The NHS Health and Well Being Interim report has been published today. You may read it in full, here. The main stream media have, of course, had a field day. They have filleted the “tasty” bits without really taking the report as a whole.
Fat, unfit NHS staff top the sick league
More than 45,000 NHS workers call in sick each day — one and a half times the rate of absence seen in the private sector. The first national audit of staff habits has found that high rates of obesity, smoking, absenteeism and poor mental health are having a direct impact on the quality of patient care.
Over 45,000 NHS staff call in sick each day
Annual NHS sickness levels are 10.7 days a year per employee – higher than the public sector average of 9.7 days and 50 per cent higher than the private sector average of 6.4 days.
The gutter press seems to have ignored the report. The Daily Mail is concentrating on far more important matters.
Fury as paedophile pensioner is given Viagra on the NHS
Child safety campaigners have reacted with horror after it emerged that a convicted paedophile pensioner is still being prescribed Viagra on the NHS.
Dr Crippen has actually read the interim report from cover to cover. First impressions?
This is yet another expensive NHS glossy brochure, costing God knows what (How many copies will they print? Can anyone advise on the likely unit cost?), crammed with pictures of fit-looking, happy, smiling, perfectly racially balanced NHS employees none of whom look like they have ever had a day’s illness in their life. Why does New Labour keep doing this? Why is this brochure full of fit, young, attractive people when it is supposed to be about poor health? Where are the pictures of the elderly West Indian cleaners? The Polish kitchen porters?
The interim report is a blunt instrument. There may be further and better information in the full report, when it comes, but I find it impossible to draw conclusions from this report as there is no detailed breakdown of which NHS employees are taking the time off. I rather doubt it is highly paid administrators and consultants. It’s the workers – probably not thought photogenic enough to appear in the brochure (where is Hogarth when he is needed?) – at the bottom end.
How many doctors replied to the survey? Few doctors admit to illness until they are close to death. If the illness from which they suffer is anything to do with mental health or alcohol, they may never admit it.
The NHS is the largest employer in Europe. Most of its employees are not highly paid professionals like doctors and senior administrators. The bulk of NHS employees are porters, cleaners, auxiliaries and so on. These people are just as essential to the NHS as are doctors and nurses, but they are rarely seen and never mentioned.
One of the most difficult tasks facing those with mental illness is finding employment. The mentally ill tend to drift around minimum wage jobs in the catering industry or the bottom end of the NHS. Then there are the first generation immigrants, many with poor English. And the chronically unemployed in the ‘last chance’ saloon. Where ever they come from, what ever their back story, they work unsocial hours, often on shifts; they are poorly paid, frequently criticised and badly treated; and a lot of them are subjected to racial prejudice, which is alive and well in the NHS.
You did not need a multi-million pound glossy brochure to “discover” that these people have a poorer health record and worse sickness record than workers in the “private sector”. Many of these people would not get a job in the “private sector”.
Is there any meat in this report? Not as far as I can see. We need to look at each sub-group of employees within the NHS. Junior doctors and nurses are badly treated but the treatment they receive is wonderful compared to the treatment received by the kitchen porters and cleaners.
You certainly won’t solve this problem by asking doctors and nurses not to smoke in the same area as patients. You won’t solve this problem by appointing more occupational health nurses and, can you believe this, more occupational health “nurse consultants” :
We welcome the increasing number of consultant occupational health nurses and their leadership of occupational health services in some places. We believe that such nurse consultants have a critical role to play in developing services and should increasingly be employed in all units. In the meantime, we recommend that there should be a regional consultant nurse in occupational health in each region to provide leadership to the function and advice to individual unit
New Labour’s answer to everything these days is a glossy brochure and a “nurse consultant”. More millions to be wasted on glossy presentation and plausible process. More large salaries to be paid to officious nurses to go round telling others how to do their jobs.
What is really needed is better pay, better incentives and better working conditions.
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