Stop the bleeding in our NHS... now
Stressed out domestic says she can no longer stay with the NHS as gruelling workloads and targets mean she cannot clean wards to a safe standard and her own health is at risk from having to cut corners
THE NHS in Scotland is buckling and its staff are on their knees.
We have reported how nursing staff are turning their back on their vocation because of the immense pressures of trying to run wards and care for patients with fewer and fewer resources.
Now the domestic staff who perform the vital task of keeping these wards clean and tidy are feeling the strain too.
The staff member we interview today talks about the stress of trying to keep control of hospital-acquired infection while not having enough time to do the job that needs to be done.
It is the same story with medical and ward staff.
Yesterday, Health Secretary Jeane Freeman had to bail out two health boards with £150million. This is not extra money, it simply gets them back on an even keel, which in NHS terms is a constant sense of crisis.
She also assured the GP conference in Glasgow yesterday that she would hit targets to recruit 800 more doctors in a decade.
That is a laudable aim but the Scottish Government, in whose hands the NHS is, have to get a grip on the staff attrition rate before then.
A STRESSED hospital domestic is following in the footsteps of a worn-out nurse who has decided to quit the health service.
The ancillary worker is the second member of staff in as many weeks to cite intolerable pressures for forcing her to leave.
And she voiced concerns that workloads were placing overall safety and cleanliness standards at risk.
Wendy MacMillan claims there is not enough time to do the job properly so cleaning staff are cutting corners to make sure the worst areas get the proper attention.
Wendy, 46, from Airdrie, said the pressure at Monklands Hospital in the town made her so ill she had to take time off due to stress and anxiety – a problem she says is rife within the institution.
Yet the single mum of three said managers bombarded her with letters and threatened she would not be paid because they claimed she had breached their sickness policy.
Just two weeks ago, a nurse from the same health board told how she was leaving, blaming understaffing for piling on added pressure.
Wendy said: “The managers sit in an office and work out how long it will take you to do a certain task but they have no idea how long it actually takes. To make sure everything is cleaned properly you have to skip bits.”
Once a week, the domestics have to do a deeper clean of a ward – which includes cleaning under beds and cleaning walls and ceilings – but they are given just 20 minutes extra to do this.
Wendy and other domestics had to take time out of their tight schedules to deal with patients’ food.
Her duties included serving tea to more than 30 patients between 10 and 10.30am each day – a large chunk of time lost from her fourhour cleaning shift.
She said the staff were under huge pressures from managers who put “notes on our files”.
Wendy said: “I once got a note for taking my dirty mops downstairs two minutes early at the end of my shift.
“Others got them for going to the toilet, having a drink of water when it was really hot on the ward and leaving the ward area to get a breath of fresh air at the lift when she felt ill.” She added that staff struggled to take their holidays. She said: “We put in for holidays and they were knocked back and then we were told we will lose them because we didn’t take them. It is just so unfair.”
The final straw for Wendy was the way she was treated while she was
off ill on two occasions. The first was just before New Year when an accident at work caused toilet cleaner to splash into her eye. She took the next day off but bowed to pressure to return the day after.
But Wendy complained that when she did so, managers took her into a toilet, demanding she showed them how to clean it.
She said: “They just didn’t believe it had happened.” In July, Wendy had been forced to leave work because she felt unwell.
She had valid sick lines from her doctor which clearly stated she was unfit for work. She is awaiting the results of four biopsies, which were taken from her stomach.
But she received a sharply-worded letter from her manager which claimed she had breached absence policy and threatened to terminate her employment.
More letters were sent and the stress got so much that she quit, despite having no job to go to.
The NHS’s John White said: “We do not recognise the claims being made by this individual member of staff and refute the suggestion we would issue intimidating correspondence to our staff.”