[Politics] The Sun - nurses ?

[DavidinSouthampton]

The obvious answer is that people should only withdraw their Labour only when it is not going to affect anyone else. I fully expect Mick Lynch to announce a new round of strikes but limited to between 2 and 4 am every Tuesday morning. That should make sure that nobody notices.

Or alternatively, what sort of cynical uncaring Government totally lacking in compassion or empathy has driven the ultimate caring profession to do this? While all the time feeling the urgent need to major on tax cuts to help the rich get richer.

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

deleted - can’t be arsed

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Playing devil’s advocate here. Isn’t this the sort of thing that lots of people actually want? They talk about MPs and say that they are not from the real world so how can they make decisions when they have no experience of what they are doing?

I am not saying I think the job is justified because I don’t know enough about the area but it is quite possible that someone on that money can find lots of efficiencies thanks to their lived experience and improve the service for lots of otherwise disenfranchised people. As I said, I don’t know the facts but the automatic assumption people make it is a daft Job might be wrong.

It is a bit like when people say sack the penpushers and just have more nurses and doctors. Great idea. I really support the idea of a highly trained consultant spending half their day organising surgery timings and sending out letters. Oh know, that would be insane. You need people trained as administrators to administer and people trained as clinicians to do the clinical work.

Schools is an area I know lots about. Some people think the school business manager or finance director in a multi academy trust are a waste of money. But when a two form entry primary school has a 2 million quid budget or a medium sized multi academy trust has 50 million quid then surely you want someone who is trained in finance to help run the thing as efficiently as possible. Let the teachers look after that sort of thing.

I‘m of a similar view. My two biggest complaints about the NHS are the lack of joined up thinking and a lack of a more holistic approach to healthcare. The NHS is very good at fixing straight forward tangible things like broken bones. It falls apart with less tangible illnesses like mental health. It’s also very good at focussing on the issue at hand, less so when it comes to wider implications e.g. rehabilitation on health, social and occupational levels. Healthcare isn’t just about an illness and a medicine. This role is one small step in the right direction.


Science as a whole is becoming a more multidisciplinary and collaborative e.g. data science and AI. translational medicine is another. I see embedding lived experience at all levels of healthcare, which this position aims to do, as a valid, valuable and extremely patient focused approach to public healthcare.

Edit: i have three complaints, lack of funding.

 

[cheshunt seagull]

I just feel so sorry for the patients who had chemotherapy or radiotherapy booked on the strike dates and it had to be postponed at short notice. It's playing with people's lives.

If they can afford to strike and have a day watching Loose Women or whatever without pay, then they can't be that badly off. My older sister is a nurse and refused to strike because she cares very deeply for her patients.

I have incurable cancer and am being kept alive by chemotherapy and have been for the last 4 years. If it wasn't for the nurses I wouldn't be here. They deserve to have a decent standard of living and it is an absolute disgrace that the government is using them as a political football. My treatment has not been affected yet but it might be but if it is I will still support the nurses. The long term interests of cancer patients like me is a properly funded health service with staff that are paid salaries that reflect the crucial nature of the work they do and there is no way we will get that with this utter disgrace of a government.

 

[Berty23]

I think for most people it's not quite so black and white as all that. The choice isn't (or shouldn't be) between keeping all the administrators we have now or sacking all of them. There's a huge range of mid-point views that says there are too many highly paid administrators doing jobs that don't need doing.

Your schools example being a case in point. Having a finance manager in a school is a good idea. But then you have more finance managers in the local education offices, and more finance managers in the district education offices, and it all mounts up to too many finance managers.

A finance manager in schools and public service organisations in general) is a different job from finance manager in business, by and large, because the whole emphasis is different. The businessperson has to worry principally about getting the customers in to generate profit. The school has to worry principally about how much to spend and what to spend it on, because the income is determined by outside factors.

Very old view of education. The vast majority of secondary schools are now academies so they are responsible for finance and the local authorities are not. This applies to over a third of LA schools too.

You are correct that schools can’t make a profit but they can generate lots of extra income to help run the organisation. They have to think in the same way as private businesses about generating revenue. Schools get funding per pupil but there are lots and lots of other things they can do to generate income.

These include ensuring all entitled apply for Free schools meals because this gets them extra money, running wraparound care, hiring out facilities, offering services to other schools E.g. if you have excellent finance manager they can be paid to help others, same for school improvement support. As you say it is also about how you spend what money you have properly which is also the case for business such as best procurement, buying the correct services, investing in capital etc. just because they are not making a profit to extract from the organisation they still need to run as businesses. This is why lots of multi academy trusts recruit people from the private sector who have never taught. I expect we are getting to a time when many MAT ceos wont have taught and then people will moan they should have done as they don’t have loved experience.

 

[rogersix]

I just feel so sorry for the patients who had chemotherapy or radiotherapy booked on the strike dates and it had to be postponed at short notice. It's playing with people's lives.

If they can afford to strike and have a day watching Loose Women or whatever without pay, then they can't be that badly off. My older sister is a nurse and refused to strike because she cares very deeply for her patients.

It's a real shame that the government doesn't care about the patient's welfare, I suppose we did vote for these callous blighters!

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

See above.

I work with nurses and my wife is frontline nhs.

Apologies. Not your usual sort of humour. I like it

 

[rogersix]

Where did I say that they don't care about patients? They have to make their point. It's just terribly unfortunate it's coincided with bad weather, rail strikes and hospital letters stuck in the post.

It's not a terribly unfortunate coincidence, it's the tories!

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

understand that, i was kinda expecting many nurses to report for work regardless. doesnt take many out to make a show and have impact. but only 44 trusts even voting for action is different from the story RCN portrays.

Out of 219. About 25%.

There are about 6.6 million trade union members in the UK out of a total of 32 million people in employment. About 20%

So the level of 'engagement', if we may call it that, by the RCN seems to be in the same ball park as the UK average. A bit higher perhaps.

Engagement may also vary from trust to trust owing to the 'postcode lottery', and the variation around the country in waiting lists, extent to which a trust is willing to outsource to private hospitals, demographic of patients, etc. Where I work it is common to have patients brought in under escort, and I have often seen patients handcuffed to a police officer. Can't imagine a lot of that in rural Hampshire.

So I'd be reluctant to draw any conclusions. Some nurses are at their wits end, some seem quite content. The usual spectrum of human disposition. Not sure the RCN has 'portrayed' anything disingenuously

 

[portslade seagull]

My sister works for the NHS looking after children who are mentally ill. She house visits and sits on the phone for hours. She has a few times been assaulted which is recorded but being children its accepted to a degree. The frontline nurses and Ambulance crews deserve a fair wage rise to make up for the last few years of stagnation as do the Police and Army who have suffered with low wage rises

 

[Bodian]

As I said, I don’t know the facts but the automatic assumption people make it is a daft Job might be wrong.

It is a bit like when people say sack the penpushers and just have more nurses and doctors. Great idea. I really support the idea of a highly trained consultant spending half their day organising surgery timings and sending out letters. Oh know, that would be insane. You need people trained as administrators to administer and people trained as clinicians to do the clinical work.

A very valid point. I work in a local authority and get paid what I get paid to read through legal arguments, have a good understanding of my area of the law, write complex reports and provide advice to my colleagues. However, since we 'cut back' on admin staff, I am doing much more of the things they used to do with/for me. Now, I'm not 'above their work' in any way, and don't consider myself to be - so it's not meant to come across this way. But I have pointed out to the bosses that they are paying me a professional wage to do the work of someone lower down the pay scale. And that is a waste of the dwindling resources that we have.

And meanwhile, the work which I am paid to do, is not getting done, because I am spending such a high proportion of my time doing the work we used to pay others to do.

 

[CHAPPERS]

My sister works for the NHS looking after children who are mentally ill. She house visits and sits on the phone for hours. She has a few times been assaulted which is recorded but being children its accepted to a degree. The frontline nurses and Ambulance crews deserve a fair wage rise to make up for the last few years of stagnation as do the Police and Army who have suffered with low wage rises

Exactly. This government line that the nurses got a pay rise last year so they should put up with a massive real terms pay cut this year is pathetic.

 

[Triggaaar]

Apologies. Not your usual sort of humour. I like it

No worries, I don't think anyone read Westander's post in the same way I did

 

[dazzer6666]

The council used to assess, from what I could gather, based on the (voluntary) equal opportunities monitoring forms upon application. These were collated and compared like for like with other sources to reach a “target figure”. I’d then get emails gently encouraging me and reminding me of the benefits of a diverse workforce.

I’d simply hire the best candidate based on experience, training and interview.

We used to do that....but in the last restructure I went through the big boss was sending out his specific spreadsheet every day as we waded through the dozens of interviews and appointments showing the % in each 'group' that were being put in post relative to the target. It led to some very wrong appointments being made that quickly unwound, and to a load of good people leaving.

 

[rogersix]

I'm an ex-nurse. My husband's an NHS nurse still. Neither of us believe this strike is justified or fair. Nursing has never been a highly paid job, it's hard work, and you have to do and see nasty stuff sometimes. You don't join the profession to earn loads of cash or for an easy life, but it has other, immense, rewards. I'm not politically minded, they're all tits, and God knows whose or what's fault it is that we find ourselves as a nation in the state we're in now (although I have my own suspicions). Most ordinary, working people are suffering to a greater or lesser degree at present, most people can do little to alleviate it. Those nurses who are choosing to strike are basically holding everyone else to ransom. If every nurse in the country gets a 17% pay rise, then the rest of us are royally f***ed, its just not affordable. Playing the "woe is me, I'm an NHS hero, don't you know" card is frankly a bit nauseating in my opinion.

how would you attract more people to take up the profession, if not by wages?

 

[rogersix]

In 18 months time we'll be in safe hands, all in the garden will be rosy and there SHALL be jam for tea.

what could the tories do that you consider to be beyond the pale?

you can swap money for principles

 

[rogersix]

If we can muddle our way through the next 18 months, then this Tory rule will be over and the new administration can set out a costed plan to make everything right.

or carry on with the most incompetent and corrupt political party in the nations history?

as the glorious day draws ever nearer, you are getting increasingly edgy!

i'll bet you won't lose a penny and you soiled yourself for nowt!

 

[rogersix]

I wouldn't count on it, sadly. Labour need to do more than they are at the moment.

the tories need to do what's best for the nation and call the election so that everyone else can start clearing up their mess,

ah........ twas ever thus

 

[fly high]

the tories need to do what's best for the nation and call the election so that everyone else can start clearing up their mess,

ah........ twas ever thus

You think Starmer wants to be in power right now, I don't think so.

 

[rogersix]

You think Starmer wants to be in power right now, I don't think so.

you are right, still be better for the nation tho'