Something for the Week-end, Sir?
Like a couple of days off?
Nothing divides the Serfs from the Masters so much as whether your working ‘week’ includes Saturday and Sunday or not.
In the Hospitality Industry, expecting a day off to occur at the ‘week-end’ would have them rolling on the floor laughing. Wanting a Bank Holiday free from work would reduce them to an apoplectic fit.
‘People need to eat at the week-end, as they do during the week, that is our business, we are there when our customers need us’.
In the Hospital Industry, the old rules of only the Serfs work on Saturdays and Sundays still apply.
Patients are 16 per cent more likely to die if admitted on a Sunday as opposed to a weekday. […] Fluctuating staff levels are the major cause, particularly with consultants and senior staff being only ‘on call’ at weekends. The JRSM also suggests that limited access to diagnostics and a reluctance among patients to admit themselves during the week are contributing to the trend.
Even the Serfs are revolting:
Nurses working for NHS Direct have lodged a collective grievance after being told they will have to work more weekends in a bid to improve the organisation’s performance.
What on earth is so special about having your days off on a Saturday and Sunday? Maybe years ago when church attendance was more prolific – at present it is estimated that only 6% of the population attend church on a Sunday – and a third of them are past retirement age anyway!
We accept that it is important for people to eat on a Saturday and Sunday, we think the emergency services should be on standby; and God help any squaddie who trotted out the ‘but it’s Sunday, Sarge’ line – yet hospitals think that the answer ‘because it’s Sunday’ is perfectly acceptable as a reason to wait to diagnose or operate on your body?
Surely time that the class war is stamped out in Hospitals and Serfs and Masters both work staggered rotas?
And the GPs too.
What think you?
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February 6, 2012 at 14:38 -
A close and much loved relative of mine had a stroke on a Saturday morning, but had to wait until Monday afternoon for a scan. The unit opened only during 9-5 working hours Monday to Friday.
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February 6, 2012 at 14:39 -
Exactly. There is no logic to it.
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February 6, 2012 at 20:14 -
And they wonder why equipment is under utilised so pushing up the cost per use.
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February 6, 2012 at 15:00 -
From last years experience of my fathers cancer diagnosis, and his subsequent passing, it just doesn’t pay to be ill at the weekend PERIOD!!!
A terminal illness which progresses more quickly that the “norm” appears to throw the system into total confusion. Trying to arrange home nursing help, and a more suitable bed was a battle even for the one good GP at our local practice. We also found that Macmillan practically shut down at the weekend… -
February 6, 2012 at 15:09 -
No one should have to work weekends. It’s not civilized.
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February 6, 2012 at 15:13 -
What difference does it make if your week ‘ends’ on a Tuesday and starts again on a Friday?
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February 6, 2012 at 15:20 -
I won’t even post to my blog on a weekend!
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February 7, 2012 at 04:09 -
I love working in the lab at weekends. There’s nobody to distract me.
I prefer to take my weekends midweek, because the shops are quiet.
Around here, you can get a three course meal on Christmas day. Try getting an emergency dentist or a heart specialist. Even the supermarket shelf-stackers are in work.
Highly paid consultants, all of those pompous medi-dicks who think they should be running our lives, all those council diversity co-ordinators, all the MPs in charge of running the country, where are they?
Stuffed with Christmas pud and brandy and immobile. Shelf-stackers, chefs and waiters are at work, the ‘important people’ are useless.
I’ll charge double to work Christmas day but not because I don’t want to do it. Because those who believe days off are sacred are daft enough to pay me double to do it.
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February 6, 2012 at 15:27 -
OK. We’ll knock off all the power stations on Friday night, and fire ‘em up again Monday morning.
That OK for you?
(And no – they don’t run on their own on Saturdays and Sundays!)
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February 6, 2012 at 15:31 -
Fine by me.
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February 6, 2012 at 16:21 -
Not by me, though; nor, I suspect, about 98% of the population if they were ever to be asked.
Consider this – NHS doctors are paid for by the taxpayer, most of whom are also patients at some time or other. Should not the piper call the tune?
It seems to me that NHS doctors, at least the ones above trainee rank, have become overpaid, underworked whingers with very little appreciation of what they are actually paid to do. It’s time that changed.
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February 6, 2012 at 16:24 -
Correction – Should not those who pay the piper call the tune?
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February 6, 2012 at 16:51 -
No, Engineer, it doesn’t work like that. The sooner you realise that the NHS exists to give employ to doctors, nurses and managers and to keep costs down by ignoring the ailments of the elderly thus hastening their demise, the better.
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February 6, 2012 at 17:56 -
Lilith: can we give the NHS baiting a break… a friend of mine had just been kept alive through the care and dedication of surgeons and nurses, and it’s kept me going for the past 50+ years (the past 22 intensively)….
It may have an appalling bureaucracy (no argument there), but the frontline staff are great, although I concede consultants can be arrogant little shits.
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February 6, 2012 at 19:05 -
The frontline staff aren’t always great. Some of them – and this is from personal experience – are lazy, incompetent bitches with as much compassion as a crocodile.
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February 6, 2012 at 19:48 -
Such criticisms can be laid at the door of any public service and it surprises nobody to read of increasing assaults on NHS and other staff. Our Libraries can still be held in some regard but the deadweight of incoming dross already weakens that once-fine service.
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February 6, 2012 at 16:03 -
My mother’s GP called an ambilance for her last Monday for suspected DVT. The amblance got het to the hospital at 5.30 pm for a scan.
‘Sorry, scanner closes at 5pm’
She then sat in a chair for 6 hours (probably not so good if she had had DVT) until one of her friends managed to pick her up, take her home and return her again the next day!
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February 6, 2012 at 16:04 -
I think I am self employed and without much a of a pension so weekend is a purely notional matter which applies only to those in the public sector or perhaps to bankers. It certainly does not have much meaning for those such as me.
Grump grum grump!
Stay warm Anna, don’t want you turning into a frozen racoon in the Big Freeze ! -
February 6, 2012 at 16:33 -
The, sadly missed since his retirement. NHS blog Doctor highlighted this years ago saying don’t get ill at weekends or bank holidays, don’t know if the archives are still available but he did a long post on it. My own experience, my husband had a stroke while working away from home as he began to recover I was arranging with BUPA for an ambulance to take him to a hospital near home as he had PMI through his employer. No problem with that but by then it was Friday and no consultant on duty to release him. When I called on the Monday I was told he was discharged! he was still very confused, I had no idea how I was to get him home, couldn’t even see a Dr. to know what to expect in future it was a nightmare. They were getting the bed anyway as I was having him transferred, in the end a friend drove us back and I got our GP in. When he had the misfortune to have an eventually fatal fall it was on New years Day, 2 years later, no one to interpret a scan, managed to send it to Addenbrooks. I don’t think he could have been saved but it did not help nor did the two young Drs. who just told me nothing could be done , pointed me to the phone and that was it. 6 am, freezing cold, my son couldn’t get there until the next day and they, very reluctantly opened the door to let me have a cigarette. In a state of total shock, alone and that was it. The whole experience was a complete nightmare.
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February 6, 2012 at 16:43 -
Apart from weekends, it’s best to avoid hospitals duirng the first few weeks in August every year.
That’s when the just-qualified new doctors arrive, with not much time for the handovers from the ones moving to pastures new. Rookie mistakes are allegedly very common.
So a weekend in August…arrgh! -
February 6, 2012 at 16:43 -
Nurses have always worked weekends (or the wards would have been a right mess on Mondays).
Consultants have not.
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February 6, 2012 at 17:06 -
Time to exposed this damnable scandal. Boarders like myself, who are not allowed to return home after Saturday School, must jolly well rely on the old sock-shop staying open at wickers. Whilst I will often submit to unreasonable demands, the blatant disregard of hoi polloi bakers is just begging for detrouserment. I mean, it’s not as if they could possibly have anything important to do at wickers, is it?
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February 6, 2012 at 17:09 -
Sunday catering may be nothing new but what of the growing tendency of retail outlets to open seven days a week? There’s a certain irony in being able to return a faulty alarm clock or take a computer in for repair while being unable to obtain medical treatment until the next weekday.
I suspect, as in so many other employment issues, it may ultimately boil down to childcare.
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February 6, 2012 at 17:13 -
Well, I’m a traditionalist. I remember when you could watch Swap Shop on Saturday mornings with Noel Edmonds, then in the afternoon, World of Sport with Dickie Davies. Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy would be going at each other. Then your mum would make you scambled egg on toast or something while you watched Happy Days, and later there would be the Generation Game. On Sunday mornings, you would wash the car, then have a roast dinner, then snooze in the armchair all afternoon waiting for Bullseye. And on Wednesdays, the bloody shops shut in the afternoon!!! But what have we got now? People being stabbed in the street all because society is breaking down. No one respects the weekends.
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February 6, 2012 at 17:31 -
It is not just weekends.
Come Christmas the wards are emptied. Miracle cures or staff convenience?
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February 6, 2012 at 18:17 -
Why are you surprised?
The payer of the piper is the state. And when doctors sold themselves to it, they ceased to be doctors.
They are now only pretending to be a profession. In truth they are (mostly lefty) state apparatchiks and couldn’t really care less about their patients.
If that were not true they would come out when they were needed and use some judgment rather than parroting propaganda about not eating butter, passive smoking, eating your ‘five a day’, 21 units a week and so on and on. -
February 6, 2012 at 20:30 -
If the NHS was actually run like a business in the private sector there would be about 70% less managers and those workers on the shop floor that weren’t up to standard would be ‘let go’ to try and find work elsewhere.
In my youth, matron ran her hospital with a rod of iron. Woe betide any nurse or other staff that didn’t do their job to ‘her’ standards. Returning to something like that would be a start – at least it would clean up the wards and make sure they were staffed at all times.
In those bygone days the hospital and staff were there to help people, now they appear to be there to help themselves and damn the people.
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February 10, 2012 at 00:03 -
Spot on!. And your last paragraph paraphrases Lilith’s sentiments with which I agree.
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February 7, 2012 at 08:06 -
Can I first declare an interest? I am a retired consultant orthopaedic surgeon. The issue is working a five day week. I, like most of my colleagues used to work a five day week, Monday-Friday. My on call was in addition to that. I I was duty weekend – what we called a ‘take’ weekend (for most of my career every second or third weekend) it was in addition to the five days. I can remember one take weekend when my wife brought me the supper she had cooked to the ‘rest’ room in the operating theatres for me the anaesthetists and my houseman. The hospital didn’t provide food for doctors, we were expected to go home at weekend. That weekend, admittedly the worst of my career, I got seven hours sleep from Friday to Monday and then had to work the following week as usual. Now junior staff work rostered duties (which ruins continuity of care, but that is a separate issue), but most consultants still work weekends in addition to the weekday job. Oh, and its in the contract, no extra duty payments/overtime.
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February 7, 2012 at 08:46 -
Given the ‘limited access to diagnostics’ quoted and the anecdotal evidence of scans etc being unavailable outside office hours, is it possible that some patients with complications don’t make it as far as the operating table until normal weekday service is resumed, even though a surgeon is available?
And if so, could it be enough to affect the statistics?
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February 7, 2012 at 08:52
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February 7, 2012 at 08:53 -
Stick around Mike, I’m gunning for the NHS in the piece I’m writing now……
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February 7, 2012 at 10:05 -
Mrs SAOT worked for a private sector scanner company attached to the NHS and they were keen to maximise every oportunity to use their MRI machine. So you could more or less get a scan when you wanted one, 7am to 9pm, or weekends as you pleased.
The only reason they didn’t operate 24 hours was the fact that MRI’s tend to be non-emergency (not all but most) and you couldn’t get patients to come after 9pm.
By contrast, the CT scanner was NHS owned and run and it closed at 5pm and damn the consequences. They were in adjacent buildings in the same hospital.
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February 7, 2012 at 10:22 -
February 7, 2012 at 10:25 -
Ah, that would explain why I had a head MRI recently at about 5 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon at a major NHS London hospital. I thought that was efficient, and odd.
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February 7, 2012 at 10:55 -
I think you’ll find that’s the exception rather than the rule.
Anybody having much contact with the NHS of late (for example, supporting a sick relative) will be well aware that finding a doctor during nights or weekends is well-nigh impossible, and if the doctors are not there to order such things as scans, there’s no point having the scanners operational until the doctors are back on Monday morning.
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February 7, 2012 at 11:26 -
Engineer, I have found much to criticise in the NHS handling of serious illness in my family but when my father had a stroke in the early hours of a Sunday morning (being in hospital for chemo over the weekend) the doctor on call was there within a few minutes.
He never regained consciousness; when it became clear he would not survive, the doctor called me and my sister to let us know the situation and visited his bedside at intervals throughout the rest of the day. Even though her shift had ended by then, she was with him and my mother when he died that evening (my sister and I were changing a tyre, thanks to the thieving bastard who stole a manhole cover on the A7, but that’s another story), and stayed on to speak to us when we arrived.
You may be right, and she may have been an exception; I sncerely hope not.
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February 8, 2012 at 17:17 -
Ok, putting my head above the parapet, I’m a nurse. (just don’t hit my face, it’s ugly enough as it is).
This days off at the weekend thing is being launched by NHS Direct, you know those nurses who answer the phone and tell you to call your GP or go to hospital after spending an hour answering inane computer generated questions, not the clinical nurses.
Those of us who work wards and A&E have always had to work weekends, nights and bank-holidays (on a rota). We’re the only large group in the NHS who do and do so without complaint as part of our job (it’s the only way to make the wage liveable). If you want a doctor, physio, radiographer, etc. on a weekend then you’re left with the skeleton ‘on-call’ team. That is why care and treatment suffers. Clinics and services such as specialist and management all disappear at 1700 every day as well as every weekend.
I agree it’s completely stupid for a service required 24/7. the reason? Cost, the out of hours pay rates would destroy the budgets of any hospital (the majority of NHS costs is the wage bill after all). Me, I get time and a quarter for nights, time and a half for Sunday and Bank holidays (25 years service, two degrees, £18 an hour, yippee do dah
).Whilst I agree, making all the week-days the same would be rational it isn’t going to happen when the absolute majority of people employed in shops, offices and businesses get that weekend off (or increased compensation). So either you advocate special treatment for NHS staff (I’d leave and so would most others) or face a national outcry.
Do you get weekends off? I have never been able to plan ahead more than one month in advance because shift rotas simply preclude it, I have limited social life as most (non NHS) friends always go out on their weekends. It’s easy to say that this is the right thing to do but how many of you would be willing to give up your regular time? Not many I suspect.
The only thing that annoys me, other than waiting desperately for a (non emergency) service to open on a Monday morning so we can help a patient (if any service or procedure is needed it can be called on at any time, if it isn’t then somebody didn’t do their job), is that those special groups who get all that time off also get time-off-in- lieu for bank holidays (?!?). They didn&
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