RolloTreadwayJun 7, 2024

Morning all. Bit pissed off, because of something I read yesterday - that some stupid percentage of people apparently want fewer non-clinical staff in the NHS, in relation to the usual election bullshit about 'efficiency savings'.

I work for an ambulance service. Our ambulances see all kind of unpleasant things, so it's essential that they're kept clean.

But without non-clinical staff, we have nobody working in Cleaning, so infections spread.

And we can't have a plan to bring these infections under control, as we now have no Infection Control staff. What, you thought Infection Control was a clinical job? You probably thought everything was a clinical job, right? Guess what? Just because a role is in some way connected to medical things, doesn't mean it is classified as 'clinical'.

Also, we don't have anything with which to clean and stop infections, because no non-clinical staff means no Procurement staff out there buying what's needed.

Even if we could procure what we needed, how could we pay for it? We'll have nobody in Finance.

Perhaps, okay, we can have Finance staff, but who's going to do that job if we can't pay them? Because we can't pay anyone, if we have no Payroll staff.

And if we have someone doing Payroll, presumably they'll be using payroll software on the computer. Except, they can't do that, as we won't have any IT staff.

This is a bad idea, right? Let's bring back Cleaning, bring Infection Control, bring back Procurement, bring back Finance, bring back Payroll, bring back, IT. Except... actually we can't do that either, because no non-clinical staff means no Recruitment team.


Non-clinical support staff matter as much in the NHS as any other organisation. Without non-clinical support, there is no NHS.

This has been a public service announcement on behalf of Support Staff Who Are Already Overworked And Underpaid As It Is, And We're Really Fucking Tired.

#NHS #UKPol #politics

Show threadJules she/herJun 7, 2024
@RolloTreadway I used to work as a database admin in the medical equipment department of a hospital. The medical equipment department was subcontracted out to a facilities management company, who presumably took a cut before covering staffing and expenses. I didn't actually work for the facilities management company directly, I was provided by an agency who presumably also took a cut. I often thought it would make some much more sense if all us not clinical staff were actually employed by the
Show threadJules she/herJun 7, 2024
@RolloTreadway NHS and paid directly, presumably I would have been paid the same but the money two different companies were taking for providing my labour would have been saved. Anyway the medical equipment department then went out to tender and was subcontracted to a different facilities management company, who decided I was surplus to requirements. By that point I was unofficially acting as first line IT support to the entire floor on the side of my "real" job because IT couldn't keep up
Show threadJules she/her
@RolloTreadway TL:DR the NHS needs more supporting staff not fewer
Jun 7, 2024 at 7:05amWeb
Show threadJayne 🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈Jun 7, 2024

@afewbugs @RolloTreadway

And more support staff who are directly employed by the NHS 👍

Show threadJules she/herJun 7, 2024
@TCMuffin @RolloTreadway And the other crazy thing was in the medical equipment department we looked after all the equipment, everything from mattresses to CT scanners, but everything that was part of the fabric of the hospital, like automatic doors or lifts or fire alarms, was managed by a different facilities management company. So what that meant in practice was if one of our engineers was on a ward to screw up a bed frame they weren't supposed to also change a lightbulb, or vice versa
Show threadTerryBJun 7, 2024
@afewbugs @RolloTreadway Managers or admins? All public services need good admin support. We don't want police officers doing filing or teachers ordering photocopy paper. All those "efficiency savings" that remove admin staff are *not* efficient.