“There’s too much slash and burn in the NHS”
“I think that we need a restructuring of the whole thing. There’s too much ‘slash and burn’ in the NHS. We don’t learn from our mistakes. There’s a model…I used to do computers…it’s an iterative model which means you formulate something, and then you make a program, and then you make something happen. And then you go back and you tweak it, and you change some things. And then you go back and make it better. And then you go back and tweak it again, and you change it, make better. But what happens in the NHS is it’s all slash and burn. So we have an initiative this year. And then they’ll just chuck that out next year, and all the money that they spent on it. And a couple of people got a promotion out of it. And it was kind of useless anyway. And then they’ll bring in another one and say ‘This year, it’s going to be perfect wards’ or blah, blah, blah…We’ve got far too much of this top-down management who are telling us ‘Do this, do that, do the other and do it immediately – if not sooner’. Instead of working with us. And the reason I’m a little bit passionate about it is because I believe there is a better way. Because I have worked with people, I have experienced working with people positively in management, who were good managers. And the way they worked I identify with that because they work alongside you. They treat you with respect. They don’t just keep looking at your KPIs. They work with you as a human being. And that’s all I want. That’s all I want from anybody whether my colleagues or even patients for that matter: to be treated as a human being.”