Sunday, September 21, 2014

NHS: Enjoying the work!

 Just back from some nice snorkelling. It reminds me: one must enjoy ones hobby. What if work is your hobby too?










©2014 Am Ang Zhang 


         Fool or no fool, one needs to enjoy one’s work, even in the NHS.

         This perhaps is one thing that the government has conveniently forgotten. Many of us do what we do because we enjoy it. Otherwise why should anyone want to teach in universities when they can earn ten or twenty times more in industry? We may also decide to dedicate more time to work for personal pride and satisfaction. During the few years I worked at the inpatient units I spent in excess of a hundred hours a week there, one man doing the job of at least two.  In addition to that, I was still looking after two outpatient clinics. 

         With increased capacity, we were ready to take on transfers. At that time the Health Authorities still had decent managers not yet blinded by directives and performance targets. For a start these managers did not interfere with clinical matters. For our part we were free to exercise our clinical judgment.  Unfortunately many consultants abuse this privilege of clinical independence, often making excessive demands for treatments and investigations, and managers have learnt to ignore them.  Worse the government set up this organisation called NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) to try to deal with such behaviour.  



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