I agree with Wes…
It’s not often you’ll hear me say that. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever said it and to be frank I never thought I would.
There’s never been anything that Silly Boy has said that I could agree with.
Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s attack on NHS managers.
His onslaught on partnership GP practices and…
… the daft plan to fund the expansion of the workforce by assuming non-doms will be stupid enough to hang around after Labour has arrived, is to seriously underestimate the intelligence of wealthy people.
You don’t get rich by not being smart.
He is a silly boy.
That said…
… I caught the Sky TV interview SB did on Wednesday morning. Wes looked like he was broadcasting from the set of Cell Bloc H.
He was in Salford, on his way to the Confed annual conference jolly, which despite the strikes, still went ahead.
Quite how so many NHS people could Hokey-Cokey about in the middle of a 72hr junior doctor’s strike, baffles me.
However they try to rationalise it, the optics are horrible and you have to question their judgement.
During this round of strikes about 120,000 people will be bumped off the waiting list…
… joining another 700,000. This is a problem of the utmost significance to the people and families we serve. I doubt they’ll like the idea that the people running the show will be having a party.
I know the counter argument; contingency plans are in place, people at the conference are not patient facing, networking and sharing is important, there are serious things discussed… blah, blah…
…but the oldest adages are probably the rightest adages…
‘… if it doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t…’
… a principle at the foundations of Nolan…
… but the Confed have to raise a few quid to pay wages.
Moving swiftly on, or back, to Silly Boy, he said something that struck a chord. It echoed something I’ve been saying for ages.
Maybe we’ve found a common accord?
Wes said something along the lines of; ‘… if we used the technologies we’ve got, the NHS could be a lot more efficient…’
He is 24crt gold, copper-bottomed, exactly right.
Efficiency and productivity are cousins. However, they come with an edge.
Talk to a nurse about efficiency, just finishing a 12hr shift and you might end up in A&E.
Talk to them about making work easier and they’d likely want to have a conversation.
Think about phoning the GP…
… most of them are still using analogue phones. There’s money available and the potential to move into Cloud telephony systems are infinitely better; auto queuing, call back systems, logging, data capture… the whole nine yards… it’s all there.
I have no idea why there isn’t universal take-up. I hear the money’s run out, people don’t want to do it?
Dunno…
Nurse observations… the kit exists to blue-tooth the results straight into the hospital Electronic Patient Record.
Very few Trusts do it.
Time saving. Switching from looking at a screen, to facing a patient.
Interoperability… don’t start me off. There are a huge number of examples… dumb pagers and faxes… to name but a few.
It will be years before the impact of any workforce plan is felt at the frontline of healthcare.
Our options are few.
Training the people we have is something we could roll up our sleeves and get on with.
Helping them to work at the maximum of their registration…
… non-medical prescribing, for instance. All post registration training should be free.
Obliging trusts to be better employers. Find out the best and share with the rest.
- Protect the front line,
- fund it properly,
- make it fun to work there and…
… most of our troubles will disappear.
I wonder if Wes would agree with me?
News and Comment from Roy Lilley
Contact Roy – please use this e-address roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Roy Lilley.
