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| Mark Clarke at St George's Hospital |
Mark Clarke is calling for urgent action to boost staff morale at St George’s Hospital.
Very worryingly, staff morale at St George’s Hospital is extremely low. The Healthcare Commission’s annual report (here) shows that St George’s Hospital staff are extremely overworked and undersupported by their own management.
It cannot be a co-incidence that the Healthcare Commission report that both staff morale is low and that the quality of care at St George’s Hospital is in decline. Their last report on St George’s said that the quality of clinical care at St George’s had fallen from Good to Fair.
The reasons why staff morale are low are complex. The root cause is the feast and famine approach of the Government towards health funding. This has left St George’s with an enormous debt of £40m. To meet the repayments on this debt local managers are having to cut services. Examples of this include:
- Staff vacancy freeze: This will mean some staff having to do two jobs at once for no extra pay.
- Shutting the staff social club: This was done despite over 2000 staff objecting.
- Running dangerous accommodation facilities: St George’s was fined by the Health and Safety Executive for Asbestos violations in staff accommodation facilities
- No Plan for Low Staff Morale: Failure to put in place any action plan for 10 months after the last dismal staff survey results were published.
- Targets Culture: The Government set central targets which are both very time consuming and distort clinical priorities.
- Overpayments Debacle: The Government’s Agenda for Change programme changed the pay scales of almost every person in the NHS. However, the NHS systems could not cope and as a result many staff were overpaid. This has meant that some of the lowest paid staff have had their wages reclaimed by the NHS. This is no way to run an people focused organisation. This entire scandal was exposed by Mark Clarke who produced documents showing that St George’s overpaid staff last year by nearly a million pounds. Link to news story.
- Junior Doctor Application System Failure: The Government introduced a new system (MTAS) by which junior doctors could apply for work. It was a disaster with doctors personal details, including their religion and sexual orientation, being mistaken placed online for all to see. Many doctors did not get a suitable placement. St George’s were asked for feedback on the process, they reported to the Hospital Board that they were planning to submit that feedback. Documents obtained by Mark Clarke, however, have exposed that they failed to make any submission at all to the Department of Health. So the voice of junior doctors at St George’s was never passed on. See below for David Cameron speaking at the Junior Doctors rally in London on this subject.
- Nurses Pay Disappointment: The Government unilaterally ignored the recommendation of the independent review body and refused to award nurses a pay settlement in line with inflation. Instead they cut the pay of nurses. See here for the Royal College of Nurses campaign on this and David Cameron’s support of fair pay for nurses.
It is vital that we start to value the staff at St George’s Hospital more. They treat us well when we are sick. Both local managers and the Government need to treat them better.
- Scrap the targets culture
- Stop annual NHS reorganisations (like the one which gave us the overpayments debacle) and give the NHS a period of stability
- Use a tried and tested system for junior doctor applications
- Reopen the empty staff social club
- Get a proper local plan for improving staff morale
- End the St George’s vacancy freeze
Watch below to see David Cameron address 12,000 junior doctors in London in March 2007. They were protesting against reforms to their medical training. We need to start treating doctors like human beings - the current online application system is an utter shambles.