Saturday, 5 January 2013

Er, who actually is the real enemy?


Eh, who actually is the real enemy?

I’ve never come across a workplace so divided by job title than a hospital, just at a time when unity and mutual respect between work colleagues is so essential.

Snooty Consultants treating Nurses with contempt, placing no value on their practical experience.

Nurses looking down on Care workers because they lack qualifications and do all the unpleasant jobs.

Everybody envying what Consultants and Doctors earn, unimpressed by their expertise and knowledge.

A general dislike of Junior Doctors.

Nobody having any regard for people doing scans, taking blood samples or working in a lab.

These are Victorian attitudes, handed down from generation to generation and they need to go.

Why?

Because patients suffer when a ward round results in a 30 second conversation and where nobody ever does anything that they feel is someone elses job. That’s how a patient can be left unwashed for 11 weeks on a ward.

Where no one takes responsibility unless it’s written on a schedule and where nobody ever interferes when someone else isn’t doing their job properly.

In a time of cutbacks and wage freezes who suffers when work mates are divided against each other?

In fact, virtually no one in a hospital ever thinks of anyone else as a “workmate”.

A divided workforce which doesn’t respect each other is easily defeated; and that means cut back, privatised or outsourced.

Funnily enough, the people you work with aren’t your enemies, any more than the patients are.

When you have worked out who your real enemy is, perhaps you can start treating each other with respect at work.

 

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

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