I have brought the below quote over from erics bad tooth thread as I want to reply to this but that thread wasn't the right place.
Dale White wrote:NHS are fantastic, we must save it from these Tory bastards.
Quite simply, the NHS needs saving from itself if my recent experiences have anything to go by.
Back in September my company got a new contract with a group of NHS CCG's to provide H&S Consultancy services, I was given the initial gig so I went to the first meeting to outline exactly where they are and exactly where they need to be going to be compliant. As it is such a big client (60+ sites and 500+ staff employed by the NHS at these sites the plan from my company was to allocate different consultants on a geographical basis which we do all the time. However, the NHS requested that I be their one point of contact across all sites, and that was that, and that is what I am.
Baring in mind these Clinical Commissioning Groups are in the main based in medical centres, doctors surgery's and hospitals so you would think they would have a very basic grasp of things. The groups are made up of doctors, nurses, other medical professionals, legal bods and supposedly some very well educated and intelligent people.
It was made clear to them that any queries must in the first instance be directed to the office so that any minor questions can be dealt with by our office guys, anything requiring a more experienced and qualified consultancy answer would then be filtered out and directed to me, the reason for this is that my time is 85% of the time client facing and I may not be able to answer in a speedy manner. This is standard practice and it works really well for every other client that we have, but not this lot, they have completely ignored this part of the contract and ignored further requests to address their initial questions through the office, we have a big team that are targeted to respond within an hour.
On a daily basis I get emails from all over the CCG's, they must have put my full contact details on the intranet which they were asked not to do, and below are some of the questions that I have had to deal with in the last few weeks alone. These are not made up, exaggerated or anything...
Who should I contact to refill our first aid kit?
If one of the toilets run out of soap of toilet paper, what should we do?
My colleague has a severe diary allergy, is it OK for them to make drinks for meetings?
I got sent a random picture of a basic office chair asking if this chair is suitable for someone who has suffered a broken back, how the fuck would I know, you're surrounded by medical professionals who are highly trained in such things, why the fuck don't you ask them?
We have not had a fire drill for over two years, what should we do?
And whilst I have been typing this, I just got another one from the same twat with the diary intolerant colleague...
Is my colleague allowed to tell people who he works with that he has an epipen?
As part of the contract I had to go and deliver risk assessment training, the director asked me who should be on the course, and I replied 'anyone that will be doing risk assessments'. I delivered the course and asked if anyone had any questions, no questions were asked but they all said they would not be doing risk assessments as they are not paid to do that - completely wasted my time, wankers.
So yes, there is a lot wrong with the NHS, but there is far more wrong with a lot of the people behind the scenes.