NHS overtime

kazzah60

My son is a student radiotherapist and works in a hospital setting for his training - he is adamant that this lady should NOT be left in this situation because should the patient condition deteriorate and need treatment if she is NOT a registed health care professional, it is highly unlikley she is trained to offer medical intervention and should she try to perform ANY medical procedures or interventions she could probably be charged with assaulting a patient- as it is illegal for her to do so

Torry_Quine

kazzah60 wrote: »

My son is a student radiotherapist and works in a hospital setting for his training - he is adamant that this lady should NOT be left in this situation because should the patient condition deteriorate and need treatment if she is NOT a registed health care professional, it is highly unlikley she is trained to offer medical intervention and should she try to perform ANY medical procedures or interventions she could probably be charged with assaulting a patient- as it is illegal for her to do so

Exactly. To be honest the fact that she's staying late is not the most important point here. It's far more important that these patients are not being looked after properly.

Cooper18

I'm sure your son is right Kazz. My friend hasn't been trained to do a set of obs. She can use a defibrillator however - but what about that whole gamut of things between well and cardiac arrest. She wouldn't have a clue, and that's not to disrespect her. She is highly skilled - but you wouldn't let your dentist do a hip replacement, or let your physio perform brain surgery. I hope your son winds up in a better trust than hers, or he needs to not be a doormat from the get go.

Cooper18

Torry_Quine wrote: »

Exactly. To be honest the fact that she's staying late is not the most important point here. It's far more important that these patients are not being looked after properly.

I get that totally. She's my friend though, if no one else is going to fight her battles, I will. If it gets resolved by taking the Poor Patient route then that's excellent for all parties. Her managers don't appear to give a stuff about her or the patients though.

getmore4less

kazzah60 wrote: »

My son is a student radiotherapist and works in a hospital setting for his training - he is adamant that this lady should NOT be left in this situation because should the patient condition deteriorate and need treatment if she is NOT a registed health care professional, it is highly unlikley she is trained to offer medical intervention and should she try to perform ANY medical procedures or interventions she could probably be charged with assaulting a patient- as it is illegal for her to do so

If this is the case I can't see a disiplinary for duty of care that does not exists is going look good for the manager.

kazzah60

Cooper18 wrote: »

I'm sure your son is right Kazz. My friend hasn't been trained to do a set of obs. She can use a defibrillator however - but what about that whole gamut of things between well and cardiac arrest. She wouldn't have a clue, and that's not to disrespect her. She is highly skilled - but you wouldn't let your dentist do a hip replacement, or let your physio perform brain surgery. I hope your son winds up in a better trust than hers, or he needs to not be a doormat from the get go.

to be honest- his initial reaction when I relayed the gist of the thread was " I would be out of there on the dot of finishing time - there is no way I would be responsible for a patient who I couldn't care for - it's a nightmare waiting to happen"

Torry_Quine

Cooper18 wrote: »

I get that totally. She's my friend though, if no one else is going to fight her battles, I will. If it gets resolved by taking the Poor Patient route then that's excellent for all parties. Her managers don't appear to give a stuff about her or the patients though.

No you're absolutely right to be concerned for your friend. However she is the only one who can do something about it, there must be a way to complain about this. The local health board must have somewhere to report problems to.

Poppy9

Probably easier said than done but if it's causing her so much stress then can she move jobs?

SarEl

I think we are getting two very seperate issues confused here, and that is making the situation even more complex than it is. And, I suspect, it has led to this whole situation getting to this point in the first place.

There is, as most people here are most concerned about, an issue of patient care. As I am not a medical professional I can't really comment on the specific issues here, but I would, as an individual, have to express some serious concern about what appears to me to be a somewaht cavalier attitude towards patient care and safety. In fact, for reasons which reflect well on her, it seems that this has, for the last decade, been the primary focus of the OP's friends complaints. She has been filling in incident reports, complaining about issues of patient safety etc.

Quite seperately from this is the issue of the working hours. These have nothing at all to do with any of the other issues. It is within reason to imagine that the hospital management could do something about the alleged risk to patients arising from this situation, and the OP would still be working the same hours! Solving one problem does not solve the other.

And that is why, as with the actual situation described here by the OP, the focus of the thread has actually shifted entirely from the employment issue to the clinical issue - it is easier to comment on / complain about the clinical implications of patients being left in these circumstances. I could solve all of these by, oh, sticking a doctor in there with her (no comments please - I am making up the clinical stuff as I go!), but that still leaves her in there too! OP's friend has made the same mistake - she has complained and complained about the clinical stuff when, as I said before, the actual complaint, ten years ago, should have been about the hours of employment. And that isn't to deman what may be very real clinical issues - it's simply separating out the issues. The OP came here concerned about her friends working hours and enforced, without notice, hours of work - not the clinical conditions!

So that has to be the starting place - forget the clinical stuff, keep that entirely and totally separate, and deal with the working hours. Which is not going to be at all easy to do because the OP has created, or at least continued, a working practice that has established custom and practice in this employment.

And I am still at something of a loss to come up with any effective strategy for dealing with the issue of working hours. As someone else suggested, I did think of a formal request based on caring responsibilities, but what has been described here has not convinced me that the OP's friend is actually formally a carer for these older relatives - it appears more of a "pop in and see they are ok" kind of arrangement. So I think that my only real suggestion is that she return to the union - but with a different approach. I think in the first instance she needs to be better prepared to speak to them - and that means spending time working through the two separate issues. Her primary concern must be the issue of her hours - not the clinical concerns. If she is going to raise the latter with them, then it must not be part of the discussion about hours. This is something the OP may be able to do - help her to prepare and perhaps even go with her to talk to the union and keep the issues seperate.

She needs to be clear with the union that she is prepared to discuss a range of options to resolve the issue of the hours of work - but that things remaining as they are is not one of the options so she is prepared to do whatever they ask to get a solution. They need to know that she will back them too - there is no point in them trying anything if she won't change!

In the end there is really no law that will help her here - this has to be resolved at management level, and it has to be something that is a negotiated solution. She clearly can't do that herself - so she is going to have to go back to the union, and if necessary, go back, go back and go back. Go to branch meetings. Go to higher officials. Just keep going until someone somewhere gives in and does something. You can't exactly blame the union for this, and in their shoes I might be concerned about just how serious she is about it given that nobody has been serious about it in more than a decade!

Dumyat

In the NHS this is common practice. Employees are expected to fill in or make do at a minutes notice and for no pay.
This whole situation could be avoided if patients needing transport are only scanned in the morning sessions, leaving time for the routine transport to get them home before 5pm.