well?

tell me why the hell not, they’d have to train as NA’s at a cost repayable to the NHS, its a skill ffs, it’d do them good and it would ensure that management had a ground floor view on the most important public institution.

tell me why not, I know from experience that whilst under pressure the systems implementing could facilitate that by employing addition staff, obviously that will incur costs but what is more important than health care system? Now reread the first paragraph and comment.

So can you tell me why the hell not, they’d have to train as NA’s at a cost repayable to the NHS, its a worthy skill to have isnt it? Don’t you think it’d do them good and it would also ensure that management had a “real world view” on the most important public institution.

Why not pathologist, cleaner, physio, receptionist, imaging, facilities, techie or surgeon. Lots going on in a hospital other than nursing.

A hospital somewhere near told its clinical nurse specialists that they should work on a ward a day a week as a NURSE.

They didnt want to for some reason.

& prisons should be run by prison officers, not ‘governors’ who have got to their post on accelerated promotion.
Like the NHS, too many chiefs & not enough indians. (Oh bollix, there I go again with my racist comments.)

absofuckingloudly.

project – Member
A hospital somewhere near told its clinical nurse specialists that they should work on a ward a day a week as a NURSE.

They didnt want to for some reason

Speaking as a CNS, they’re knobs. It wouldn’t be Broadgreen Hospital would it?

My job is hospital based, and takes me into the community a lot, but I enjoy those days where through chance rather than planning I end up spending a shift on the ward backing up the staff nurses. I get to supervise junior nurses, share knowledge & skills, shapren my own clinical skills. Any CNS who thinks they should not do ward shifts probably shouldn’t be a CNS, or at least shouldn’t get CNS pay. Got a colleague who is getting all aereated over this type of story, so out of the 4 of us in our department I can see me being the only one who ends up doing ward shifts.

Nurses shouldn’t run the NHS, it is just one discipline among many, in fact for the management that a major Trust needs possibly the best management would come from the private sector.

it’d do them good and it would ensure that management had a ground floor view on the most important public institution

Hah. Are you a Tory cabinet minister? That’s the last place I heard ideas so poorly thought through 🙂

To be an effective manager, you don’t have to have done the thing that you are managing. You have to be able to listen to and understand those that do.

Politicians and hospital management (also known as the residents of carpet land) are very keen on clinical engagement at the moment. The idea being that Drs and nurses and other clinical staff are very much more involved in the running of the institution and the decision making process so that management decisions do actually reflect the needs of the clinical staff and the patients.

Well that’s what they tell us. What we actually think is that this is in vogue at the moment because there’s not enough money left, and when the NHS is forced to rationalise / limit / withdraw / down-grade services they (politicians and managers) want to be able to say that they are only following the orders / advice of the clinical staff. We (the clinical staff) are all very aware that when the NHS was brimming with cash several years ago the managers and politicians were quite happy to try and ignore clinical priorities in favour of meaningless arbitrary politically driven targets. We couldn’t get a look in.

So I say b’llocks to their clinical engagement. I keep my head down and stick to what I do best (apart from buying bikes) – passing gas (giving anaesthetics). They’ve created this monster of an over bureaucratic and management heavy NHS which sucks up and wastes huge amounts of your tax revenue on their unnecessary management costs, let them run it.

And relax.

By the way, in case anyone is thinking of coming along and criticising my credentials I have been an NHS employee (in various hospitals) continuously since 1994, and have been a Consultant Anaesthetist for nearly a decade. My remarks do not pertain to where I currently work but rather to the NHS in general. Infact, I would say that where I do work (Wales) has taken a rather more long term and mature approach than the NHS in England. I suspect the NHS in England (metaphorically speaking, currently positionned with its pants round its ankles)is about to give the private sector a great big welcome. The private sector is great (I should know I do some work there) unless you’re actually ill.

Jesus….

Do you think the CEO of Tesco would be better at running a multi national company if he put tins of beans on shelves once a week?

Maybe Bill Gates would be more efficient if he spent time building keyboards?

Lewis Hamilton a better driver by working at a carwash?

I’m a nurse.

I’ve been one for 20 odd years and I’m pretty good at my job.

What all the dimwits don’t seem to grasp is that the bigger organisations get, the more complex institutions become, the more managers you need.

What the NHS suffers from more than anything else is managers who have ‘come up through the ranks‘, who know ‘what goes on on the shop floor‘, in other words, people who have had no experience and no training in actual management.

What it needs is lots of good managers, who manage well.

Well said crikey, I think the fact that you can get a shit load more money as a manager, People Finance, IT or otherwise in the private sector probably has a lot do do with it too.

What the NHS needs is:

Politicians to be honest and tell the public that they can’t have everything they want from the NHS – we simply can’t afford it.

Politicians to decide on exactly what the NHS management structure and strategy is and f’ing well leave it alone to get on with things without endlessly poking their oar in and subjecting us to endless mindless pointless reorganisations.

In defence of local NHS managerial staff every where, I should point out that many (not all) I have met are decent folks who find themselves sandwiched between the politicians and top level NHS managers above them and the stroppy clinicians below them. They don’t need to spend a day a week on the wards, they need to left alone to get on with the job.

Gasman Jim i thought you where a plumber Gas safe registered of course.

Crikey, Tesco CEO, does actually work in the shops, he and his senior staff ,also a lot of staff from head office work the stores over the christmas trading period, to see the job from the shop floor.

crikey – Member

I’m a nurse.

I’ve been one for 20 odd years and I’m pretty good at my job.

What all the dimwits don’t seem to grasp is that the bigger organisations get, the more complex institutions become, the more managers you need.

What the NHS suffers from more than anything else is managers who have ‘come up through the ranks’, who know ‘what goes on on the shop floor’, in other words, people who have had no experience and no training in actual management.

What it needs is lots of good managers, who manage well.

Good point, too many nurses are pushed into management as their only career opportunity without the adequate training or support.
Nursing splits into 1)clinical specialist and 2)management, after a certain point if you want to gain promotion. Whereas the first seems a natural progression, management seems poles apart from what nursing fundementally is, like jumping from communism to capitalism.

So yes, we need good managers who manage well.

Also, there are many specialities in a hospital so to say managers should “nurse” is negating all the hard and valid work done by others.

I am speaking as a nurse with 11 years experiance who has always run a mile from management and opted for the clinical specialist route.

My wife is a nurse in the forces (they effectively work within the NHS when not overseas or nursing the injured troops on return home) and in both military and nursing terms does not want to be `promoted’ to officer/management as her nursing skills get put to one side.

Stupid idea. Highly skilled and trained and expensive managers attempting to do an NAs job?

As others say – what the NHS needs is skilled managers working in a sensible structure

The NHS is undermanaged in many ways with not enough managers with not enough skills.

Dunno how it is after recent english reforms -= it didn’t happen up here but it always used to be the case that management and admin costs in the NHS were far lower than in Germany France and the US.

McDonalds does this, all employees (AFAIK) have to spend at least one day a year working at a restaurant – and McDs seems to be doing pretty well, which probably reflects well on its management.

That said, McDs is in the hamburger-flipping business, not saving lives. I’m not sure I’d want some senior manager on his yearly work experience scheme being responsible for my health!

We sort of do it at our place, most of our management has worked their way up in the business anyway so they have some knowledge of how things work outside of a spreadsheet
As it happens, I have 2 days next week riding along with one of the van techs, which is where I started 20 yrs ago

All levels of management need to spend time in all departments of their business getting their hands dirty [rather than pre-announced inspections] – It’ll do them the world of good – it certainly won’t hurt them or the business

MrNutt, i completely see where you’re coming from, but as a nurse who’s gone into management i feel i’m in a position to comment… the other guys on the forum have a massive point… being a manager is completely different to being a real nurse in so many ways.

my experience is only in the mental health side so i cant comment on general hospitals, but i think there’s different levels of management… rotas, ordering stock, managing front line staff, appraisals, supervision, hands on problem solving at a ward level… an experienced nurse can step up into that role providing they can get their head around a computer. (ward manager type job)

but managing other managers, big budgets, multiple teams and everything else involved in running parts of the nhs… i havent met many people at that level who find having been a nurse (or other professions within the nhs) that useful, being a manager is SO different from being a nurse.

in my humble experience (and it is humble compared to some of the other STW’ers experience in the nhs) is that i’ve worked with some incredible ward managers who have worked up from being a cleaner – nursing assistant – nurse – team leader – ward manager.

but also i’d agree with:

the bigger organisations get, the more complex institutions become, the more managers you need.

What it needs is lots of good managers, who manage well.

too many nurses are pushed into management as their only career opportunity without the adequate training or support.

What the NHS needs is:

Politicians to be honest and tell the public that they can’t have everything they want from the NHS – we simply can’t afford it.

its early, i hope that made sense in some way :S

The only people who should be forced to work on the wards as NAs are the matrons. 😈