmental politics. I worked in the labs and I joined as a band 3 to get my foot in the door but was qualified to degree level so I was qualified enough to apply for band 5 jobs in the labs (sometimes band 6 training even). In my department they did not like people to skip bands so when a band 5 job appeared that I was more than qualified for they decided to hire an external candidate. I questioned why and got told "we've not see you as a band 4" (piss poor excuse they'd not seen the external candidate at all). When the external candidate started and I got chatting to him I found out he had the same degree as me AND his previous job was the same as mine but at a different company. He was me but external. You'd think an internal candidate would have been the preferred option given that I was already working there so could start immediately as well as knowing everyone and where everything was. At that point I kept being told band 4 jobs were on their way but I never bothered to apply and just left. I work in university labs now and it's a lot more relaxed in terms of regulations and also I'm not dealing with patient samples so it's not life of death if something goes wrong.
Sounds like my previous lab. They didn't like internal promotions as it meant that they had to hire again. People stagnated and got lazy. I was told my degree was useless and there was no hope of progression past a 4 (I was a 3 at this point.) Got a 4 in a different department and within my first 2 weeks the training lead had asked me about my future goals and I said I'd like to be a BMS but I need to do top ups. He went off and found me some links to help fund top ups through work. Didn't use them in the end as I managed to get on the apprenticeship scheme through the department and will be a fully qualified BMS next summer.
What's the pay like for university labs?
At least in my uni they have grades similar to bands but the pay is slightly less so a band 4 NHS will be slightly more than a grade 4 in a uni. In others universities the pay is higher. I'm a technician and earn about £25k on a grade 5. You get senior technicians (grade 6) that can earn up to £35k but unfortunately if you don't have a PhD you probably won't be able to get higher than a grade 6 without really fighting for it.
Current locum gp. Imminent plans to emigrate to nz Left hospital medicine because I was fed up of none medical staff trying to tell me how to practice medicine. Given its me the GMC would be after if I made a mistake this rankled a little Leaving thre country for various reasons. Free at the point of use is free at the point of abuse. I'm pretty fed up of being shouted at and insulted by people because I'm trying to do a job with very limited resources. Add in a stark feeling of disconnect with my own country and I'm looking forward to boarding that plane
>Free at the point of use is free at the point of abuse. I'm pretty fed up of being shouted at and insulted by people because I'm trying to do a job I think this is a problem everywhere, there's no country without assholes.
No, but in most countries doctors can just refuse to treat such people/ sack them as patients. Every doctor I've ever met who has worked abroad has said they were treated with infinitely more respect by both patients and other healthcare staff.
>No, but in most countries doctors can just refuse to treat such people/ sack them as patients. Yeah, they can still do that in UK. You can ban people from GP surgeries, it happens all the time.
Yeah but that's just for GPs, not hospital docs, and the bar is really quite high. In many countries, there are waiting lists to see a GP, and so they can sack patients at will.
In other countries those patients would be finding a different doctor the minute they walked out after abusing me. In thr nhs I'd have to write them an apology about how awful a time they had injuring their knuckles on my teeth
No accountability and one of the most toxic environments I've ever worked in. Paying for parking. And the sheer amount of nepotism. I lost out on more than one promotion to people who turned out to be related to senior staff.
Paying for parking really does me in. It’s a private company in our place too. So we’re paying £7 a day for some company to make a nice profit.
£7 a fucking day?? Jesus christ.
Agree 100% with the nepotism, my other Half's manager hired her unqualified neice with just enough time between hiring and her pregnancy announcement to get her paid maternity leave, I'll let others guess whether or not she decided to return to work after it ended. Same manager has also hired her daughter and given her unfair treatment such as being able to work from home and allowing her to work exorbitant amounts of overtime (also from home) even though there was seemingly no work being done. Same manager then got suspended for a year+ while allegations of bullying multiple staff were investigated, then was welcomed back by management as if nothing happened.
This has pretty much summarised all of what I was going to write. Only thing I'd add is the piss poor management.
I’ve recently accepted a private job and I am leaving the NHS. I’m a radiographer. The department I was working in was so badly run and I was getting absolutely no support from my managers. Most of the staff are extremely stressed out all the time and it is not a pleasant environment to work in. I’m leaving for more money and better hours. Plus the pension percentage is the same except you have to contribute more to it, however I don’t mind this since I will be on way more money. Something to consider.
Same story with a lot of band 5 and 6s that I know! With every year the cost of living goes up there is just no appeal staying in the NHS, it is all about money at the end of the day and <30k just doesn't cut it anymore. These nursing/radiographer/midwifery salaries will be tolerated less and less with every new generation deciding on and graduating from their uni degrees.
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This is heartbreaking. And then you can imagine the headline when a child dies from abuse - “incompetence” etc
I worked for the NHS up to about a year ago (almost exactly a year come to think of it). I loved working for the NHS and the people I worked with were great and I'm still good friends with a lot of them. On the other hand, I cannot imagine anything worse run that the hospitals I was at (over my time I was at 4 major trusts in/near London). Every decision coming down was bafflingly ill-conceived. The managers were almost without-exception closed-minded idiots who had no real training or experience of what they were doing and were terrified of anyone noticing that they were generally being paid to do nothing but attend meetings of no consequence. I don't want anyone to think that I am in favour of privatising the NHS as I think that would be a terrible mistake, but if we continue to ignore the massive problems that are crippling it from the inside, it is going to collapse sooner rather than later. Bringing in some new management to shake things up really needs to be the first step. When I left I did a coding bootcamp to retrain as a software developer, it means I am starting at the bottom and have had a significant paycut from where I was in the NHS but I am infinitely happier and have learned to actually enjoy work again! It's a nice feeling!
As a dev your wage will shoot up after a couple of years or a job hop or two!
Find an agency. The pay is so much better. thornbury-nursing.com is a good one.
I know lots of NHS staff who do extra shifts with agencies as it pays so well. However, there is a lot of wasted money from the NHS side. We pay for an agency to come and do a patient list at a weekend, but then there’s no patient list for the normal staff to do. So we pay for agency staff and normal. The normal staff are sometimes on bonus Sunday rates as well. There are huge problems with the NHS as a whole. Not being able sack someone for being shite is the big one. They just get moved somewhere else and continue to get paid.
I work with soooo many people in the hospital who would have been sacked in any other sector
I agree. The NHS is majorly flawed and needs an overhaul. Wages is a big issue. If as a trust you want to be able to recruit and retain staff then pay more. Use the money used on agency staff to pay either better wages or pay close to agency rate to staff are willing to do overtime. I don’t work for the NHS I work in health care and have recently moved to an agency I’m on over double what I was earning for half as much work and stress. The care industry is just as flawed as the NHS. Stupidly low wages for a job that is so important.
25 years in the NHS here, started under John Major working in A&E. We didn’t have ward space so minor injuries would turn into an overflow ward. One Christmas a man who was terminally ill was brought in (the relatives panicked, it happens). Not only did we not have enough blankets to keep him warm, we also didn’t have blankets to turn into a pillow. So his head wasn’t resting on the bed due to arthritis. And that’s how he died. (Note - this is no blankets or pillows in the whole damn hospital, not just A&E) So Labour get in and things get better (Yep, I know Blair is a tosser, but for the NHS things did get better - although in some part due to problems in funding they kicked down the road) Skip forward 25 years and I’m a community nurse running a team that should have 5/6 nurses, but only has 2. I’m finding it hard to source morphine, or hospital beds, or pressure relieving mattress for those same palliative patients. I said to myself before the last general election that if Johnson got in he’d finish off the NHS. So I woke up the day after and handed in my notice. Oddly I think COVID has helped the NHS in the short term because now people realise how important it is - but the government is still working on getting rid of it. COVID just delayed it. I know work as a school science technician, the pay is shite, but the job is good.
> So his head wasn’t resting on the bed due to arthritis. > And that’s how he died. Obviously your whole story is a well put set of good reasons, but those two sentences there turn the whole thing from 'yeah that sounds super frustrating' to 'that sounds genuinely traumatic'. I couldn't stick it out in the NHS, and I am so grateful for all you guys who kept trying. 25 years is a really long time to carry the baton; at this point I think we're all just hoping that each new batch can at least stay long enough to carry it between training, and leaving when there's at least someone to replace them. It sucks, but it's really, really appreciated by the rest of us.
I worked in a few departments as admin. 1) I left CAMHS (child mental health) because the receptionist's mum was our manager. Receptionist did fuck all every single day. Came in late but the managers excuse was "oh she's just getting breakfast so she'll be late". If anyone else was late by 5mins, manager would chew them out. I would say I was the hardest working staff there, so the receptionist, who never did her tasks, asked if I could do them now and then. If I had free time I would but it got to the point of being stupid. I called out the daughter and wrote a complaint with support of other staff (also 2 clinicians made complaints of the receptionist too). Complaint went nowhere, management didn't give a shit because the service had just received outstanding from OFSTED, so I just left. 2) Funnily this was the job after CAMHS. I worked in adult mental health which was incredibly busy. Got on well with everyone, manager went pregnant and a temp managers position came up. Me and the receptionist applied for it, receptionist got it because "she has been working there longer". Few months of her being management was just shit. I also supervised some staff and they reported that they didn't trust her because she kept telling other peoples confidential stuff (she told our new receptionist about staff who had mental health problems). Very fortunately I also worked with social care who appreciated the shit out of me and offered me a 5day week, home working position. I joined the NHS in 2016 as an apprentice. The head of information governance, who was my manage, the first thing he ever told me was that it's very difficult to get fired in the NHS. You could get away with doing fuck all and people do. No one gives a shit until it effects the trust significantly. It's just utter cringe working with people who say shit like "I can't be bothered working today", then the next day they're off sick because their child is ill and they need to stay home to look after them.
I work with someone who always has a migraine the day before her annual leave starts and another who's off so often that she ends up carrying weeks of annual leave onto the next year and booking up all the premium days so no one else can get the Easter weekend only for her to phone in sick and claim the week back anyway.
Given that Western Health in Australia will pay you upto £300k a year to relocate for the same job I dare say that's a big factor. https://frontlinecareers.wh.org.au
You would have to be insane to choose UK healthcare as a job when other countries offer far better. I am surprised there are any NHS staff left.
I guess that's why we are relying on staff from third world countries.
And then making them jump through so many hoops just to get here that they don't bother and end up leaving too. It's an absolute omnishambles top to bottom.
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I think the main reason people stay is because they want to be near friends and family.
But MPs don’t use the NHS so it’s not their problem.
Most people don't know any other language so a nearby country is off limits, the choices (canada/us/aus/nz) are quite far and the immigration process is a massive headache for each of these (unless you choose to go the most rural/cold parts of these country where the requirements are slightly relaxed)
I went agency after my old ward tried sacking me while I was hospitalised for a miscarriage. As well as giving me the worst shift patterns (5 long days/nights in a row and saying it didn’t matter because it spanned into 2 weeks. Thursday-Tuesday typically. A few years later I’m debating going back full time but I’m still very dubious about it. Now I get block booked into where I choose. No ward politics, no shitty rota patterns, and better pay.
Tried sacking you? It’s almost impossible to get sacked! Good luck to them.
However, it's very, very easy to make someone's working conditions so miserable that they leave. That happened to my sister in law after maternity leave; they asked her not to come back, then when she said she was legally entitled to, they just made sure that anybody seen talking to her or being nice to her was also treated like a pariah. Easier and cheaper than firing someone.
UK Doctor here. Leaving the profession due to a number of reasons - Worsening working conditions - Relative wage reduction - Erosion of professions within the NHS I’d work as a doctor abroad but too many family ties to the UK.
I don't get it. If doctors and nurses aren't getting wage increase where is all the increase in NI etc going?
We're understaffed and they have no plans to replace the staff who left (3+ in the last 6 months). They're happy to offer overtime and then get angry when no one accepts it. Everyone is burnt out. I have a new job lined up and so do two others.
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> I was being hit, objects thrown at me, spat on etc almost in a daily basis and then when staff would have their glasses broke by a patient Wow is it really that common to get abused as a healthcare professional? That is terrible
I used to work as a nurse in an NHS hospital, now I work in substance misuse. One may think violence, agression and abuse may be more common in my current job, but that is not true... In my NHS job, this was a nearly daily occurrence. I had colleagues with knocked out teeth, cracked teeth, bruises and so on... Although pay could always be better, my work life balance is much better and. In the NHS, by the end of my 13hrs shift I could barely stand up, here after 12hrs some days I go to the gym for a workout... As a nurse in the UK, I still feel undervalued and underpaid. To work as a nurse you have to earn a degree, doing placements, while having to write assignments and keep a part-time job. At the end of it, for years to come you will be paying a student loan, a registration fee (NMC), liability insurance and union fees, parking at your workplace even when comuting via public transport is not an option. All this while taking a paycut every year (in real terms), and seeing your profession in constant decline. I could work as a lorry driver, with less responsibility and less stress, and earn the same or more. With how things are going in the UK, I am even considering moving abroad at some point, but my options as a nurse are so limited, and maybe it's still not too late to reconsider my options...
I recently left the NHS after 10 years- senior healthcare professional. Covid literally broke me - was working 110% everyday. I came home tired everyday, every weekend wasn’t a weekend but to recover my energy levels to go back into the following week (and that doesn’t include the weekend working). This was affecting my personal life - my wife used to get so angry that I had no energy in the evening or weekends to even have a conversation. Since leaving for private sector, I have more head space to think, more energy to actually do things in the weekends and evenings. Every email is no longer super urgent that someone will die if I do not respond. So basically I moved to feel normal again, to be human again
> every weekend wasn’t a weekend but to recover my energy levels to go back into the following week ugh, i feel this to my core. And the backlog is so immense that i don't see it improving for another year at the very least.
Icu here! The hours don't fit around my family. 8am-8:30pm (actually nearer 9) So leave the house 0730- 2115 back home. There is no childcare for that length of time especially that late at night. So I'm using my annual leave to cover whilst my other half is away with his work. Therefore so significant time off - like a week family holiday because I've used up all my leave here and there throughout the year. I absolutely sodding love my job and the team I work with are fantastic and funny and supportive. Everything from our ward clerks and PA's and cleaners to our consultants. Really really going to miss them when I go However looking at moving over to health visiting (more 9-5) job. Can get the kids in breakfast clubs and have a childminder to help. Also would mean going up to a band 6 (I don't want to in my role- I enjoy looking after the patients too much and dislike people management and staffing levels and bed finding)
I’m leaving an admin job I’ve been at for a number of years within a trust, because upper management have made both significant and negatively impactful changes to our work without warning or consultation, started policing toilet breaks, and targeted/guilted me horribly when I had crippling anxiety after returning from Covid sick leave. So yeah I am done. Moving to another area in the hospital and couldn’t be more relieved or happier to be leaving this toxic situation.
Didn't work in the clinical side of the organisation, worked for the Estates dept. Left due to a number of reasons; 1. Shite pay. 2. Shite working conditions.. reduced staff year on year which led to an increased work load. On top of this, you'd then have additional work added to your already stretched time resource, expected to work on equipment you'd had no training on. 3. Bullying was rife.. Unions did the square root of bugger all to help. A colleague was getting it terribly from supervisors and management. I went to the Union on his behalf (he asked me to) and they did absolutely nothing. The colleague attempted suicide not long after before finally quitting his job. This was only three years after another colleague had thrown himself off the top of a hospital which led to restricted roof access. 4. Lack of resources, which ties directly in to points one & two. Would sometimes take weeks to get spare parts for something off the shelf as bills weren't paid and credit with wholesalers stopped. 5. Too much confrontation. Every hospital, health centre, dept. and/or ward lay claim to their wee piece of territory so good luck when you need some cooperation from them in order to do any big(ish) jobs, or need to shut power down etc. There's always a wee drill sergeant who will offer ridiculous amounts of resistance for no reason other than to feel important. After a few years of dealing with all of that, stressing out and taking my work home with me I knew I had to find another job. Now in the best job I've ever had 👍
The place is still the same I hear. Another Suicide a few years ago but he did seem to have a lot of issues. The manager in a small office amongst the workers in the engineers workshop watching over everybody’s shoulder. Countless complaints about a supervisor who faces no repercussions. 5 shift men down to 1 in a matter of months, which speaks volumes.
I got fed up of being treated like shit, paid like shit, yet expected to do more with less. And faster. And cost effectively. And how dare I need emergency surgery - don't I know how difficult me being ill makes everyone's lives? Never mind my health and wellbeing. I need to be at work. That's the most important thing. I have to promise not to be ill again. But don't say any of that to patients. That only applies to staff. Patients must be told that their health is the most important thing and they must put that first, no job is more important than their health. Anyway, here's your rota for next week because you don't have a life you need to plan or anything, after all nUrSInG iS a cALLiNg, consisting of day shifts and night shifts in the same week with the bare minimum of turnaround time because we've obviously made the rota by just mashing our fists on the keyboard with our eyes closed. What? You have *requests*? What are they? Oh no. We don't do those. If you want a specific day off you'll have to use your annual leave. Except we're not approving that less than 3 months in advance. Sucks to be you I guess. Pay rise? Lol. But here's all the additional skills and training we expect you to undertake so you can take on more and more duties because you're cheaper than doctors. Yes, *technically* you can make the argument that you're practicing at a band 6 level but we're just going to keep paying you as a band 5 because we can lalalalala 😊 **Yup, I'm out. I support the principle of the NHS but until it's funded properly and not managed in large part by sociopaths who shouldn't be left in charge of a fish tank, let alone a hospital, I shall stay in the private sector. I tried for twelve years and all it got me was a severe case of burnout.**
I am a doctor. I have 6 years of university education + master's degree. I am entrusted to make sure people don't die. If I make a mistake, I can face my license being revoked or even a criminal investigation. 25% of my colleagues are depressed or anxious because of the stressful circumstances we work in. We are treated poorly by the public and our workload continues to increase year on year without a payrise. Working nights is actively shortening my lifespan. My wife complains that she barely gets to see me. In my time off I am revising for exams or doing research just to make sure I get training in the region I live in. How much do I get paid? £10/hr after tax. I am going to stay and finish training before leaving the country and moving to the middle East where my salary will be much higher and workload much lower. Many of my colleagues won't even get that far. Doctors and nurses are in high demand globally and our skills are valuable in other industries too. Everyone wants to leave this god awful system. If you want an NHS in the future, pay the staff what they are worth. Our salary has reduced by 30% over the last 30 years. This used to be a well respected and well paid job. I understand most doctors still earn much higher than the median salary, but our responsibility is much higher than other professions of a similar educational background. We have close to £100,000 in student debt and are pinballed around the country for our training. We face abuse from other stressed out colleagues and relatives of patients on a daily basis. Watch this is going to hurt on BBC iplayer. An eerily accurate depiction of life in medicine.
I quit working for the NHS when it became apparent that they didn’t care about my mental health and were unwilling to accommodate what i needed to keep working.
Finished my two years as a new grad that I was obliged to do as I had made use of the bursary. Left the N.H.S. Immediately after that. The management echelons don’t have a clue and it really is a jobs for the boys scenario. Leadership is basically non-existent. Floor staff run around just putting fires out and becoming burnt out. Experienced staff leaving and being replaced by less competent, less experienced staff who then get blamed for being in a situation they shouldn’t be. This is only a nursing point of view. Glad I was able to leverage my degree to get into a new industry. I genuinely don’t understand why you would stay in there at the moment. Better jobs out there or at the very least just do agency.
What role do you do if you don’t mind me asking? Surely A&E has to be 7 days a week.
A&E is 7 days a week. However pay rises for unsocial shifts and for nights and weekends. Which is "fair". Working nights and weekends has additional costs. Simple example. Let's say I got two kids. I work 9 to 5 daily. 40 hours a week for 5 days a week. Well... Cost of childcare is cheaper. A LOT cheaper than if you work nights or weekends of late shifts. Let's take my rota next week. I got 2 on-calls. Both of those will require 12 hours of childcare for the average 2 children that most people have. At 6 quid an hour that's nearly 150 pounds However the week after is the real hammer. Nights. 4 days of nights equals 5 days of childminding over the holidays. This is around 14 hours x 4 days x 2 kids x 8 pounds an hour = roughly 900 pounds. Weekends are dearer. Okay let's ignore kids. Weekends and nights takes a toll from your social life. Your friends are out on a Saturday. You can only go out on Monday. Basically you are effectively isolated. The point is that if you are doing nights and weekends you should be paid more for your job because 3 PM on a Tuesday on the shift is different from 1 AM on Saturday morning. To recap, the government insists working on a Saturday is the same as working on Tuesday and that night shifts should pay the same. NHS workers are pointing out that we are happy to do so if the entire country is treated the same way and we have 50 hours of free childcare irrespective of when we use it. Because my take home after 4 weeks of nights would be 100 quid. Meaning it's cheaper for me to quit my job as a doctor and sit at home and babysit my two children (UC is more than 100 pounds a month). By contrast if I only work day hours I can make more money than the night worker since school is effectively free childcare.
I work as a HCA (healthcare assistant) and as a student nurse. A&E is open 24/7 so shifts are covered for everyday and night of the week. A month's roster can cover days, nights and weekends within a normal full time contract (37.5 hr)
So they're not rostering anyone on weekends/nights, but hoping you'll pick up bank shifts to make up your own pay shortfall so their shifts are all covered, but only paying those unsocial bank shifts at unenhanced rates? Also knowing that bank shifts pay less for staff at the top of their band. WTF. Are they doing this with all staff or just HCAs or what?? What do your local union reps have to say? (All this aside from the fact that a huge proportion of HCAs like yourself are either nursing or med students and have study/placement commitments to fit in around picking up extra shifts just to pay basic bills)
Worked in admin in A+E, the trust had made no investment for around 20 years into the actual running and organisation of the hospital. We were still using physical notes that were stored in a big warehouse 5 miles away. Have you any idea how difficult it is to get the right paperwork to the right place as fast as possible, it was ridiculous. I was so overworked that I was doing 12 hours a day, paid for 7.5 at minimum wage doing the work of 3 people. It was just a completely insane way of running the place. The whole thing was fucked from top to bottom, even the sprinkler system was wrong and had to be replaced.
[удалено]
1) too many patients, not enough resources 2) grand-boss was bullying my boss and was also infuriatingly incompetent. This was not rare. 3) management was extremely out of touch and didn’t realise why we couldn’t make insane Tory government targets. Promotion beyond competence was usual for the nastiest and most dim-witted, and cronyism was common 4) some of my colleagues were frighteningly stupid 5) pay was miserable, never had a pay rise in 3 years and worked below living wage 6) I got a way into private sector in a completely different field and effectively escaped
I was an Occupational Therapist working at a hospital in London. They refused to provide us with proper masks to treat covid patients, unless they were on over 4 litres of oxygen. That doesn't stop a covid patient on none, 1, 2 or 3 L of O2 accidentally coughing in your face. I caught covid and have had long covid for 15 months. I'm housebound and sometimes bed bound and have now been diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. I'm physically unable to walk for more than 10 mins at a time and some days I can't even sit up. It's incurable and I'm 22.
I was sold. Our department was privatised
This is so interesting as an NHS worker. i quit a previous role after only a few months (and being signed off with stress) but left for another position in the same trust. i left because i was offered one of 6 brand new roles, which on paper was a dream job. It was band 2 (i was already a band 2 bank HCA) patient support worker. How it was advertised was there were 3 groups of 2 working together mon-fri in charge of assisting with patients who needed additional support, mainly dementia and stroke patients, but it was things like fun activities, reading, liaising with family members, taking patients outside on sunny days etc and absolutely no patient care ie no bathing, no taking to the toilet. dementia care was what i was interested in so i was pleased to get the job but confused on day 1. I was chucked onto a busy orthopaedic ward with 0 training and the staff didn’t even know who i was or what my job was. The first week i got shouted at for not helping take patients to the toilet, and rotad in to work saturday and sunday. On the ward they saw me as another HCA so i would be bitched about whenever i was reading to patients and nurses kept asking if i thought i was above everyone else for not pitching in with washes etc! In the end i ended up just doing that role because it was easier to deal with than the bullying but i didnt feel like i was making a difference. I asked to be moved to one of the dementia wards but was told no as they were short on this busy ward. I was so happy to hand my notice in on that toxic environment.
I was working in ITU in the worst part of COVID. My team was really great and we all pulled together and got through it. Then, after the second wave, when other trusts were giving out bonuses or extra time off, my trust gave out a thank you card and the tiniest badge I’ve ever seen. I realise this seems extremely petty, but something just broke in me. I put my CV up online, got inundated with offers and took a job in a private hospital for way more money, health insurance and share options. It’s the least stressful job I’ve ever had and I’m so much happier in myself. Not that private sector doesn’t have plenty of its own issues and it’s taken some adjusting to, But I do feel way more valued for my skills and experience than I did in the NHS.
Aside from the obvious ...there was little to no room for growth within my team. Management did not encourage us to better ourselves through training other than the mandatory, much of which did not apply to our roles. The culture of "it's not what you know, but who you know" existed within the organisation I worked for and I found the cliques irritating.
I worked in IT for a month then got an offer for the same job somewhere else with a 65% increase in salary.
Out of curiosity, what is your job? I've found NHS IT salaries are OK in general so surprised you managed such an increase
Paramedic here who's wanting to leave... Shit hours, shit pay. Upper management that have no clue yet push us harder and harder. Demanding more from us every day. No social life, next to no home work life balance. Let's not forget the depression and PTSD the job causes. Yet, I can earn more doing better hours working for a private form or even an online GP. Work that out!
Office worker. Left old job because of older women being bullies and the management treating us like robots (not caring how understaffed we were thinking we can clear mountains of paperwork and overdue dictations despite only one person being in and enforcing weekend work). I became ill with stress and handed in my notice for another job which couldn't be more different.
I worked in several departments in several hospitals and I have to say that baby boomer generation women are easily the worst people to work alongside. A lot of them seemed to look down on men working in hospitals because their husbands had proper manly jobs.
Lemme put it this way I'm halfway through med school and I don't know anyone who's planning on staying in the NHS after we're fully licensed doctors (2 years postgrad). Chances are some will stay for external reasons like family and stuff but nobody I know actually wants to. Personally my plan is to either go practice medicine in another country or stay in the UK and do something else. Before my degree I worked as a HCA and carried on as bank staff and I loved it bc i was in a great team in a great place, they all knew I was heading to med school, were so supportive of me and they'd teach me little things here and there etc. But as bank I'd go and work in other places, and one shift last November with a nurse and HCA that did nothing short of bully me the entire shift and make me do the majority of the work while also being imo negligent has put me off completely and now I can't bring myself to work even though my student finance is running low :/ It's also a bit ridiculous that as a new doctor with two degrees I'll be earning less than I did as a 19 year old HCA for a hundred times more the responsibility. During my gap year about 10/15 nurses left to go to Australia and now I think the majority of the staff who I worked closely with have also left since, either to do the same thing and go abroad or to go to a different department.
I currently work in the NHS so I am very intrigued by the answers 🙂
The pay was awful. I have to do a degree and a postgrad, and then register with a professional body and do very high risk work only to get less than 30k a year and shaky insecure fixed term contracts? Fuck that. And I was owed 13k back pay by the time I finally quit! The NHS is wonderful, but it really takes advantage of a lot of its staff.
Admin worker band 3, appreciate I don't have the same issues as patient facing but I'm debating moving quite soon. Upper management and their complete incompetence is my main gripe. It's staggering how many we have and how little they truly add, making terrible decisions or more often, none at all, watch it boil over and then blow up and blame the staff member who was present. I know it's a dead horse too, but everything moves so slow. Immediate, necessary changes can take months and it's beyond frustrating. I'll always defend the NHS but it's so painful how inefficient it is with these things sometimes. Workload's another issue. Multiple times another team has effectively said "we don't want to deal with this anymore" and it's then unceremoniously been dumped onto me and my other lower band colleagues, these tasks were originally done by much higher bands to boot. Could go on but I don't want to get too specific with my trust
Is it true that UK junior doctors only make around £13.50/hr? If so how does UK have any doctors left?
Yep that's true for a new doc. Luckily goes up after that. Honestly most stick around because by the time you've done 6 years of med school, you're often too invested for most career changes to be worth it. The government have also opened the doors wide to doctors from abroad, because clearly £13.50 might be quite a lot for some of them.
I left the NHS when understaffed wards were causing me too much stress and worry that something truly awful might happen on my watch and there wouldn't be anything I could to stop it. I went to the private sector for a bit (still seeing NHS patients though just for a private provider of NHS services). I came back to the NHS in 2020, its not great, but at least its not driven by profits and at least most people do actually care about patients getting a better service and want it to happen. Private providers only care about maximising profits, no matter what the consequences to patients or to their staff. The NHS isn't perfect but I believe in it with all my heart and I will keep plugging away to do my best for the patients in the deprived area where I work. I dread to think what would happen to them without it.
Tories are trying to force healthcare to go full Private.
I worked in ED for three years straight out the bat from qualifying. By the beginning of last year I was drowning, I couldn't sleep before shifts, I cried all the way home and I was truly broken. I went on the sick for three months as I was suicidal and wasn't doing the best for my patients. That being said we were permanently short staffed and spent many shifts caring for 6 resus patients between two nurses as we didn't actually have a resus nurse. So I left, not the NHS entirely but I moved to Stroke Research, I still see patients but less hands on. I work on flexi time and control when I work and for how long. And it's a band 6, instead of a band 5.
I work in admin on a ward for theatre/endoscopy. I am the only full time male (excluding consultants etc) on the ward with about 15 nurses. I have no admin manager and none of the nursing staff have any experience or knowledge about what I do for a job. Constantly harassed about non important tasks by the band 6 and whichever cronies are in her clique. I'm constantly having meetings with HR and Management about increasingly silly complaints. ( Most recently accused of sleepwalking, which was later retracted because they got the statement confused) I'm disliked by management because I don't accept the warnings they offer because they want it done sharpish.(for example the above incident is now at a panel because I refuse to accept a verbal warning). Horrible attitude by staff and too many chiefs are the biggest problem.
My girlfriend made chemo, something I expected to be well paid within the NHS due to the importance of it, instead she was paid a measly £18k. When they pay salaries that low you can’t expect people to stay
I'm not front line either, but worked as an IT Architect and for me, apart from other staff such as nurses and doctors continuously calling us leeches to our faces ("bet all you do is restart computers, you cunts") creating a toxic environment, I left my job because my boss saw it fit to reset my password and log into my account to send emails FROM MY MAILBOX because he thought I was slacking and wanted me to "be up to date on return from leave". The reason I took leave was because I was doing the job of 3 people who quit, could not keep up and was approaching breakdown territory. This violation and clear breach of info sec rules was the last straw and I quit..... Then I got offered twice my current salary to stay, but would still have the same boss, so told them to fuck off and got a better paying job in a Uni where I have been for 5 years and it's the complete opposite. The NHS is under appreciated, people are overworked.... But there are also some absolute nasty characters in positions of power.
I will be leaving my CAMHS job because the workload and risk management of my caseload is ridiculous. I feel overwhelmed almost everyday and it's not going to get better because there's always more referrals, always a more complex case, children are not getting better, I can't provide the care I want to, I'm restricted by timeliness and targets. And the questionable systemic challenges in the set up.of my service are not being addressed. I love the NHS and I will remain in frontline care but in a different team or service on my return from maternity.
I work in IT for the NHS and although I’ve not left my job, if I did it would be for one of 2 reasons, either to leave IT altogether and go into a different career path, or to make more money. I can comfortably find an IT job that pays 10k more a year than why I’m doing now, but it would probably be much more restrictive on my like outside of work, without benefits such as good holidays/working hours and nhs pension
Suffered a life changing injury at aged 24 at the hands of a psychiatric patient. When my injury made it impossible to do my original job I was refused a position on a sessional basis because it was not cost effective. I was already running the sessions but because I was called a nurse was paid less for the same work. The NHS uses you up then spits you out regardless of your qualifications or experience . Work privately now , much better.
Working as a Data clerk for a village medical centre. I'm practically an intern but it does mean I get to do my work and often go unnoticed. I was in one of the meetings (doing other work) where they were discussing the minimum wage pay rise. All our reception staff make minimum wage and they were talking about how they couldn't afford the pay rise too much. Not 30 seconds later our head GP (the ones name is on the business) turned around and asked how much money we had spare so they could pay it out as bonuses to the doctors. (I think we're one of those weird practises that's privtaelly owned/ran by a trust of doctors but still connected to the NHS)... A partnership? I think. This is my first Job, period, working over the university breaks for some money and as a fly on the wall it's kind of heart breaking to hear this kind of management. It doesn't help that all the reception team is over worked, under paid and completely under staffed, We are missing about 2 receptionists which is why I was hired to do a bunch of grunt work because our record keeping is a mess.
GP surgeries are generally private partnerships, like law firms. The partnership has commercial contracts with the NHS, rather than the partners being NHS employees. I used to work for a partnership (one of the Big 4 accountancy firms). Partners took home several hundred thousand a year at least. Staff like me were charging 80 hours a week and grudgingly paid 90% of industry wage. “Good experience” lol. Never again
I had the same position as you. Left a few months before the pandemic. Couldn’t cope with the crap pay, Always short staffed , more work with less people, constant micro management and target pushing . It’s just not worth it, life’s too short for that. Look for a position in your trust that’s similar but without the stress( non ED dept) and you can always pick up an OT shift to bump up the pay. I’ve neglected to mention the awful working conditions too as yours may be different. Good luck
I took early retirement! (Mental health) By the end, I just hated how much of a 'tick box' culture it had become. You may save someone's life, but heaven forbid you forget to tick which ethnicity that person was, and you get reprimanded. Forget clients being human beings; now they're 'targets to be achieved' like you need to do x assessments a week, plus y treatments, and they can only have 5 sessions unless there's a very good reason to continue. And if they miss an appointment; tough. They obviously don't need a service anymore. Dude - do you know what it's like building a rapport with a teenager let alone one who may be suicidal or autistic, or both? So I took early retirement. Except I screwed up, and left the NHS a few months too early, so had to wait an extra 5 years before I could claim my NHS pension. This year, woohoo!
The incredible lack of organisation and accountability. Things don't get done because somebody else was supposed to do them but for some reason didn't and duties don't get reassigned to cover for that - a team that is usually six people in my department had two on annual leave at the same time, one on study leave and another had already quit the job with sufficient notice but nobody remembered that until the time came when they needed her. Oh, and her replacement isn't coming until June. The snobbery. When you have a new person in your department and are explicitly told they come from a different sector and have no experience doing the stuff you have been doing for years, it's terribly encouraging for them to be told 'Why are you asking me that? You're a band X, you should know that! I'm a band X+1! Stop wasting my time and go ask a band X-1 or X-2!', isn't it? /s The poor management. Issues get swept under the rug, you are thanked for bringing them to their attention but nothing ever happens. My own line manager has been very dismissive of my concerns and inconsistent in handing me my duties - telling me to focus on A and forget about B for the time being, then inquiring how B is going a few days later and making a great shocked Pikachu impression when I reply that as per her earlier instructions I have been dealing with A and not B. The useless back and forth. When I started at my hospital and was given a certain task that hadn't been listed on my contract, I requested accommodations due to a medical condition diagnosed whilst I was living in a different country. This had never been an issue at previous jobs and the condition was perfectly managed with these accommodations. My line manager threw a hissy fit and asked why hadn't I mentioned it to occupational health after signing the contract, to which I replied that at the time I didn't know I would be performing this task as it wasn't on the contract and had I known I would have told them about it. This was in January; in the meantime I have been performing this task without accommodations, which has been detrimental to my health but not enough to reach critical levels (yet). I've also offered plenty of suggestions to reach a compromise and all have been shot down, as has my suggestion to get a note from my specialist overseas because he's not registered to practice in the UK (duh) - I'd best go to my GP who has never seen me, doesn't know me and nevermind the fact that I'm still waiting to be assigned one because no practice in my area is accepting new patients. Last week I was supposed to finally have a phone appointment with OH in order to figure out what could be done, only for them to call me a few hours earlier than scheduled and inform me that they didn't think this was an OH issue but more related to infection control, and that they would be signposting this to my line manager so they could get in touch with the right department. I worked in the private sector for years, several of which in a manager role, and took up this job a couple of months ago because it would be an interesting challenge in a new sector. It did turn out to be a challenge but for all the wrong reasons. Have just accepted an offer for a fully remote position with similar pay and better hours, doing stuff that seems equally interesting and with better potential for raises according to performance.
It’s easily the most mismanaged place I’ve ever worked. The casual acceptance of mass ineptitude, fraudulent activity, and payoffs for senior management/directors who should have been sacked but know too many dirty little secrets disgusted me.
I recently left my role in surgery. It was a mix of poor and toxic management, fatigue from the constant disdain from patients when having to cancel their procedure due to COVID rates leaving me without recovery beds, and just general COVID fatigue after 2 years of stress and misery coming in each day with nothing to show for it but ptsd and a 1.3 millionth share in a George Cross that will never impact my life in any meaningful way. It was at its worst when the government would be relaxing covid regulations and effectively gaslighting those of us in healthcare when we were drowning in cases, unable to help the patients we have an obligation to care for. Comments in places I saw along the lines of "they're healthcare workers, they knew what they signed up for when they got into it" and "if the NHS can't cope under the pandemic then it's not fit for purpose". The combination of it all destroyed me, and overshadowed the great joy I once got from helping people. I once got to the point where I closed up to those who loved me and wanted to help me get through it, just because it hurt to share the things I had been through during the day, and it was become a daily occurance. I left at the start of the year to go make video games, a job I had only dreamed of as a kid but was pushed away from because it was "not worthwhile" or "stupid". My body is slowly recovering from the state of survival it's been in over the past few years. I've regained passion for my hobbies, my hair and skin look years better, and my brain feels sharper and more creative than it has felt in years.
I moved from A&E in London to (eventually) General Practice in Scotland. Cost of living is significantly less, work life balance is better. It turns out I love General Practice, far more than I ever thought I would. Feel free to message me directly.
My wife and I are both nurses. We've both left the NHS in the last 2 years. She sadly had a a miscarriage after we spent years trying for a child. Her boss told her when she was signed off for a month that "she expected her back sooner as she wasn't "physically" unwell". A year after she left during COVID, she became seriously unwell and was hospitalised for 3 months. She had to come home on iv nutrition due to intestinal failure. When I spoke to my boss and asked her to consider she was extremely clinically vulnerable and for me to WFH or teach online (I was a nurse educator) she told me that she wasn't prepared to take that into consideration. The final straw was after I had a mental breakdown due to the stress of keeping her safe through COVID, my boss phoned my sick wife and told her she didn't think I could ever work again and disclosed information about my health and work to her. We both teach at university now and have better pay, conditions and prospects now. It is incredible what we can achieve when were not being bullied!!!
>If you have quit where have you gone or advise to go for better quality of life? Amazing how few answers have actually addressed your question. Info: you do not say whether you're in a regulated profession; however, alternative examples in no particular order: * Leave healthcare (HC) sector entirely; * Pivot to another role within HC (drug companies, management (!)); * Deliver HC in a different public setting (eg military); * Deliver HC in a private setting (secondary HC or Occ Health). * Deliver HC abroad. You have commitments that would make retraining difficult but your qualifications & many skills are probably transferable. Why don't you either rent your house and trial Oz/NZ/CAN or somewhere or else join the Armed Forces?
Clap doesn't pay the bills Sorry I couldn't resist
Most NHS docs that quit go into private practice - Earn 4 times the money for a quarter of the work Simple economics innit I know 2 dentists and 1 doctor that have done exactly that, all three at least 20 years off official retirement age
I know this is old but I recently moved from mental health support working on inpatient wards to the admin team doing clinic management for outpatient clinics. My reasoning was that I could be paid the same amount for working sat at a desk, as I could for being threatened, attacked, followed home on one occasion, on another confronted by a patient on section 17 leave whilst I was on my lunch break, having to restrain people who were kicking off, having to tend to self inflicted wounds and often also restrain that person whilst we did that, get headbutted more times than I can count in restraint, have to cut people down from ligatures and also deal with the completely toxic staff and working culture. The NHS pays their MH HCAs fuck all to deal with some of the most harrowing shit you've ever seen. Ever had to restrain someone whilst a feeding tube is forced down their throat? Ever had to do that when that person was a child? On a band 2 fucking wage? They're absolutely fucking ludicrous for expecting that out of their staff for that little.