Discussion
CS Garth said:
A quick google shows that average NHS staff sickness ran at 14 days per capita last year (doctors under 3 however).
Did you work for an agency perhaps?
Edit: I would add that I accept that much of this is extreme pressure but I think this can often mask other institutional behavioural problems
I’ve had no sickness for 18 months now.Did you work for an agency perhaps?
Edit: I would add that I accept that much of this is extreme pressure but I think this can often mask other institutional behavioural problems
Edited by CS Garth on Tuesday 12th November 21:02
Last time due to the s
t office which was cold and damp meant I got Bronchitis and now have Asthma.Cheers NHS thats not really making people better.
dave_s13 said:
Nope, never been agency.
I'd wager you might get more sickness in the non professional/lower band roles that drags down the average....that's pure speculation though.
Band 7/8a (and 6 to some degree) lower management levels seems to be where the bulk of sickness is from my experience I'd wager you might get more sickness in the non professional/lower band roles that drags down the average....that's pure speculation though.
I pay for my prescriptions so not overly relevant to the conversation, but my doctor has always tried to save me money if it is cheaper for me to buy something direct rather than pay the prescription charge.
He will generally say “this drug is exactly the same as is available over the counter as benedryl” or “this is just ibuprofen which you can get over the counter for much cheaper than the prescription charge”.
I think all doctors - and pharmacists- should be like this (I suspect the vast majority are).
He will generally say “this drug is exactly the same as is available over the counter as benedryl” or “this is just ibuprofen which you can get over the counter for much cheaper than the prescription charge”.
I think all doctors - and pharmacists- should be like this (I suspect the vast majority are).
alorotom said:
dave_s13 said:
Nope, never been agency.
I'd wager you might get more sickness in the non professional/lower band roles that drags down the average....that's pure speculation though.
Band 7/8a (and 6 to some degree) lower management levels seems to be where the bulk of sickness is from my experience I'd wager you might get more sickness in the non professional/lower band roles that drags down the average....that's pure speculation though.
CS Garth said:
A quick google shows that average NHS staff sickness ran at 14 days per capita last year (doctors under 3 however).
Did you work for an agency perhaps?
Edit: I would add that I accept that much of this is extreme pressure but I think this can often mask other institutional behavioural problems
Yeah who would’ve thought that the staff that work in close proximity to ill people may get ill themselves. Did you work for an agency perhaps?
Edit: I would add that I accept that much of this is extreme pressure but I think this can often mask other institutional behavioural problems
Edited by CS Garth on Tuesday 12th November 21:02
Notreallymeeither said:
I pay for my prescriptions so not overly relevant to the conversation, but my doctor has always tried to save me money if it is cheaper for me to buy something direct rather than pay the prescription charge.
He will generally say “this drug is exactly the same as is available over the counter as benedryl” or “this is just ibuprofen which you can get over the counter for much cheaper than the prescription charge”.
I think all doctors - and pharmacists- should be like this (I suspect the vast majority are).
We'd always tell the patient if they could buy the item over the counter and save themselves money, some doctors do the same but may not realise all of the licensing requirements and tell a patient to buy something that is prescription only. Said patient can then get a bit stroppy...He will generally say “this drug is exactly the same as is available over the counter as benedryl” or “this is just ibuprofen which you can get over the counter for much cheaper than the prescription charge”.
I think all doctors - and pharmacists- should be like this (I suspect the vast majority are).
The waste is phenomenal, and at many levels.
There is a vast tier of middle management that don't seem to do anything quantifiable. If I cannot identify their role from their job title they should probably be made redundant.
There's a medical recruitment crisis up here in the north of Scotland. One 'solution' was to re-deploy some people in non-jobs to come up with a project to work out why jobs up here are undesirable, see what other places are doing and help advertise to recruit. What actually happened is that 3 people seemed to spend the best part of a year travelling around and no additional medical staff have been recruited (I recall there being a trip to Denmark, one to Iceland, and several around the UK). It's all gone funnily quiet now.
The NHS estates are huge and many buildings old and inefficient. Those that are newer are often no better with teething troubles and huge costs (remember pfi?!)
There is huge waste of resource by patients. A shopping-bag charge would help. As a GP I still do not have a cure for the common cold yet see several people a week with just that!
Medicines get wasted. Many are cheap, but many also cost hundreds-thousands per month. We frequently get bags returned from relatives when patients die/move to nursing home. Boxes and boxes and boxes, all to waste.
Of note to some earlier posts in the thread I am a dispensing GP. Small rural practice with <1000 patients on the list. It brings a small additional profit but is marginal. Nearest mainstream dispensing chemist is 24 miles away, and our furthest patients are a further 20 miles distant from town.
There is a vast tier of middle management that don't seem to do anything quantifiable. If I cannot identify their role from their job title they should probably be made redundant.
There's a medical recruitment crisis up here in the north of Scotland. One 'solution' was to re-deploy some people in non-jobs to come up with a project to work out why jobs up here are undesirable, see what other places are doing and help advertise to recruit. What actually happened is that 3 people seemed to spend the best part of a year travelling around and no additional medical staff have been recruited (I recall there being a trip to Denmark, one to Iceland, and several around the UK). It's all gone funnily quiet now.
The NHS estates are huge and many buildings old and inefficient. Those that are newer are often no better with teething troubles and huge costs (remember pfi?!)
There is huge waste of resource by patients. A shopping-bag charge would help. As a GP I still do not have a cure for the common cold yet see several people a week with just that!
Medicines get wasted. Many are cheap, but many also cost hundreds-thousands per month. We frequently get bags returned from relatives when patients die/move to nursing home. Boxes and boxes and boxes, all to waste.
Of note to some earlier posts in the thread I am a dispensing GP. Small rural practice with <1000 patients on the list. It brings a small additional profit but is marginal. Nearest mainstream dispensing chemist is 24 miles away, and our furthest patients are a further 20 miles distant from town.
cheesesliceking said:
CS Garth said:
A quick google shows that average NHS staff sickness ran at 14 days per capita last year (doctors under 3 however).
Did you work for an agency perhaps?
Edit: I would add that I accept that much of this is extreme pressure but I think this can often mask other institutional behavioural problems
Yeah who would’ve thought that the staff that work in close proximity to ill people may get ill themselves. Did you work for an agency perhaps?
Edit: I would add that I accept that much of this is extreme pressure but I think this can often mask other institutional behavioural problems
Edited by CS Garth on Tuesday 12th November 21:02
Didn't stop one miserable cow coughing and spluttering in there. Funnily enough, 2 days later all the little ones had a cold.
sjabrown said:
Of note to some earlier posts in the thread I am a dispensing GP. Small rural practice with <1000 patients on the list. It brings a small additional profit but is marginal. Nearest mainstream dispensing chemist is 24 miles away, and our furthest patients are a further 20 miles distant from town.
We used to dispense a fairly complex regime of medicines to a <12 month old, one that was under constant review by secondary care and had frequent dose changes. My pharmacy was in a health centre, so we would co-ordinate with the gp the most appropriate medication as it was necessary to get a lot of it from a specials manufacturer, so we had to juggle supply with short expiry dates as well as changing concentrations so that the parents had a suitable dose to administer. Not especially difficult but you had to be on top of it.All went well, until the parents moved to Dartmoor and had to transfer to a dispensing practice. I told the father that if the new gp had any problems to let me know and I'd tell them which specials people we used and where to get some of the meds.
Didn't hear from the GP, but about four months later patient's Dad appeared in the pharmacy with the scripts and a copy of hospital discharge fax. Turns out there'd been an epic f
k up with the scripts necessitating a late night ride in the Air Ambulance. That's what happens when you let amateurs do a professionals job, and why, quite apart from the fraudulent activity, I have no time at all for dispensing doctorsWith some notable esceptions the majority of these posts are aboslute rubbish. its like reading the comments section of the Daily Mail
Of course there is waste in the NHS. Its inevitable in such a large organisation and its also a victim of its own size as to the reason why there are so many people in the organisation doing what appears to be meaningless tasks. However those meaningless tasks are likely to be the ones which generate the cash for the hospital to operate.
The posters who say that getting rid of middle management and noticing the difference is easy. Exactly what parts fo middle management would you get rid of and why? What would be the result of them not being there and who would do the work they were doing previously?
Of course there is waste in the NHS. Its inevitable in such a large organisation and its also a victim of its own size as to the reason why there are so many people in the organisation doing what appears to be meaningless tasks. However those meaningless tasks are likely to be the ones which generate the cash for the hospital to operate.
The posters who say that getting rid of middle management and noticing the difference is easy. Exactly what parts fo middle management would you get rid of and why? What would be the result of them not being there and who would do the work they were doing previously?
pavarotti1980 said:
The posters who say that getting rid of middle management and noticing the difference is easy. Exactly what parts fo middle management would you get rid of and why? What would be the result of them not being there and who would do the work they were doing previously?
Apart from anything else, the management cost is a tiny proportion. The VAST majority is spent on clinical staff, drugs and medical supplies. Slashing and burning management posts would be lucky to generate 0.5% savings.Our budget is £1.2bn, so 0.5% is £6m and about 85 Band 8A posts at £70k Gross per post.
Sure we could do without a number of those, but 85? A lot of departments would become headless chickens.
rossub said:
Apart from anything else, the management cost is a tiny proportion. The VAST majority is spent on clinical staff, drugs and medical supplies. Slashing and burning management posts would be lucky to generate 0.5% savings.
Our budget is £1.2bn, so 0.5% is £6m and about 85 Band 8A posts at £70k Gross per post.
Sure we could do without a number of those, but 85? A lot of departments would become headless chickens.
The definition people seem to use is band 6 and above being "management". So that basically means all senior clinical staff on wards, AHPs, associate practitioners, pharmacists etc etcOur budget is £1.2bn, so 0.5% is £6m and about 85 Band 8A posts at £70k Gross per post.
Sure we could do without a number of those, but 85? A lot of departments would become headless chickens.
MonkeyBusiness said:
CS Garth said:
Sick days piss me off the most - some people seem to think they are due one every month or more often as a right - lazy bds who are the first to moan about U.K. plc or their lack of pay rises whilst doing fk all to justify them.
Same in the prison service. I once knew someone who said "I get x amount of days holiday plus x days paid sick leave"ds who are the first to moan about U.K. plc or their lack of pay rises whilst doing fk all to justify them. The planners would ask us when we were using our "scheduled sick leave" in monthly progress meetings. If you took less than eight days sick in a year it was felt you were letting the side down (I think the national average in private was about 3 at the time but our jobs were "much more stressful". Hmm, yeah, right). We were also reminded by managers to try and use the eight days in two periods (which due to Drs notes over 5 day absence) meant that you basically did a 3 or 5 day period or two 4 days. Helped to avoid the third session of sickness when the absence management procedure kicked in!
My SIL is a midwife. She remembers a right dragon of a ward sister thinking one of her colleges was swinging the lead and threatened to "go and drag her out of her bed and into work herself". It was pointed out Aileen was in the same hospital two floors up having had her appendix our two days previous (after collapsing with pain on this sisters shift).
The amount of painkillers and antibiotics SIL came home with when one tablet had been taken from a blister strip for one patient and they were going to get thrown away was maddening though. You could have tranq-ed a horse every night for a year with the "waste" she was given to "pass onto your family, save on prescription / chemist costs at least".
StanleyT said:
The amount of painkillers and antibiotics SIL came home with when one tablet had been taken from a blister strip for one patient and they were going to get thrown away was maddening though. You could have tranq-ed a horse every night for a year with the "waste" she was given to "pass onto your family, save on prescription / chemist costs at least".
I hope she isn't still doing that, as you've described, because she'd be in serious, career ending trouble. Paul Dishman said:
StanleyT said:
The amount of painkillers and antibiotics SIL came home with when one tablet had been taken from a blister strip for one patient and they were going to get thrown away was maddening though. You could have tranq-ed a horse every night for a year with the "waste" she was given to "pass onto your family, save on prescription / chemist costs at least".
I hope she isn't still doing that, as you've described, because she'd be in serious, career ending trouble. a) everyone does it,
b) the managers don't notice as they're too busy writing the rules to enforce the rules,
c) when they did catch me and threaten to sack me they realised they needed staff and there were already xxx headcount down and couldn't afford to sack me as being a midwife you can't introduce a waiting list for babies being born under emergency c-sections
d) as those managers were complicit 10 years previously in encouraging this "recycling" they are sh*t scared that a whistleblower will take them all down as well.
While I agree not right and morally, any better than Mexican drugs lords or not, that response and the fact the situation has been going on 30 years shows exactly the culture problem with the NHS.
Contrasted with last time I had a private op I picked up my weeks medicine on the way out, added £216 to my invoice and got the quip from the orderly "sorry we charge so much for drugs sir, it is the only way to keep the hospital running without having to start to treat drunks, druggies, elderly or mentals or xxxxxxxxx".
Paul Dishman said:
StanleyT said:
The amount of painkillers and antibiotics SIL came home with when one tablet had been taken from a blister strip for one patient and they were going to get thrown away was maddening though. You could have tranq-ed a horse every night for a year with the "waste" she was given to "pass onto your family, save on prescription / chemist costs at least".
I hope she isn't still doing that, as you've described, because she'd be in serious, career ending trouble. Supplying prescription drugs in this manner is an offence. Really the whistle should be blown about stuff like this
pavarotti1980 said:
Jeez! cant believe she wasn't struck off. I wonder when she will pop up in the news again....Paul Dishman said:
sjabrown said:
Of note to some earlier posts in the thread I am a dispensing GP. Small rural practice with <1000 patients on the list. It brings a small additional profit but is marginal. Nearest mainstream dispensing chemist is 24 miles away, and our furthest patients are a further 20 miles distant from town.
We used to dispense a fairly complex regime of medicines to a <12 month old, one that was under constant review by secondary care and had frequent dose changes. My pharmacy was in a health centre, so we would co-ordinate with the gp the most appropriate medication as it was necessary to get a lot of it from a specials manufacturer, so we had to juggle supply with short expiry dates as well as changing concentrations so that the parents had a suitable dose to administer. Not especially difficult but you had to be on top of it.All went well, until the parents moved to Dartmoor and had to transfer to a dispensing practice. I told the father that if the new gp had any problems to let me know and I'd tell them which specials people we used and where to get some of the meds.
Didn't hear from the GP, but about four months later patient's Dad appeared in the pharmacy with the scripts and a copy of hospital discharge fax. Turns out there'd been an epic f
k up with the scripts necessitating a late night ride in the Air Ambulance. That's what happens when you let amateurs do a professionals job, and why, quite apart from the fraudulent activity, I have no time at all for dispensing doctorsGassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff