Friday 11 February 2011

No cuts in frontline services - whiteboards to take up the slack

We're constantly told by the government that its squeeze on public finances will not affect frontline services in the NHS. We all know this is nonsense. I was at a meeting today where we saw what the cuts, sorry, efficiency savings, actually mean for our trust.

They have abolished several consultant psychiatrist and junior doctor posts and a great tranche of CPNs, social workers, support workers, and secretarial staff. But fear not, because this will not affect frontline service delivery. How? We all asked. By 'working smarter' we were told by the newly employed 'Team Building Manager', 'Productive Community Champion', and 'Performance Advocate'.

And what, specifically, does this 'working smarter' entail? We all asked again, because we weren't sure where the extra hours in the day were going to come from to see the same number of patients. And the answer we got was fiendish in its ingenuity. We're going to have a big whiteboard in the reception area of our CMHT community bases. Truly the NHS is safe in their hands.

The Future of the NHS

4 comments:

Brainduck said...

I've been in a series of meetings recently about where to make cuts in York MH services.
The best bit was 'Psychological therapies cost too much. We could have life coaches instead of clinical psychologists'.

Gah, we don't even come anywhere near NICE guidelines for psychology, I know someone who has been in the Early Intervention for Psychosis service for 3 years now, & had several rounds of ECT, without seeing a psychologist.

Spirit of 1976 said...

Life coaches instead of clinical psychologists? Oh dear God...

Where do these people come from? It makes you want to hug them and cuddle them until their cute little legs stop kicking.

pj said...

Actually it makes perfect sense. If you're a bureaucrat you want to hit the government targets for access to talking therapy - it isn't that you want to choose something that doesn't have any evidence that it works, rather, as far as you are concerned, efficacy is utterly irrelevant. Since efficacy is irrelevant why pay for expensive clinical psychologists rather than 'life coaches'?

The Shrink said...

Lose clinicians, gain a 'Team Building Manager', 'Productive Community Champion', and 'Performance Advocate'.

And a whiteboard.

This is cogent decision making? Pink forms and time for Part IV treatment, methinks . . .