Do they think we are mad?

What the hell goes on in an NHS managers mind? First they tell us that jobs in Scotland will be cut including Nursing jobs and now NHS Grampian have come up with this little scheme.
What makes them think that nurses will work a full shift for nothing? We already work extra (unpaid) hours to make sure that everything is complete before we go off shift and I very rarely see anyone getting their time back. So now they decide to make us work another 12 hours unpaid. Never mind that this involves transport costs, childminding costs and any other costs that are involved in going to work. They then play the guilt card, "if you don't do this then nurses will lose their jobs" - you have already told us that nurses are going to lose their jobs anyway you dipshits.
And of course, how many nurses get a break or a full lunch time? How many managers get a full lunchtime?
I wonder though........? Perhaps this is a sneaky way to reduce the pension deficit in the NHS. It is well known that long shifts and no breaks are bad for your health so perhaps they are trying to kill us all off so they don't have to pay us a pension.
As Nurse Anne over at Militant Medical Nurse would no doubt say - Bastards!!

Wuss

I understand that my wife is a bit wary of wasps and bees etc. it's a girly thing and getting rid of them is one of a husbands duties that are taken for granted. Why though does my dog tremble and run out of the room when anything that buzzes flies around? However, what I really, really need answered is why my 30 year old 6 foot 3 inch son runs like a little girl when a wasp or bee enters the kitchen?

This is possibly one of the reasons I have no grandchildren yet!

Rant

A rant this morning, I saw this story on the news last night and immediately started shouting and throwing things at the screen. This man hurt his knee 15 years ago and has not worked since and because he has now won £11 million he will be able to afford to get his knee fixed. This man is a lazy, selfish swine, he could have had an operation on his knee any time from the NHS. He states he is unable to work but can drive a car - if you can drive a car you can work, people in wheelchairs manage to work, people with no legs manage to work. No, this man hurt his knee and decided that he enjoyed sponging off the state and took our money. Sometime over the past 15 years a job that he could do must have come up.
So good luck to you Peter Redkin for winning the money, but at least now you will be one less drain on society.


I have just had a trawl through the internet and I must be wrong about this - the comments after the Daily Mail story about him agree with me. Now that is a worry.

Scissors

Like every nurse I have a pair of scissors. When I worked on the wards they were small and curved and had a little foot to go under bandages - some bugger stole them out of my locker (they also stole my toothpaste, but as it had fallen down the toilet and I had no idea why I still kept it I didn't mind that). When I moved into A&E I obtained a pair of Tuffcuts. I have had a few over the years, I even bought a pair of left-handed ones to see if they were better (they weren't, not their fault, after years of using right handed scissors I could not make the adjustment) and anyway Tuffcuts are left or right hand friendly.
Why am I telling you this? Well over the years I have cut many things - shirts, jackets, trousers,pants, bra's and they are superb at cutting leather boots. I tell the story that they will cut anything and I once saw a doctor open someones chest using them - they had nothing else at that point and the patient would have died otherwise. Today though I excelled myself, today I was cutting someones shirt off and managed to cut through the ECG leads. Think of every time you have ever felt shame and multiply it by 100, I am embarrassed as I type this. The sound of the monitor alarming and then the sudden realisation what you have done and then the comments from colleagues.

It's begun!

Here we go, a week after an election and health boards in Scotland are talking about cutting staff. The numbers given so far add up to 1876 and this does not include all boards, some are only talking about percentages.

Where are these cuts going to be made? You guessed it, Nurses, Midwives and other front line staff. But the good(?) news is that there will be no redundancies but there will be no replacing staff who leave or retire. So despite what the chief executives of the health boards say, more and more will be done by less and less. However, they have promised that services and patients will not suffer.

Does any of this sound familiar? I wrote this piece in January;

Recently we had the horror of Mid Stafford where over 1000 people may have died unnecessarily - why? Well here is a quote which may help point you in the right direction

"Over the years, many clinicians had noticed deterioration in the standards of patient care, which became particularly acute approximately three years ago when major cutbacks were made in staffing numbers. This included a ­savage reduction in the number of nursing staff."

When will they learn?

Hmmm

Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it!

So we have a hung parliament, Brown is desperately trying to hold on to power, Cameron is equally desperately trying to kick him out. Clegg is waiting to see who offers him the best deal. What happens now? As the one and only Conservative MP in Scotland said during his victory speech; "We live in interesting times." Not necessarily a good thing.

As we have only one Conservative MP in Scotland does this mean they have no mandate to rule us if Cameron becomes Prime Minister? Alex Salmond and the SNP think so. A sort of West Lothian Question in reverse. Ah well, time will tell.

One thing is absolutely certain, whoever gets in Scotland is going to suffer, our budget will be cut which means our services will be cut, our NHS will descend into long waits and a poorer service.

Addendum

I would just like to add that I still hope we have a hung parliament tomorrow. If nothing else it will force the politicians to actually do some politics.

Can I recommend the excellent Julie McAnulty at Campaigning for Health for this post

Candidates

Well, I have voted. Have you? If not get out and do it. My personal opinion, voting should be compulsory with a fine for those who don't vote without good reason.
During my training I was working in a locked ward in our local psychiatric hospital and one of the patients asked to vote. Was quite upset when told that he couldn't as he was barred because he was in the hospital. Is this still the case? Are psychiatric inpatients still barred from voting?

My son told me he did not know who to vote for, well in this election I can understand that as there is not a lot to choose between the main parties. The advice I gave him was, if you can't find someone to vote for then vote against someone or something.

Just as an aside, why is it that out of 8 candidates in my constituency 4 of them do not live in the area. One even lives 90 miles away - how can s/he represent me from 90 miles, they have no conception of the issues I live with - stupid.

More waste

I saw an item on the news last night, it said that civil servants were in New Zealand looking at how their parliament worked as they have a permanently hung parliament since they introduced proportional representation. Now why go all that distance and incur all that expense when they could look at any number of local councils in the UK and also look at the Scottish government in Hollyrood? Everything that happens there happens after debate and horse trading between the parties - works for us so why should it not work for the UK as a whole?

Ah well, we will soon see come 7th May.

London V Scotland

As we are going through an election where all parties are talking about cuts to the public sector I thought I would remind you of a post I did in January. In it I said that although Scotland spent more money per head on health services I asked what was wrong with this. I now want to tell you a personal(ish) story.

I have an aunt who has lived in London for years, She is in her late 60's early 70's (I don't like to ask ladies ages) and has needed the NHS a fair bit over the past few years. Recently she has returned to Scotland and of course everything has been transferred with her. We were talking the other day and she was discussing the NHS in our part of the world and my first thought was oh no, what have we done. Turns out it was the exact opposite, she was so impressed with our services, she pointed out that in London if she goes to A&E she waits for hours - despite the 4 hour target - when she goes to our hospital for a clinic appointment she is seen pretty much on time and there is a notice stating "if you have waited 20 minutes past your appointment time come to the desk and let us know". She also feels that up here the consultant she sees is willing and wants do more for her. So all in all a very satisfied patient who is glad that she has come home.


Now, I understand that direct comparisons are difficult and that London has huge problems that we don't but the experience of my family (her daughter and grand daughter) are that in Scotland we are doing it better.

I want to make it absolutely clear that I am in no way getting at London hospitals or the English NHS workers who I am sure are working as best they can with what they have. What I am trying to compare is that if you spend a bit more money and have a higher ratio of doctors and nurses to patients then things can be better


This report in The Telegraph makes for sad(angry) reading, I have commented in other places that management level never seem to be cut, it is always the front line staff who go. It is always nurses, porters, cleaners and now doctors who are cut. How do know when a politician is lying to you? - Their lips are moving.


Before their are more Stafford's, can I remind you of something I wrote in January;

Recently we had the horror of Mid Stafford where over 1000 people may have died unnecessarily - why? Well here is a quote which may help point you in the right direction
"Over the years, many clinicians had noticed deterioration in the standards of patient care, which became particularly acute approximately three years ago when major cutbacks were made in staffing numbers. This included a ­savage reduction in the number of nursing staff."

As Scotland is in charge of it's own NHS then perhaps we can avoid the worst excesses of the Westminster government. But I am not hopeful especially if Westminster cuts the budget.

I would love to see a hung parliament on Friday 7th May with SNP and Plaid Cymru having deciding votes.

Sorry not posted for a while, been ill.

My thanks to Campaigning for Health for this.

I didn't think our politicians could get any lower but..........

Go here and see what nonsense they are spending our money on now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7OGUAQSYQ4&feature=player_embedded

Following on from my last post about nursing numbers in Scotland I find this little piece. Nursing numbers to be cut by 13,000???? WTF? As the current vernacular has it. If you are working short staffed now, where are they going to make the cuts? Especially when you consider that we have an ageing population which is increasing as the baby boomers are only going to get sicker as they live longer and sicker patients need more resources, basic health economics I would have thought.

Recently we had the horror of Mid Stafford where over 1000 people may have died unnecessarily - why? Well here is a quote which may help point you in the right direction

"Over the years, many clinicians had noticed deterioration in the standards of patient care, which became particularly acute approximately three years ago when major cutbacks were made in staffing numbers. This included a ­savage reduction in the number of nursing staff."
The whole article can be found here.

So despite Scotland being criticised for having a higher nurse/doctor to patient ratios I hope we keep this and as health is a devolved issue as long as we can keep those Labour sycophants out we should be if not OK then at least a bit better. To think that Labour is supposed to be the party of the people, they are not the party of any people I know.


Thanks to Militant Medical Nurse.

NHS Scotland

According to this report NHS England is more efficient than the rest of the UK. What exactly is wrong with Scotland spending more per head on health care? Why is it bad to have more nurses and doctors and to keep people out of hospitals? A few years ago I studied for a management qualification and one of the points they tried to put over was that it was better to be effective than to be efficient in a business sense.
What surprises me is that even with these supposed extra resources we are still running short staffed, so what are English hospitals like?
A point I would also like to make is that these figures are now 3 years old and very out of date. They were gathered from a time when we had a labour government up here, now we have an SNP government things have improved and waiting times are nowhere as long as have been indicated. And being Scotland, we gather information differently from England so comparisons are not quite as straight forward.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year and is keeping well.