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THE NHS TRAFFIC WARDEN - A DOCTOR'S NIGHTMARE
It's a doctor's life - you are covering for three of your colleagues as the Trust saves on locum money, you have double the patient work, and your juniors have taken sick leave. Management have told you that, according to Department of Health guidelines, you take too long at outpatients and you need to speed up, your accommodation electricity does not work in the hospital, there are extra on-calls to cover and discharge letters piled high - yes so high that already you can't see above them. Laden with all this work you walk to your car - on the window underneath your windscreen wiper it says "PARKING TICKET £45" for parking your car in hospital grounds whilst going to an emergency. TRUSTS and the Department of Health abuse the goodwill of doctors. The NHS survives on a shoestring where the doctors and nurses keep the system from falling apart. How are these doctors treated? Are they given company cars or even incentives to work in the National Health Service - certainly not! While the Management has their "own" named executive spaces and their new Range Rovers, doctors, who do most of the hard work, are left to find their own spaces out in the road or somewhere in the limited space. These Management staff sit on their leather chairs sipping Cappucino while doctors are exhausted with the overwork and demoralised by poor incentives. Not only do they bask in the knowledge that they work most doctors to the bone, but the NHS Trusts take another step to continue to make life a living nightmare. What happens when a doctor tries to pay for parking fines? a) Doctors are busy during the opening hours of these booths, which are usually located at the distant end of car parks. While performing in NHS Trusts and missing lunch breaks you may have a minute to run down to the booth. What is the sign you see? "OUT FOR LUNCH". b) You try ringing them and the phone just rings out c) You then try and obtain a permit and they provide you with one, about 14 days later. d) By this time, they have slapped another parking ticket onto your car. This continues like a recurring nightmare. We would like to introduce an extract from the NHS Exposed "unbelievable real stories" Archives which sets out the reality of the NHS-parking control systems and shows how a well-renowned Trust embraces the actions of their private agency car parking firms and makes life a living nightmare for doctors. Since the Trust system was formulated in the 1980s, Trusts have developed agreements with private companies (PFI) to ensure car parking is a money-making machine. Staff can receive car-parking tickets without any warning notices. When the staff member tries to resolve this issue, the Trusts absolves all responsibility. Is it not logical that if the Trust had an initial agreement with a private firm that there should be equal responsibility for the welfare of staff? This is not so at the current time. To show the public, the bureaucracy and the lengths the Trust and its associate private company should go to, we wish to take the opportunity to expose the antics of a very reputable hospital. This hospital is renowned in research.
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