Van der MoodHoover Posted July 15, 2016 Share Posted July 15, 2016 No, not the 1990s tv series that launched catherine zeta jones onto the world, but the recent cabinet announcements of the new PM. We have..... IN - Boris Johnston (Foreign Secretary), Liam Fox (international trade), David Davies (Brexit), Damian Green (DWP), Andrea Leadsom (Environment), Priti Patel (international devt), plus a few more minor folks UP - Philip Hammond (now chancellor), Justine Greening (education +), Amber Rudd (home), Liz Truss (Justice), Chris Grayling (transport) OUT - George Osborne, Michael Gove, John Whittingdale, Stephen Crabbe, Nicky Morgan, Oliver Letwin, Theresa Villiers What change if anything might we notice? Are these undiscovered gems which will generate huge positivity, or is this a collection of second and third rate brains who will provide no meaningful leadership to the country. Interestingly, C4 news reported that Fox and Davies cannot abide each other which will make life interesting given they have to be working hand in glove so to speak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stive Pesley Posted July 15, 2016 Share Posted July 15, 2016 Surely a miracle that she left Jeremy Hunt in post - given his disastrous treatment of the Junior Doctors Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramarena Posted July 15, 2016 Share Posted July 15, 2016 39 minutes ago, StivePesley said: Surely a miracle that she left Jeremy Hunt in post - given his disastrous treatment of the Junior Doctors He's go a job to do. Nurses and GP's are next in his sights! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Van der MoodHoover Posted July 15, 2016 Author Share Posted July 15, 2016 2 hours ago, StivePesley said: Surely a miracle that she left Jeremy Hunt in post - given his disastrous treatment of the Junior Doctors Perhaps she was hoping for another classic R4 mispronunciation of his name...... oooh that James Naughtie! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PistoldPete2 Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 23 hours ago, StivePesley said: Surely a miracle that she left Jeremy Hunt in post - given his disastrous treatment of the Junior Doctors What has Jeremy hunt done wrong? Isn't the plan to get 24/7 cover, as weekend cover is currently inadequate. The new contracts for doctors were recommended by their own unions but rejected by the membership. I can't see that's jeremy hunts fault. Some doctors do think they are gods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GboroRam Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 1 hour ago, PistoldPete2 said: What has Jeremy hunt done wrong? Isn't the plan to get 24/7 cover, as weekend cover is currently inadequate. The new contracts for doctors were recommended by their own unions but rejected by the membership. I can't see that's jeremy hunts fault. Some doctors do think they are gods. This was written by Dr Hammond early in the debate before full details emerged. I think it explains why they are resisting the changes. The junior doctors dispute explained simply and in context… It is not possible to explore the Terms and Conditions of the proposed contract in detail because they have not been published yet and may still not have been finalised. The announcement of the imposition of a contract that has yet to be finalised and can’t be scrutinised by the junior doctors who are be imposed upon has been highly counterproductive. Irrespective of the content of the final contract, I believe imposition is wholly wrong. This is not a dispute about Saturday pay, it’s about safe staffing. Safe staffing requires both safe rotas and a safe number of staff to fill them. Junior doctors have not asked for more money, but for a better, safer NHS. However, a better safer NHS will cost us more because it needs more staff at all levels and occupations The government’s manifesto promised ‘a truly 7 day NHS… to ensure you can see a GP and get the hospital care you need 7 days a week by 2020.’ Urgent NHS care is already available 24/7, but this commits the NHS to providing the routine care you need 7 days a week, in general practice and in hospital. Many GPs already offer routine and emergency appointments on Saturday mornings. The government has promised you will able to see a GP 12 hours a day, every day, 8am – 8pm, by 2020. We need at least 5000 more full time GPs just to keep the current service safe. Some hospitals do routine work on Saturdays but nearly all routine hospital work is done on Monday to Friday. To extend this to a ‘truly 7 day service’ would require an increase in routine work of around 40%, to be done on Saturdays and Sundays This extra work for GP practices and hospital staff over weekends can either be done by training and employing more staff. Or by spreading the existing staff more thinly. Extending services over 7 days without employing extra staff could make the NHS less safe, not more. The junior doctors’ contract offer is ‘cost neutral’ – no more money is available to employ more staff. So existing staff would have to be spread more thinly. Wards would be less well staffed during the week to move more staff to the weekends. This could make the NHS less safe for patients, not more. The government’s manifesto also promised: ‘We will continue to ensure we have enough doctors, nurses and other staff to meet patients’ needs.’ However, the government halted and then tried to prevent the publication of vital work by NICE to determine safe staffing levels, developed after the Mid Staffs scandal to try to prevent future scandals where there are dangerously low levels of staff. This withholding of crucial evidence is seriously at odds with the government’s manifesto commitment to make the NHS the safest health service in the world. The only plausible explanation is that they do not wish to commit the money to funding the safe staffing levels needed. Tax payers should be asked if they wish to pay more into the NHS to fund safe staffing. The NHS currently has dangerously low levels of staff and large numbers of vacancies. A recent BBC Freedom of Information request shows that on 1 December 2015, the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland had more than 23,443 nursing vacancies – equivalent to 9% of the workforce. For doctors, the number of vacancies was 4,669. In England and Wales, there were 1,265 vacancies for registered nurses in emergency departments – about 11% of the total. For consultants in emergency medicine there were 243 vacancies – again 11% of the total. Paediatric consultants – specialists in the care of babies, children and young people – were also hard to recruit, with 221 vacancies – about 7% of the total. For junior doctors, there are already dangerous gaps in the rotas for many specialties every day of the week because there simply aren’t enough doctors to fill them. Putting a cap on locum fees has made the rota gaps worse. Extending cover safely over the weekends can only happen with more doctors, not by spreading the already exhausted workforce more thinly. Doctors are expensive to train and employ, so this is also a question for us. How much are we prepared to put into the NHS to staff it safely? The current funding cannot cope with the current demand on services as we live longer, and survive more illnesses. We do not have enough doctors, nurses and staff in most other professions at present. Staff in hospitals which have large numbers of vacancies already work well above their contracted hours, often for no pay. Some are bullied into doing so. There needs to be a robust and proven mechanism of preventing overwork and exploitation because tired NHS staff make mistakes that can harm and kill patients. The new junior doctors’ contract does not have this. The number of deaths in hospitals does vary during the week but we do not yet know why. It may well be that introducing safe staffing levels would reduce some of the avoidable deaths. However, this can only be safely done by employing more staff, not by spreading the existing staff more thinly. A leaked report from the Department of Health has suggested that equal NHS cover over 7 days would need 7,000 more nursing and ancillary staff, and an extra 1600 consultants and 2400 junior doctors, and would cost £900 million. And yet the junior doctors contract is cost neutral. Shift systems harm both mental and physical health, and where they’re unavoidable, such as in the NHS, a great deal of care and expertise needs to be put into designing them to ensure minimal sleep disruption, adequate recovery time and a fair work life balance. Junior doctors have the additional requirement that they are doctors in training, and so need protected training time alongside providing a safe service. In attempting to increase cover at weekends without increasing overall staffing levels, NHS Employers has produced sample rotas that probably aren’t safe for doctors or patients. They would appear they have been rushed through without the essential input of sleep and fatigue specialists. As Dr Michael Farquar, a Consultant in Paediatric Sleep Medicine, wrote in the Independent: ‘I note with dismay the rotas that include frequent rapid cycling between long (13 hour) day and night shifts. These ill-considered proposals run a risk of creating increasingly jet-lagged doctors, more likely to make mistakes while carrying out tasks which require high levels of attention and judgement. I urge NHS employers to reconsider, taking into view evidence collated by the Health and Safety Executive and the Royal College of Physicians. The new junior doctor work rotas need to be properly trialled, to see what effect they have on attention, judgement and reaction time in a very stressed NHS frontline environment. Written evidence by the Cass Business School for the National Audit Office expresses serious concerns about stress and fatigue of junior doctors on shift work and recommends ‘a rigorous feasibility study’ of the new contract prior to implementation to ensure safety.’ The new junior doctors contract would appear to reward doctors in specialties with little or no on-call duty, but may penalise those in specialties with lots of emergency duty. These are precisely the doctors we need to train to improve 24/7 urgent and emergency care in the NHS and the fear is that these emergency specialties will become less attractive to doctors. Doctors have a professional duty to protect patients and to speak up if they believe care is not safe. Most doctors believe the new contract for junior doctors could make the NHS less safe for patients, which is why so many consultants and GPs are supporting their junior colleagues. Because the government has announced it will be imposed, most junior doctors believe that the only option is to take industrial action. This has to be balanced against a doctor’s professional duty not to harm patients. It’s an extremely difficult decision to make, and many doctors have been reduced to tears having to make it. My greatest concern is for the mental health of NHS staff. Many are struggling to provide a safe service in very difficult circumstances and levels or work related stress, anxiety and depression are very high. It is hard to imagine how the imposition of a contract that many doctors believe is not safe or fair will improve their morale and mental health. Rather, imposition could have a disastrous effect on morale, recruitment and retention of staff. There is no urgent need for a new junior doctors’ contract, and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have no plans to introduce any such changes. If it is imposed in England, industrial action could be prolonged and a whole generation of doctors may be alienated and demotivated. Many may leave the NHS entirely, at huge cost to the taxpayer and to patients. Other bright students may decide not to enter medicine at all. To repeat, the new contract has not even been published in full, and the final terms and conditions are still being decided. To announce imposition of an unwritten contract so far in advance of publication has been hugely divisive. Sample rotas and pay calculators have been rushed out, found to contain significant errors and then withdrawn. Such an important contract cannot be rushed through and made up on the hoof just to meet a political deadline. It’s far more important to slow down, think clearly and get it right. A far more sensible and safe option would be for both sides to call a pause both to imposition and to industrial action. This would allow independent analysis of safe staffing levels and what seven-day services can safely be delivered with the staff we currently have. It might also identify the extra funding we would need to put into the NHS to provide an extended seven day service, if indeed that is the best use of NHS money. It makes no sense for a government that wants to improve the NHS to go to war with the workforce. Particularly when the workforce is kind, committed and able to come up with many of the solutions the NHS needs if only it were included and involved. The views of patients, carers and tax payers must also be heard. Any solution has to beguided by compassion, collaboration, evidence and sustainable funding. Any final proposed contract – and the new rota patterns – have to be calmly and rigorously tested, costed and safely staffed. And it has to be agreed, not imposed. Negotiations must restart as soon as possible. Declaration of Interests I am an NHS doctor and patient, but not a member of the BMA or any political party. As a junior doctor, I was an active campaigner for a better, safer NHS from 1987-1992. I was invited to become a Vice President of the Patients Association for my role in uncovering the Bristol heart scandal in 1992. 24 years later we still haven’t safely reorganised child heart surgery in the UK, for all manner of complex political and professional reasons. I have campaigned for many years for the rights of NHS whistle-blowers, and although this current conflict may take a while to resolve frontline staff, patients and carers must be encouraged to speak up and express their safety concerns. Any errors in this article are entirely mine, for which I apologise. Please correct them, join and improve the debate. Please do not impose Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ketteringram Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 On 15/07/2016 at 14:55, StivePesley said: Surely a miracle that she left Jeremy Hunt in post - given his disastrous treatment of the Junior Doctors At least she didn't put his brother Mike in charge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ketteringram Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Must have been some happy faces in schools, when Gove and Morgan were got rid of. Mrs KR is a teacher, and was happy about it anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McRamFan Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 1 hour ago, GboroRam said: Extending services over 7 days without employing extra staff could make the NHS less safe, not more. Exactly and that is exactly what we are NOT being told by Hunt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkFruitsRam7 Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 1 hour ago, ketteringram said: Must have been some happy faces in schools, when Gove and Morgan were got rid of. Mrs KR is a teacher, and was happy about it anyway. I get angry about what Gove has done and it doesn't even affect me. The school year after me have to go through some of the most ridiculous and rigorous tests that involve no creativity or real world applications at all, such as remembering 16 poems off by heart before analysing them (my year only focused on the analysis, which is the real heart of studying English literature, as opposed to just regurgitating the poems). I understand that "this is how it used to be" but it doesn't mean it's right, and there is already a lack of enthusiasm for education among people my age so I dread to think of the number of people that will be discouraged from higher education as a result of the new measures put in place by Mr Gove. This, added to his dithering about where his loyalties lay after the campaign, conveys the feeling that he is an absolute buffoon and I was very glad when he was sacked as Lord Chancellor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davenportram Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 the maths exams have changed drastically too, content has increased bit there is more focus on problem solving skills. unfortunately those that didn't get a C on the old style ones will only get to resit in November, then try to learn all the new content and revise the old content by June next year to sit the new exam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PistoldPete2 Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 6 hours ago, GboroRam said: This was written by Dr Hammond early in the debate before full details emerged. I think it explains why they are resisting the changes. The junior doctors dispute explained simply and in context… It is not possible to explore the Terms and Conditions of the proposed contract in detail because they have not been published yet and may still not have been finalised. The announcement of the imposition of a contract that has yet to be finalised and can’t be scrutinised by the junior doctors who are be imposed upon has been highly counterproductive. Irrespective of the content of the final contract, I believe imposition is wholly wrong. This is not a dispute about Saturday pay, it’s about safe staffing. Safe staffing requires both safe rotas and a safe number of staff to fill them. Junior doctors have not asked for more money, but for a better, safer NHS. However, a better safer NHS will cost us more because it needs more staff at all levels and occupations The government’s manifesto promised ‘a truly 7 day NHS… to ensure you can see a GP and get the hospital care you need 7 days a week by 2020.’ Urgent NHS care is already available 24/7, but this commits the NHS to providing the routine care you need 7 days a week, in general practice and in hospital. Many GPs already offer routine and emergency appointments on Saturday mornings. The government has promised you will able to see a GP 12 hours a day, every day, 8am – 8pm, by 2020. We need at least 5000 more full time GPs just to keep the current service safe. Some hospitals do routine work on Saturdays but nearly all routine hospital work is done on Monday to Friday. To extend this to a ‘truly 7 day service’ would require an increase in routine work of around 40%, to be done on Saturdays and Sundays This extra work for GP practices and hospital staff over weekends can either be done by training and employing more staff. Or by spreading the existing staff more thinly. Extending services over 7 days without employing extra staff could make the NHS less safe, not more. The junior doctors’ contract offer is ‘cost neutral’ – no more money is available to employ more staff. So existing staff would have to be spread more thinly. Wards would be less well staffed during the week to move more staff to the weekends. This could make the NHS less safe for patients, not more. The government’s manifesto also promised: ‘We will continue to ensure we have enough doctors, nurses and other staff to meet patients’ needs.’ However, the government halted and then tried to prevent the publication of vital work by NICE to determine safe staffing levels, developed after the Mid Staffs scandal to try to prevent future scandals where there are dangerously low levels of staff. This withholding of crucial evidence is seriously at odds with the government’s manifesto commitment to make the NHS the safest health service in the world. The only plausible explanation is that they do not wish to commit the money to funding the safe staffing levels needed. Tax payers should be asked if they wish to pay more into the NHS to fund safe staffing. The NHS currently has dangerously low levels of staff and large numbers of vacancies. A recent BBC Freedom of Information request shows that on 1 December 2015, the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland had more than 23,443 nursing vacancies – equivalent to 9% of the workforce. For doctors, the number of vacancies was 4,669. In England and Wales, there were 1,265 vacancies for registered nurses in emergency departments – about 11% of the total. For consultants in emergency medicine there were 243 vacancies – again 11% of the total. Paediatric consultants – specialists in the care of babies, children and young people – were also hard to recruit, with 221 vacancies – about 7% of the total. For junior doctors, there are already dangerous gaps in the rotas for many specialties every day of the week because there simply aren’t enough doctors to fill them. Putting a cap on locum fees has made the rota gaps worse. Extending cover safely over the weekends can only happen with more doctors, not by spreading the already exhausted workforce more thinly. Doctors are expensive to train and employ, so this is also a question for us. How much are we prepared to put into the NHS to staff it safely? The current funding cannot cope with the current demand on services as we live longer, and survive more illnesses. We do not have enough doctors, nurses and staff in most other professions at present. Staff in hospitals which have large numbers of vacancies already work well above their contracted hours, often for no pay. Some are bullied into doing so. There needs to be a robust and proven mechanism of preventing overwork and exploitation because tired NHS staff make mistakes that can harm and kill patients. The new junior doctors’ contract does not have this. The number of deaths in hospitals does vary during the week but we do not yet know why. It may well be that introducing safe staffing levels would reduce some of the avoidable deaths. However, this can only be safely done by employing more staff, not by spreading the existing staff more thinly. A leaked report from the Department of Health has suggested that equal NHS cover over 7 days would need 7,000 more nursing and ancillary staff, and an extra 1600 consultants and 2400 junior doctors, and would cost £900 million. And yet the junior doctors contract is cost neutral. Shift systems harm both mental and physical health, and where they’re unavoidable, such as in the NHS, a great deal of care and expertise needs to be put into designing them to ensure minimal sleep disruption, adequate recovery time and a fair work life balance. Junior doctors have the additional requirement that they are doctors in training, and so need protected training time alongside providing a safe service. In attempting to increase cover at weekends without increasing overall staffing levels, NHS Employers has produced sample rotas that probably aren’t safe for doctors or patients. They would appear they have been rushed through without the essential input of sleep and fatigue specialists. As Dr Michael Farquar, a Consultant in Paediatric Sleep Medicine, wrote in the Independent: ‘I note with dismay the rotas that include frequent rapid cycling between long (13 hour) day and night shifts. These ill-considered proposals run a risk of creating increasingly jet-lagged doctors, more likely to make mistakes while carrying out tasks which require high levels of attention and judgement. I urge NHS employers to reconsider, taking into view evidence collated by the Health and Safety Executive and the Royal College of Physicians. The new junior doctor work rotas need to be properly trialled, to see what effect they have on attention, judgement and reaction time in a very stressed NHS frontline environment. Written evidence by the Cass Business School for the National Audit Office expresses serious concerns about stress and fatigue of junior doctors on shift work and recommends ‘a rigorous feasibility study’ of the new contract prior to implementation to ensure safety.’ The new junior doctors contract would appear to reward doctors in specialties with little or no on-call duty, but may penalise those in specialties with lots of emergency duty. These are precisely the doctors we need to train to improve 24/7 urgent and emergency care in the NHS and the fear is that these emergency specialties will become less attractive to doctors. Doctors have a professional duty to protect patients and to speak up if they believe care is not safe. Most doctors believe the new contract for junior doctors could make the NHS less safe for patients, which is why so many consultants and GPs are supporting their junior colleagues. Because the government has announced it will be imposed, most junior doctors believe that the only option is to take industrial action. This has to be balanced against a doctor’s professional duty not to harm patients. It’s an extremely difficult decision to make, and many doctors have been reduced to tears having to make it. My greatest concern is for the mental health of NHS staff. Many are struggling to provide a safe service in very difficult circumstances and levels or work related stress, anxiety and depression are very high. It is hard to imagine how the imposition of a contract that many doctors believe is not safe or fair will improve their morale and mental health. Rather, imposition could have a disastrous effect on morale, recruitment and retention of staff. There is no urgent need for a new junior doctors’ contract, and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have no plans to introduce any such changes. If it is imposed in England, industrial action could be prolonged and a whole generation of doctors may be alienated and demotivated. Many may leave the NHS entirely, at huge cost to the taxpayer and to patients. Other bright students may decide not to enter medicine at all. To repeat, the new contract has not even been published in full, and the final terms and conditions are still being decided. To announce imposition of an unwritten contract so far in advance of publication has been hugely divisive. Sample rotas and pay calculators have been rushed out, found to contain significant errors and then withdrawn. Such an important contract cannot be rushed through and made up on the hoof just to meet a political deadline. It’s far more important to slow down, think clearly and get it right. A far more sensible and safe option would be for both sides to call a pause both to imposition and to industrial action. This would allow independent analysis of safe staffing levels and what seven-day services can safely be delivered with the staff we currently have. It might also identify the extra funding we would need to put into the NHS to provide an extended seven day service, if indeed that is the best use of NHS money. It makes no sense for a government that wants to improve the NHS to go to war with the workforce. Particularly when the workforce is kind, committed and able to come up with many of the solutions the NHS needs if only it were included and involved. The views of patients, carers and tax payers must also be heard. Any solution has to beguided by compassion, collaboration, evidence and sustainable funding. Any final proposed contract – and the new rota patterns – have to be calmly and rigorously tested, costed and safely staffed. And it has to be agreed, not imposed. Negotiations must restart as soon as possible. Declaration of Interests I am an NHS doctor and patient, but not a member of the BMA or any political party. As a junior doctor, I was an active campaigner for a better, safer NHS from 1987-1992. I was invited to become a Vice President of the Patients Association for my role in uncovering the Bristol heart scandal in 1992. 24 years later we still haven’t safely reorganised child heart surgery in the UK, for all manner of complex political and professional reasons. I have campaigned for many years for the rights of NHS whistle-blowers, and although this current conflict may take a while to resolve frontline staff, patients and carers must be encouraged to speak up and express their safety concerns. Any errors in this article are entirely mine, for which I apologise. Please correct them, join and improve the debate. Please do not impose Thanks Gboro for your extensive contribution. I certainly agree with your campaign for the rights of NHS whistleblowers , and indeed whistleblowers in all jobs. Whistleblowers should be protected even when they are wrong. My experience of medical care at weekends or even on Fridays is that it is very thin. Isnt jeremy hunt a whistleblower? He's saying hospitals are unsafe because of lack of cover at weekends. You may not agree, but he's surely entitled to his view and entitled not to be subjected to the kind of vitriol that he is, just because of his very reasonable beliefs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TigerTedd Posted July 17, 2016 Share Posted July 17, 2016 This argument that it would be unsafe to work weekends because doctors would be over stretched, it's always struck me as making no sense. I run a private clinic. We try to cram all of our customers into two days so we get the most out of our staff, who we have to pay per hour, but it makes for two very busy days. If we opened for a third day, it would release quite a lot of pressure, and to be honest, we'd probably provide a better service overall. If you've got 100 patients to see, and 10 members of staff to see them, isn't it better that those hundred patients are evenly spread over 7 days instead of 5, and those staff are evenly spread over 7 days instead of 5. It's going to free up resources, bed spaces, and generally make everything a lot safer. Theoretically, no one is asking anyone to work any extra hours (probably not how it will work in practice). It doesn't help the fact that those 100 patients keep increasing, but the 10 members of staff keep decreasing. But that is a different issue. Spreading your team's workload over a longer working week is a bit of a no brainer for relieving pressure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jono Posted July 17, 2016 Share Posted July 17, 2016 We will only if she is any good when it's all settled down but I have to say giving Boris the FO and making David Davies the Brexit minister strike me as very astute .. And having the brain to engage quickly with Sturgeon tells me she is extremely intelligent. Gove was way too polarising so getting rid was sensible and giving Leedsome a job so she could shoot herself in the foot was an act of genius ! She has a hand to play and regardless of personal politics it seems she is using her cards well at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PistoldPete2 Posted July 17, 2016 Share Posted July 17, 2016 5 hours ago, TigerTedd said: This argument that it would be unsafe to work weekends because doctors would be over stretched, it's always struck me as making no sense. I run a private clinic. We try to cram all of our customers into two days so we get the most out of our staff, who we have to pay per hour, but it makes for two very busy days. If we opened for a third day, it would release quite a lot of pressure, and to be honest, we'd probably provide a better service overall. If you've got 100 patients to see, and 10 members of staff to see them, isn't it better that those hundred patients are evenly spread over 7 days instead of 5, and those staff are evenly spread over 7 days instead of 5. It's going to free up resources, bed spaces, and generally make everything a lot safer. Theoretically, no one is asking anyone to work any extra hours (probably not how it will work in practice). It doesn't help the fact that those 100 patients keep increasing, but the 10 members of staff keep decreasing. But that is a different issue. Spreading your team's workload over a longer working week is a bit of a no brainer for relieving pressure. The doctors are very well paid , and get fantastic pensions as well. I'm sure it's no more than they deserve. But as a result they don't really need to work weekends. More family conscious doctors also probably want to spend weekends with their families. Its a problem. And it needs fixing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TigerTedd Posted July 17, 2016 Share Posted July 17, 2016 5 hours ago, PistoldPete2 said: The doctors are very well paid , and get fantastic pensions as well. I'm sure it's no more than they deserve. But as a result they don't really need to work weekends. More family conscious doctors also probably want to spend weekends with their families. Its a problem. And it needs fixing. See I don't agree with weekends as a rule anyway. We should have a 7 day working week full stop. Some people have Saturday /Sunday as their 'weekend', some people have Wednesday / Thursday as their weekend. It would ensure that you didn't get dead days and busy days in shops, or at attractions like theme parks. And generally people could get things done without any arbitrary break in service. The only problem I see with that, and as a parent who mostly works weekends, I get this acutely, is that schools have to have a consistent two days off across the board, so parents would prefer to have thermals two days off as their kids. But there are many childless people, or people who's kids have flown the best, who would be quite happy to switch around their 'weekend'. In fact many private services have to stay open during weekends to take advantage of the universal weekend, ironically. And they need staff to man their services at the weekend. And they don't seem to have too many problems with it. So why do public services have a problem? i wonder how much it costs the economy that when you work out time off by council employees spent attending appointments that can only be scheduled during their working hours? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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