The story I hear the other day (direct from the horses mouth) is that my local large teaching hospital were no longer cleaning offices.
The job of cleaning the offices would now fall to its inhabitants, including senior nurses and Consultants. Most Consultants are paid for 10 or 11 sessions per week within the hospital and it is not unreasonable to think that they would take one of those a fortnight to clean their office properly. Man…that is an expensive office cleaner! A head and neck surgeon who has trained for 22 – 25 years taking a session a fortnight to clean their office. Not long sighted.
In the same vein, the same hospital has cut its portering staff by 50% so that should ensure that more of the Consultants, when they are not cleaning their offices, are stood in theatre or clinic without any patients because they haven’t been brought to them by the porter.
The portering staff in a hospital are at least as important as the Consultants because the Consultants will not be porters.
The NHS is in difficulty.