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10 Million Of Taxpayers' Money To Be Spent On Patient
Advocates ANOTHER ONE FOR THE NHS PIGGIE BANK OF ERRORS SPECIMEN : MANAGER Read the Observer article : Patient advocate for every hospital Is this another ploy at employing more managerial staff for an already over manager subscribed service ? Isn't this supposed to be tackled by patient complaints procedures which are already the most corrupt system there is ? It believes in a " no fault " system of letters and I assume with this trend the " patient advocate " will implement a similar " no fault " policy . "All walks of life " says Anthony Browne of the Observer . So what does customer services in a shop have in common with a dying ,incontinent soiled elderly person then ? Are we to have people to actually understand the plight of patients ? That would certainly be the first ! Patient advocates are hardly going to say " hey manager , the patient is dying because there arent enough nurses to feed him , the hospital is at fault " . Think of the legal consequences of admitting liability ? No complaint has ever been successful in the NHS without a long court fight . NHS Trusts hold off until the bitter end when their favourite trick is to "compensate the individual " but guess what ? Yes , you guessed it , admit " NO LIABILITY " . That is the nature of the NHS and the many corrupt lawyers who limit cases reaching court . It is the government's policy to prevent litigation . We have managers to manage , more managers to manage those managers and then other managers to count their performance the more managers to count waiting lists . After that we have more managers to force doctors into doing their surgeries on time then lo and behold we have even more managers to manage those managers . NOW WE HAVE THE NEWEST MANAGER TO MANAGE PATIENTS ! Are there more managers in a given hospital than there are patients ? How much do these managers get paid ? Lower than the junior doctor or consultant or higher ? As Bruce Forsythe would say , definitely HIGHER . Who drives the jaguar ? Is it the junior doctor , the consultant or the manager ? Yes , you guessed it , it is the manager . Who goes home at a civilised hour while we slave away on getting the patient back to life - the manager . Time approximated at 3pm to " have an executive meeting at the 5 star hotel with buffet lunch and nice napkins " . What do we have as junior docs ; cold food , moth eaten sandwiches and cold coffee ( if you are lucky the mould can be taken off the food machine !) much the same as the patients . To top it all off , we have the worst of the manager specimen , the BED MANAGER who manages everyone and everything including the consultants ! Who isnt managed in the NHS ? Ofcourse, no one realises that very few understand the needs of healthcare . The NHS runs on a balance sheet and thats where it fails its consumers . Resources are directed according to the manager's " desire " . It has been known for managers to pay themselves a rise in wages while he orders the junior doctor to " work another oncall because your colleague is off sick or else you wont get a reference " . Do we get paid for these oncalls ? NO. Do we get blackmailed? YES . I was once told by a manager to "work harder " . His name was Mr Hibbert . He is the nursing manager at Selly Oak Hospital. On the 21st April 1999 at 12.30 after I had been oncall for two days running . Conversation Mr Hibbert " I hear there is a complaint at A and E about patient waiting times , I suggest you work harder unless you would like me to tell your consultant " Dr Pal " Mr Hibbert I have done two oncalls and I am exhausted . I am not covering A and E , my SHO is. I have one patient in heart failure on the wards , one with the blood sugar as high as anything and another going into theatre soon . As you know I am covering the wards and I cannot leave these patients . I cannot be at two places at once " Mr Hibbert : We have a waiting time policy and you must keep to it so if you dont want any trouble you need to get yourself down to A and E and do the case - NOW" Dr Pal : This is not my oncall , I am covering for the girl who did not want to cover for the oncall GI team Mr Hibbert : I suggest you go now Dr Pal : Do it yourself Mr Hibbert and speak to my consultant if you want to, I will not be told by a manager what my priorities are . I have patients dying on the ward and that is my duty " I left my oncall and went on strike causing havoc in the surgical department after all " how dare a junior doctor stand up to them " . My consultant MrAllen Edwards did not support me but I decided that I was not going to be ordered around by a manager . I brought this to Professor Temple's attention . Nothing was done . Nothing is ever done in the NHS . Even doctors do not stand for anything they believe in for whatever fear plagues them although they moan increasingly about their dreams of leaving medicine . Mr Edwards as fair as he was , never had the courage to do anything about the abuse that junior doctors faced . He had become much like a manager, too scared to stand for anything he believed in . That was the greatest disappointment to a junior doctor when you are bullied by managers and you are helpless in a world where nothing but position , finances and how many endovascular dacron grafts you fit matters ! Mr Edward's is famous for his dacron grafts and is well admired . Unfortunately, my admiration for him grew less and less when I discovered he was ruled by the manager because that is what happens to independent men in hospitals . You are either ruled by your wives ( for those who take offence to this , I apologise but this is merely my experience ) or ruled by people like Joy Learman ( Trust manager to Selly Oak Hospital ). She being the typical manager never had any concept of medicine or what stress she placed junior doctors under by placing waiting list patients for the doctors to clerk as a freebie xtra . The point was there were too many xtras , many hundreds infact ! We were drowning in xtra slipped in patients by Joy Learman who expected us to do it because of the fear of " references " . Mr Simms stood for his house officer , Mr Vohra stood for his and I was left to work all the hours because my references were at stake and I was frightened . My consultant did very little because " he was the new consultant on the block with a reputation to protect ". At the end of the job Mr Smith was supposed to have said " Dr Pal has not done enough oncalls , she cannot be registered with the GMC" . After all the clerking , all the oncall extra cover I had done without pay , this was his answer . My form had thankfully gone through and it was too late in the day for his paws ! Well , this was from a consultant who once was reputated to have said the infamous lines " Tell British Rail to terminate their services because the the trains outside are disturbing my wardround " Other meetings with managers were interesting . I once even met a manager who did not know what a " venflon " was . When I asked him why they were no " grey venflons " on an acute ward , he said " you will have to make do , doctor , we are not here to cater for your requirements" . A grey venflon is a line needed for seriously ill bleeding patients on an acute ward and it can be life saving equipment to administer fluids . So much for managers and their understanding on what is " required " by a doctor for the welfare of a patient ! Like the early warning system for whistleblowers and many of its spin stories , this is a " we are the government and we have to look like we are doing something right " . The patient advocate system is another effort at leading us to believe that something is " happening " . A knee jerk reaction , reacting to a government damning reports like say " the Virgin leaked report " . How similar is this reaction as say to the Neale and grandad pathologist episodes ?!! Perhaps, far too similar in attempting to regain public faith . These are the actions of a government who is gradually loosing its grip on a system . The managers need to manage an increase in cleaners , an increase in nursing staff , an increase in kindness and patient care . If there aren't enough nurses , or cleaners or doctors , how are the problems supposed to be tackled by the " patient advocate " . Is he /she supposed to wave the magic wand and make everything suddenly appear ? Like the Early Warning system which no one will use due to fear of their careers ) , the patient advocate system is what we and the used car salesman would call simply a " CON " . Lets see how the system will work - Patient complains to advocate , advocate goes to boss , boss says there is no more money to employ more nurses , CATCH 22 . What difference is there apart from the fact that the the tax payers are minus 10 million . Another one out of the NHS piggie bank of errors ! Alan Milburn , you have got it wrong this time ( AGAIN ! ) mate ! Try concentrating on aiming to get the selfish managers out of the hospitals and bringing some caring people in for a change . Redirect finances from the managers to the patients for simple things like venflons and drip sets . Labour is not doing well , " health care free for all " or was it 10 million pounds this time round ! Probably as much as they spent on the punk spoked Dome and the millenium wheel ( which failed on millenium night but at least New York got it right ) ! How many patients would have been kept alive with that much money Mr Blair ? Why don't you give the money to the elderly pensions or towards their care ? Even Calcutta has a better system of treating their elderly ! Patient advocates gets a "thumbs down" from NHS Exposed and Alan Milburn should hire better health civil servants to advise him on the fact that the public are not stupid . It is time he came to terms with the fact that governments are respected for their power to govern , not to spin stories to protect their reputations . So, Mr Milburn needs to ring NHS Direct (another waste of finances ) to ask for a solution to his obsession for this tactful approach . Perhaps then the referrall to a specialist may even take less than 10 years ! ( usual waiting time that us mere mortals have to wait until . That is if the waiting doesnt kill us first ! ) Anything can happen in an NHS today ! Spin stories , Trojan horses , more managers to manage the spin stories and "image " . What next ? Marks for Alan Milburn's idea - nil points as they say in the
European Song Contests Next idea Mr Milburn or are we going to resort to the intelligence service AGAIN ! ( yawn) Mr Milburn was not able to comment . ( We wonder why ?! ) Dr Rita Pal
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