It was announced in the hospital that we had to start loosing staff to save money:
"to then identify particular at risk posts within each area. In order to ensure there is no impact on front line services the pool of staff at risk of redundancy will not include front line clinical posts, such as nurses, doctors and allied health professionals. Individuals at risk will include managers and administrative staff at all levels, particularly from corporate functions, based on the pool comprised of those with less than 24 months continuous NHS service."
[My emphasis]

Two people from Medical Physics were made redundant - fortunately one post was successfully fought and was withdrawn from the list.
They were not "managers and administrative staff" but technical people.

Beware of cuts that are occuring across the country, it seems that even though we think our roles are vital we seem not to be included in the group "front line clinical posts"

Robert

It is important to justify your department, QA is one way to show that you are doing a good job.

It's amazing how i am expected to do training on swine flu, disability, child protection and the like as a member of front line staff, but when it comes to swine flu jabs and the rest i am not considered to be frontline.

I wonder if it has anything to do with meeting targets for numbers of staff who have carried out training.

Lee

@Robert: what about the "Outreach" and "Diversity" Managers?

@Lee: swine 'flu - what happened to the pandemic? Could this have been yet another damp squib (as predicted), or simply a scare-mongering tactic by Nanny?

@Umish: looks like you're missing the point here. Doing a good job (or otherwise) has very little (nothing) to do with it, unfortunately.

To understand the NHS you need to bone up on things like left wing political agendas, social engineering, tribal loyalties (cronyism), jobs for the "chosen ones" ... and "Common Purpose" in general. Sadly, decent public healthcare for the masses comes quite a way farther down the list.

Regrettably, the NHS as it stands is the very epitome of Big Brother Britain. Obscenely large amounts of money are bunged at it but it remains, shall we say, as inefficient as ever. The only sensible way forward would seem to be to dismantle this behemoth and start again.

May I commend and suggest the French model.

What is more galling is that in the same message about cutting staff, a block on recruitment cutting of overtime and agency staff (but not the work load) are welcomes to new managers.

We also have several "frozen" posts but they do not count as lack of staff as they still appear on numbers sheets. The fact that there is no one allowed to be recruited to them so no one is there to do the work does not count.

And we have worse to come a 10% cut in staff over all. With 7000 staff that is 700 people to go. What is worse is that it seems to be people that have to go not frozen posts as that does not save them money..... a double whammy if ever I saw one.
A department full of frozen posts, perhaps that is what happened to the Marie Celeste. The positions were there it was just that the posts were not filled with crew.


Robert

"The only sensible way forward would seem to be to dismantle this behemoth and start again."

Dare,nt you mention the dread word PRIVATISATION then Geoff ??

@Tony: not necessarily. I believe that Britain was at its Best (in Modern Times, that is) when we operated under the so-called "Mixed Economy". That is, stuff that faired best in private hands stayed there, and stuff that needed to be Nationalised, er, was!

@Robert: it's clear to me (as an outsider, looking in) that there is some sort of agenda at play here. Let it all go down the pan, Mate. Sooner or later they'll have to call in armies (well, platoons) of techs to sort out the piles of broken kit.

From the medical equipment perspective, it sounds like the only parties likely to gain from all this will be the manufacturers and suppliers. Because no doubt "funding will be made available" to replace all the broken kit when the next pandemic comes along.

I have just been chatting with someone about these figures we have been given
7000 staff in total at 10% = 700 redundancies
5000 nurses are frontline so not touched, this leaves 2000 staff at risk.
Within these there are radiographers, therapists etc who are "front line".
This means about half of the remaining staff will be made redundant. Surely this is not possible. Having said that 22% of our Supplies department have just gone, under the first wave. They have SLAs with 4 other Trusts which they must maintain at the current level as the other Trusts are still paying them the same money. So how will we fair being that we are 20% of the number of Trusts they serve.
Someone needs to do some basic thinking and maths rather than throw figures around.
Robert

No doubt your CEO will still be getting his (or, more likely I guess, her) "well deserved" bonus. Which, by the way, has to be funded somehow. But I should imagine that such essential expenditure is probably (what's that BS phrase?) ... ring-fenced.

Excuse me a minute ... I have to visit the small room. I've just felt the need for a bit of "quantitative easing"!

Very short sighted Rob. There are many ways of saving money without sacrificing ebme staff - who are usually already under resourced.

Once the staff are gone it just puts more pressure on the rest of the staff reducving morale etc, etc.