It’s the standard way Conservatives deal with public services - underfund, run down, sell to private sector and subsidise profit with taxpayer money. The USA medical sector is itching to get its hands on the billions spent on NHS.

Valid. Sadly the system is already broken. They are already doing it now. We spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax payers money to the big pharma organisations who conveniently benefit. They’re bleeding us dry. It would blow your mind to know the cost of some of the tests we do. Straight to the pockets of the MPs mates.

This is sadly true. I used to work for a company which supplied the NHS it wasn't a large company, but the profits went into the tens of millions all being sent back to America. It wasn't even the full profit (as it was a subsidiary) the company back in America was also making profit selling the products to the UK branch at another mark up NHS suppliers should be audited, the medical monopolies need to be broken up and the market should become competitive again.

This needs pinned!!! Some wilful ignorants need to understand this!!!!

Speaking of medical capitalism and how much it sucks, I've had to rush through the paperwork to change medication due to the fact that Pfizer decided that they could make more money but just making less and charging more, I get this medication from a private clinic but the administration and monitoring are done by an NHS nurse, to have thus change enacted I've had to gave 4 separate signatures to agree to it, one from the private clinics Dr, one from an NHS Dr, one from the nurse administering it and one from myself (it's a bit much but I understand that they want to know for sure that I'm not self injecting cus it's a 20G needle and 2.5ml of fluid), all in all its cost me over 300 quid to just swith meds cus a private company needed to pad their margins And it's not like I can use the NHS pathway as the wait list for their equivalent service is on the order of years (3 in the absolute best case, indefinite in the worst) where the NHS should be responding to referrals in a much shorter time frame (it's either 18 weeks or 18 months, I don't remember) It's not like it's a unique issue to me, there is a subreddit just for my private provider, let alone the people who can't afford the over 100 gbp monthly cost of private who are forced to go through a compromised experience of their life

It's a sad state of affairs and one a lot of people are unaware of. 99% of British people have pride/love for the NHS as something thats always been there and available to everyone all their lives and I for one have nothing but respect for those front line staff and those departments that support them. The problem is from above, upper/middle management are slowly killing the NHS and sucking it dry to benefit themselves and other for profit companies. All too often when this subject comes up people simply say 'just give the NHS more money' the problem is that those entrusted with putting that money where it needs to go simply don't or more likely won't, they'd rather pay themselves exorbitant wages to as you said, to sit in meetings, do presentations or have zoom calls all day and overpay outside contractors insane money to fulfill some vanity project or hire more middle management roles than pay front line/support staff a decent wage and look at how they can make those roles appealing and retain well trained experienced staff and improve departments with the best equipment. As more time goes on I really fear that your right, the NHS will at some point reach a critical mass and most of those medical professionals will walk away or be pushed out and the whole thing will collapse in on itself, then the private sector will step in and we'll be paying thousands for a broken leg or having a baby, and those that caused it all? well they'll jump ship before the end and latch on to another public sector then simply start all over again..Sorry for the rant but I feel the same about where it's all going.

This is so true. The NHS's woes are often just oversimplified as not enough money, the nasty Tories are killing it etc. But its actually the culture of NHS management over the years that has neglected medical staff at the expense of big shot managers who seem to do very little for the huge wages they earn. The NHS needs a huge axe taken to executive roles, external consultants etc and the savings need to be passed directly to the medical staff.

It's extremely inefficient and short-sighted. One of my family members works in the NHS, and just the other day, shared a tidbit on how inefficient they are. They built a new hospital block maybe 15 years ago to save money. They negotiated a contract whereby the developer put up most of the cost of building, and the NHS rents it off them. Of course, the rent charged is utterly obscene. They also have to go through the developer to get any building maintenance or upgrades done. She said they recently got a lock fitted on a door, and it cost £2k. When you hear stories like this one a regular basis, you really begin to understand why the NHS is struggling. It's a poorly managed, beauracratic behemoth.

Yeah totally. I heard of insane waste and mismanagement during COVID too. Often it's via poorly thought through contracts. Companies secure a bid by giving a very cheap quote that poorly trained managers go for thinking it will save money, without checking the fine print on changes and maintenance costs like those you mention, which makes the contractor heaps of money over the 20 year contract. Its all a massive scam and can be directly blamed on the NHS's "Save a million this year and get my bonus/promotion" philosophy rather than thinking about the true cost to the taxpayer in the long term. It's sadly a disease that is plaguing all of our public institutions at the moment. The military is also really struggling because of poorly executed contracts right now, particularly in defence estate management and procurement. Once upon a time our large organisations were able to maintain themselves but we sacked lots of support staff to save on pensions etc, only to waste more money on the contractors that replaced them. Ban contractors and consultants in the public sector I say!

Fantastic reply

Not the 99% of Daily Mail readers. They are always complaining … and want the NHS shut down … not realising what the alternative is… even so they will vote the shower in every time because cOrBYn.

It does need more money though I agree a lot gets wasted, particularly on contractors. My department had a contractor analyst in - ran to about £300 quid a day. This is equivalent of a band 5 so we're talking this person was replacing someone paid only about 25-30k or paid I don't know something like 100 quid a day. The reason: was too difficult to find someone good at that level of pay. Also the conditions and the work is really hard for the money. So why would anyone put themselves through that? I'm talking admin here of course nurses are even worse because you simply HAVE to have them in and not only that they also have to be in on short notice which is many £££ for agency. My department could have struggled through and no one dies, but for nursing, that's not possible. Hospitals sometimes have no choice.

Also valid, my wife has a friend who spent 12 hours in A&E because her daughter had a cold,, then complained about the wait, yet thinks she was justified.

Hope your wife called her out on that?

Ideally the system would be good enough to handle idiots like these. Not saying it's good, but this would be dealt with a check-up and a warning. Not a 12 hour wait. It's all on the ruling party's wilful mismanagement of our NHS imo...

This is another symptom of NHS problems and mismanagement though - GPs are so overworked and overflowing that 111 is sending people into urgent care and A&E because there are no healthcare professionals at a less urgent level available to treat them. I had to go in on a weekday afternoon last week and it was so crowded that obviously sick and injured people had to sit on the floor. Security were asking relatives not to take seats because there weren't enough for the patients. Every level of the NHS is crumbling and it's all just putting more pressure on the emergency department and their labs...

I posted this some time ago in a different thread but thought I would paste it here as it's relevant..... Here are some key things which happened in just 2016 to bring it to breaking point. Removal of the NHS [bursary](https://www.unison.org.uk/our-campaigns/save-the-nhs-bursary/#:~:text=But%20the%20government%20has%20scrapped,nursing%20courses%20beginning%20in%202017) for allied healthcare professionals like Nurses, midwife's, radiographers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists etc... This created a massive shortfall in new staff entering the NHS for years after and we are still suffering as a result now. The bursary was later [reinstated](https://news.sky.com/story/first-victory-in-campaign-to-restore-student-nurse-grants-11889437) by the Tories in 2019 to much fanfare by them as they were demonstrating their "commitment to the NHS" conveniently forgetting that they fucking scraped it in the first place. Doctors pension tax [trap](https://www.bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/pensions/tax/end-the-pension-tax-trap-for-doctors) which caused many doctors to retire early rather than be hit by massive tax bills, and since then many consultants being unable to work additional hours to support the NHS because of the same reasons. In 2019 the Tories [offered](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-pensions-tax-rules-tory-government-staffing-crisis-hospitals-doctors-a9213826.html) temporarily boost doctors pay in order to make up for the shorts fall. Again, let's not forget they fucked it up in the first place, and the fixed was only a temporary measure. The junior doctors [contract](https://www.themedicportal.com/application-guide/medical-school-interview/nhs-hot-topics/the-junior-doctor-contract/) dispute saw the Tories attempt to strip Oncall and unsociable hours payments from junior doctors which would have forced them to not work these shifts and put patient safety at risk. These shifts are essential for a hospital to function, and the Tories knew it. Again, this has since been resolved but not without a battle. There are many other examples throughout the last decade which demonstrate what could be interpreted as deliberate acts of sabotage to staffing and funding. In 2016 a lot of these came to a head, but these had been planned years in advance and are only just being fixed over the last two years. There was a glimmer of hope for the NHS in the early days of covid, but I fear that has since be snuffed out and soon we will see it close its doors forever, and we won't know what we have lost until it's gone.

I'm an OT. We've had over 45 therapy staff leave since January 2021. We've hired 2. One has already left. There is no-one else to hire until the new grads finish in April (if we're lucky). We have three feeder unis that give us students and I have to say as well that sadly the quality has dropped massively since COVID. We used to have students who were excited to learn, be on placement and were happy to get stuck in with anything. Not all of them of course but a vast majority were proactive and keen. Now most of them want accommodations for the most random things (one wanted to only work weekends because of another job she had during the week - we're a Monday to Friday service, another didn't want to see anyone with dementia because they had a grandparent who had it - unfortunately we can't pick and choose our patients and all have our own personal lives with people in it who also have health conditions) and hardly ever put in any extra work (like researching exercises for a certain condition for the physio students or looking at health conditions and their implications on an individual's life for the OTs). Some are fantastic but they're no longer the majority and it does worry me how the tides have shifted and what we're going to have for a workforce in a few years. Couple that with a staff that is massively overstretched, burnt out to a crisp and doesn't have the resources to do what we need to do (we have had two and a half years of equipment shortages, care shortages, nursing/residential home bed shortages, community rehab services have been annihilated) and you can understand why we're haemorrhaging staff quicker than someone who's been stabbed repeatedly in an artery... It genuinely makes me so sad to see the state of affairs. My colleagues and I do the best we can for our patients, we put our heart and soul into our work and most patients and families understand our frustrations and constraints but it's not good enough. I go on maternity leave in a few months and quite frankly I don't know what I'm going to be coming back to. It's terrifying. The NHS is one of the best assets this country has and no-one gives a shit that it's all being destroyed right in front of our eyes.

>The bursary was later reinstated by the Tories in 2019 to much fanfare by them as they were demonstrating their "commitment to the NHS" Don't forget that it was reinstated on worse terms. They just kept the name.

The whole public sector is way overdue a decent pay rise (well the wider economy as well but most pronounced in the public sector).

Absolutely. The public sector bore the brunt of austerity throughout the first decade of this government and fell way behind.

The problem is that the private sector doesn't pay any more than the public sector and no one wants to do the jobs, privatising it won't increase services.

This is the problem. Whilst contractors can be on very good money filling high demand roles, this is usually a temporary thing. Ultimately service privatisation typically leads to 1 or 2 big companies cornering the market, then directing money away from staff, towards their management and shareholders. The end result is higher cost, with the same or worse quality of service. Privatisation makes no sense in many service based industries because there is no inherent management or professional expertise advantage. Privatisation is far more suited to specialist engineering or IT projects where private companies retain niche / highly specialised skillsets (i.e. these are staff you don't need beyond project completion).

Let's be Frank here, Labour did their fair share of privatisation in the naughties and the lib dems were complicit with the tories 2010-2015. Sad fact is every major party has bitten massive chunks out of the nhs over the last few decades, the tories have just done it for longer and are the current government and so they are more prominent in our minds. Never forget that Cameron literally ran on the slogan 'we'll cut the deficit, not the nhs' in 2010, the sentiment of the nation then was that Labour wasn't doing a good job. I'm convinced that the only use for the nhs, in political terms, is purely as a weapon to be wielded by the opposition, none of them truly want it when they get into power.

Yeah, the Blair government seemed to want to privatise the nhs too, and all the PPIs in the late 90s and 2000s were steps towards it. I'm very concerned with starmers embrace of new Labour ideology that he won't do much if anything to reverse this trend. It seems to be a constant thing with social democratic governments around the world, that right wing governments undermine public services, then social Democrats consider undoing any of it 'too radical', then try to rely on the same free market forces to put a bandaid on the severed limb.

> Let's be Frank here, Labour did their fair share of privatisation in the naughties and the lib dems were complicit with the tories 2010-2015. Most users on here probably aren't old enough to remember any of that it feels like.

ELI5 - why are the compassionate Tories doing this to the public sector? Greed?

Mixture of ideology and greed. Some tories are far right and/or libertarian and oppose any government/public services, some stand to get filthy rich from flogging off the country's silverware. The most reasonable tory would say its unsustainable to continue funding the NHS model, which is true to a degree, but they aren't willing to take alternative action to fix the problem (I.e. unlimited increasing demand through demographic change, increasing obesity, etc)

The US? I'm sure there are UK vultures waiting to profit off this too.

This is it. They're already here. They are going to suck us dry if we don't stop voting Tory.

Underfund - "the NHS is failing - we need to fix it by selling to private sector" - £££ I fucking despise the Tories.

You forgot the distract and gaslight

Thank you for posting this. The media don't hold the government to account for their treatment of the NHS nearly hard enough. We need more insiders like you to get the real stories and send the message out to the country. The NHS is being stolen from us, right from under our noses and we have to do something *now*.

NP. TY. I figured it needed more of us to share our experiences.

You should write this in to your local news paper and see if they will pick it up. The public needs to know these stories ✌🏻

You reckon they’d listen? I did wonder if someone involved in journalism would read it and reach out. I’m not one to put myself out there. But maybe I’m just as complicit in its demise if I don’t speak out?

It's very well written. Byline or OpenDemocracy would be interested (and would help you polish it up). I think Shaun Lintern at the Sunday Times would be interested too.

Ok perhaps worth a shot. Ty :)

LBC would be interested, they’re running stories on the nurse’s strikes sympathetically.

Byline and Politics Joe will defo pick it up I reckon.

Guardian/Observer, Byline, OpenDemocracy

I hope they would listen, and it would reach more people. This is so important. I truly believe that the NHS is one of, if not the best thing about the UK, and if we let it collapse, this would be an absolute disgrace. Thank you for your work.

Please do. Healthcare professionals tend not to speak out for fear of retribution from health boards. Similar to teachers and other professions, I'm sure. It only takes one or two to step forward and others follow. There are a handful of NHS healthcare professionals and staff speaking out on Twitter which is great but it's mostly anonymous and, well, it's Twitter. The public need to be told and told hard. Unfortunately, as many in the comments have said, there are so many people who sit back and think "it won't happen to me"... Until it does.

Seconding this, it’s very well put.

*has been stolen. There is an atrocious amount of private sector involvement in the NHS now, from staffing agencies to care providers. Successive governments have been more than happy to privatise the NHS by stealth.

Boomers won't care until they have to go to hospital and it effects them. Otherwise they just want to keep banning foreign doctors and voting for parties that want to underfund it and make a mess of it. Quite frankly I hope that generation gets the shitty care they deserve. It's just a shame the others who are sick have to receive it. I totally respect and support the nurses striking. As well as a better pay you deserve better conditions. Just know that the working class support your striking and it's only the Greys that will moan

Presume you meant boomers but aye. Fair point. Yet they are the ones who need all the tests! Society is sick and getting sicker. Some mad stuff is coming through the labs. People are really unwell. This is just the wave that’s about to break.

I'm not generally anti-vax, and I've had three jabs, but recently I've started worrying about reports of negligence and corruption at the pharma companies, and excess mortality that probably isn't traceable to covid itself. It feels like we're on the brink of apocalypse. I miss the 90s, this feels like some kind of surreal nightmare that society was never meant to go down. It used to be, or at least seemed to be, a place where people took care of each other and was run by responsible people

Boomers also blame the wrong people. Because they dont know how to use the internet to do research and wouldnt even if they could.

We've known for a long, long time that the Tories will dry fuck the NHS into oblivion. I really feel for the staff of the NHS and how they get treat by the government and the public. To hear how much doctors, nurses and paramedics take abuse each and every day from absolute arseholes saddens me. I've been extremely grateful to those providing our healthcare, I've been lucky to experience the NHS at its prime but sadly it's on its knees and the public are suffering, the staff are suffering and the whole background is falling apart

This. I don't think people actually care. They love the NHS, they love getting stuff for free. But actually investing in it - that is not popular. People were clapping, for f*s sack. As if clapping has ever fixed anything.

> I have just returned from working in the Pathology Laboratories today, where all of our MLAs (medical laboratory assistants - the lab workhorses) are quitting en masse, because the workload is just too much. > It is a complicated and skilled role that requires a keen mind and intelligence for the sheer level of difficulty, accuracy and responsibility that you require, since you will have to deal with a huge amount of patients tests, some of which are very sensitive, urgently important and some very dangerous samples. Yet they are only paid at a Band 2 level - the lowest, which if truth be honest, is fairly abysmal pay for what it entails, as they are required to work crappy long and unsociable shift patterns, where those shifts are ALWAYS non-stop work, with constant patient samples being processed - 24/7: every day & night, of every day of the week. It is relentless. If the MPs or public were to see the sheer volume of work they do, they would be ashamed. > No one can realistically work at that pace for long, and the shelf life of MLA’s is short. MLA’s take a while to be trained and are hard to retain. This is not even discussing the band 4 AP’s who are narrowly better paid, and the BMS’s (biomedical scientists) who do years of specialist training but are paid at a fraction of the wage of doctors. Having just finished a shift in the lab and having been an MLA and BMS, it is nice to see this issue brought up. Being an MLA is much tougher than being a porter or secretary, yet they are paid the same amount and that means we lose staff faster than we can replace them. This is a role that keeps labs functioning but training a new batch every few months just slows the entire process down. We have the same issues with BMSs and recruitment is becoming nigh on impossible in a high cost of living area. We had a new role out and 75% of applicants were foreign nationals who could not legally work in the UK, British BMSs are just worn out and not applying to work in the NHS anymore. They are all going private now and not coming back. NHS labs are basically held together by locum staff and fresh graduates, both of whom leave after a few years. We are a severely neglected department, with the higher-ups mostly pretending we do not exist, but perform a vital service. Neglect has killed it though and collapse is inevitable in a few years time.

Thanks for your reply! but it’s very sad to hear the same experience being echoed. Wishing you all the best! & Worse case scenario we can all go work at Lidl lol. Same hourly rate of pay I think? That should really sober people up. (No disrespect to shop workers). But one job literally requires you to save lives. By the powers of investigation and knowledge. And requires years of study. And they are paid the same. Mull on that folks.

Registered Nurse on the Ward opposite where I work decided to work in Costa for better conditions and workload. She took a pay cut of 5% only, and said it was worth the drop to get out the staffing crisis and the abuse from patients and visitors.

I left NHS nursing back before Covid. Was a great decision financially and mentally. Came back because of Covid. Will likely leave again soon as it’s less pay, more stress than my old sales job.

Well quite. Why train for years and come out with thousands in debt, just to take abuse from visitors and patients all day, and be run ragged because there's not enough staff to cover? No wonder the student intakes are lower than they've ever been. People are dying because there's not enough staff to treat them properly. In 2022, people are dying in a 1st world country, when it could be completely avoided by the Govt just listening to the NHS staff on the ground. But they won't, because they want this to happen. We're being starved so that we're so weak, we're easy pickings. The public will turn on us after a while, and we'll be railroaded into privatisation, and this Govt want the full US style system (many MPs already have bought up shares in private healthcare providers). My kid's generation won't know what social healthcare was like.

I work in social care, mental health recovery. Many of the clients we take care of get more in tax free benefits to live off than we get paid to take care of them full time. Mcdonalds pay better. We've been understaffed since before covid and now we just can't replace the staff. The sentiment of 'we do it because we care' has faded significantly, the mentality of the few people now applying have the attitude of 'its just a job'. Which I'm sure you know, in the context of taking care of vulnerable people is extraordinarily dangerous. Which of course in turn makes the good staff want to leave even more as they don't want to work with people who don't care about the people we're responsible for at all.

I had a meeting this week with one of our Consultant Pathologists and she noted that we are running at 40% staffing levels. The 10 day turnaround for the lab is a pipe dream. Its the same with our AHPs and I'm bleeding consultants all the time. It's freaking me out as I handle the performance data and every area is slipping through no fault of my amazing clinical colleagues but purely because there is too much work and not enough staff.

I'm a cancer improvement manager for the NHS and with the pathway work I've been involved in, I've noticed that the 7 and 10 day TAT for histology is a pipe dream in all labs in the country. The worst part is, back in April 2019, the Faster diagnostic standard (FDS) was put into action with a 1 year cooling off period before trusts had to start reporting on the performance per tumour site nationally on it. The issue with the FDS is that is a 28 day TAT for the notification of cancer or no cancer outcome to the patient, however to get there you often have to go through more than one diagnostic test which really highlights cellular pathology in particular. The new Best Practice Timed Pathway (BPTP) guidance which now builds muscle around the FDS target make the problem even worse, with a MAXIMUM of 7 days being the TAT for pretty much any type of pathology tissue, with lower GI and upper GI having some 3 day requirements built in which is savage, considering the average Histology lab makeup for those two tumour sites alone is 40% of all of the work load. As a BMS specialising in all aspects of Cellular pathology as my professional background before I entered NHS improvement work, I saw the impact of disastrous IBMS qualifications that then acted as gateways to the band 6+ jobs. The specialist portfolio in particular taught a BMS in cell path effectively no operational knowledge that assists in the quickening of the diagnosis of a patient which for me is a complete joke. Compounded with the band 7 requirement of having an MSC when you can walk into any other band 7 role in the NHS without even a degree is also proof of insane gatekeeping and keeping scientists always in low paid positions. MLAs have been bleeding out of the service for years as there is simply no career progression for them at all. Scientists are leaving for private work to chase the ££ as IR35 locum work pays around £30 per hour and often has very long contracts doing the easiest work too. The big elephant in the room is around the pathologist workforce where RCPATH published data around 5-6 years ago saying that 33% of the workforce were due to retire within 10 years and there wasn't enough new blood entering the positions to sustain the service. What has the government done about this? Introduce BPTPs to effectively crush pathology into dust whilst the IBMS offers no bursaries to laboratories for training MLAs into BMS and universities also don't offer bursaries for BMS degrees anymore as most students use them as a jump off point into a medicine degree if they fail to get in from college grades alone. The entire system needs stripping back and rethinking at this stage as it simply doesn't work.

We have a shortage of paraffin supplies on top of all this. So it's a material issue in tandem. There's only so much work I can do in terms of QI, we can't do a QI project on AFC can we? That would fix a lot.

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An MLA is mostly data entry and sample receipt. So logging samples into a computer by scanning them or in the old days typing it in, and sorting samples that arrive from wards/clinics/outpatients etc into racks and sending them off to different departments. Some MLAs who've been there longer might do very basic testing, like faecal testing or some light centrifuge work. You might learn how to do blood slides or some band 3 MLAs can do staining work or help BMSs do slightly more complex work. It's the entry level job of the medical labs. You need absolutely no previous experience or knowledge of science or medicine it can be taught on the job.

Depends on the lab and whether it is a band two or three role. I was a band three and the job was more complicated than that.

It’s not a competition, porters and secretaries are vital and work incredibly hard too

If the lab system collapses, it wont just be patients that die in hospitals. It will be joe bloggs who is waiting on a blood test to see if hes got unlucky and caught something nasty who doesnt get his results and his symptoms worsen and he collapses in the road etc. The pregnant mother anxious for results of her screening etc. The list is endless. If the NHS does literally collapse then i think there will be civil unrest. The economy will TANK because nobody can get general healthcare, the territorial army will have to assist with their staff. Ive had to drive to hospital rather than use an ambulance as the wait time was over 4 hours in some cases. A n E is a lottery. Sometimes its 2 hours other times it can be 24 hours before you can get answers and treatment.

My daughter with severe Long Covid was having chest pain and trouble breathing a few weeks back and NHS 111 called an ambulance for her. 30 mins later I get a call saying we're on the waiting list for an ambo and can I drive her in... A 10 yr old with those symptoms and existing medical condition. I was beside myself. Luckily it was costochondritis and not cardiac but it really hit home that day how bad things really are if an ambulance can't get to a young child with possible heart issues. God help us all this winter. I wish the NHS staff the very best and hope most of us come out the other side of winter reasonably unscathed.

If you haven't watched it already, I 100% recommend anyone to watch the 'Ambulance' TV series on BBC. Really shows how hard they work, and in a similar fashion to this post the paramedics are basically doctors who get payed a fraction of their pay. Even the 999 receivers are talking through people by phone how to keep their loved ones alive long enough for the ambulance to arrive, they are all incredible.

The job paramedics do absolutely astounds me. You get 3 - 2 or 2.5 if you trained before 2009 (? I can't remember when the course changed) - years training, and then you can see anything. Literally anything. From a horse rider who's got a spinal injury to a drunk who's cracked their head open to a little old lady who's been on the floor for 12 hours. I'd be a bag of nerves not knowing what I was turning up to and whether I had the skills to do it.

"Paramedics are basically doctors". No.

>the paramedics are basically doctors who get payed a fraction of their pay. The starting salary for paramedics and doctors is literally the same despite doctors have double the amount of further education. Doctors only get paid more down the line because of the insane amount of further training and exams they have to do.

This 1000%!!! Exactly!

Thank you for posting this, OP. I am an Apprentice Science Technician, having already spent 5 years as firstly an Assistant Technical Officer then as a Senior Technical Officer in Specialist Pharmacy Services. My job is to manufacture chemotherapy, TPN, outpatient antibiotics, and a plethora of other medicines for our patients and other shareholders (external contracts). It's unsung work, performed in a blank and faceless building within the hospital that nobody is truly aware of. Most of my team are Band 2-4, doing work that far outpaces that of some roles within those Bands (though not to discredit those people at all). Work that requires us to work ~4-5 hours at a time in an environment with no access to drinking water, toilets, or food. We do get breaks, yes, but oftentimes we have to cut these short because of the high increase in demand for chemotherapy and TPN since the increase in cancer testing and more inpatients in post-surgical wards. It's exhausting. It's unfair. It's disrespectful to be paid so minimally for the talents and skills that every single person in our team possesses. But we all love our job, we all love helping patients and providing life-changing and potentially life-saving medicines to the most vulnerable of people. And it's about damn time our voices are heard, and people know what we do.

Shit. That’s pretty dark dude. But thanks for sharing that. & Carry on, until you can carry on no further. Wishing you all the best. Keep up the good work.

Cheers mate. I love my career, and I'm grateful to finally be doing this diploma - I'm still young, it'll take me far and set me up for life - but nobody in my team or on this field should have to deal with the shite wages and conditions that we're faced with by being so understaffed, undervalued, and understood. May the NHS weather this storm and be truly appreciated again.

I’m shocked at how vital your job role is yet you are paid an absolute pittance for lifesaving work. A total shame. Thank you for sharing this.

Thank you for saving my life. Seriously, I had chemo in April and I'm just now back at work 100% fit. I'd be dead without you guys, so please do feel heard, appreciated and possibly motivated!

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I manage an aseptic facility and I completely agree with you. I'm constantly highlighting that the gap between supermarkets (for example) and the wages in aseptics is closing quickly and I would not fault my staff for moving when I consider how much skill and stress at times the aseptic roles have. Thank you for everything you do though, I don't think a lot of people realise how fragile this part of the sector is. It takes just a month for people to leave, but 3-6 months to train people. The consequences of this area going would be catastrophic, never mind the current risks there are to patient safety with more and more work being squeezed into an already limited capacity.

As someone who works in an NHS lab, thank you for the recognition. We are on our knees. Since covid we've had more and more work piled onto us to clear the waiting lists but very little funding for extra staff or equipment to help with the increase in workload. The labs are run down and not fit for purpose, equipment is ancient and we get very little recognition for the work we do. I'm hoping the focus on nurses striking will enlighten others to the very stressful and demanding situation we find ourselves in every single day.

I fear there will too many joe blogs voicing their whataboutism. “What about me? (When they get paid cash in hand) My jobs hard! why should I support those tik-tok nurses? I need a raise too! Until big joe goes and steps on a rusty nail this Xmas & needs a tetanus shot, or gets bitten by a tick off his tree, and ends up with Lymes disease, or has a strep A infection from eating too many mince pies and drinking to much brandy, and then there aren’t any scientists around, or nurses or doctors or pharmacists to treat them. Cos they all went to work at Lidl selling Xmas trees and mince pies and brandy for the same wage as they were saving lives.

everybody is paid terribly. i’m a surgeon in training and was operating on someone with a perforated stomach ulcer who was literally leaking acid into his abdomen at 4am in the morning, i get paid £19 per hour 😃. i’m quitting the nhs as soon as my training is complete and moving somewhere i’m appreciated and remunerated appropriately. claps don’t pay the bills or my £80,000+ student debt.

I’m conflicted by this as I’d like to say please don’t go as we need your skills, but on the other hand, i wouldn’t wish any of that stress on anyone so, I’d say go for it. You got to look after you, as no one else will.

i’d love to stay as my family is here but it makes no sense at all. why subject myself to a difficult life when i can go to aus/nz/canada and be paid 3x more for working half the hours.

Staff in the NHS are overworked and underpaid by the system. Teachers are overworked and the retention rate of new teachers after investing in their training is terrible. Care workers and social workers have unrealistic workloads and patients suffer. Libraries and swimming pools are closing to save money. Is there anything government funded which isn't on a downhill trajectory?

It's every job that isn't tech or fianance. I get paid less than a nurse for a job that requires a STEM degree/masters.

But maybe over your lifetime you will earn more than a nurse if you have a Stem job. It's about averages of everyone, not comparing one person's circumstances. (I'm assuming you're fairly new in your career if you needed a stem degree and currently earn less than £30k).

I won't. My profession/industry caps at about 45k. I started at 21k. people in tech/fianance severely overestimate the pay in bio/chem roles and other jobs in general.

This. We have to be careful of ‘but we work the hardest and everyone else sits around drinking tea taking us for granted’ cross professional bickering. It’s easy to fall into - because on a fundamental level the people in these professions are being psychologically/neurologically compromised by the amount of constant stress they are under and the lack of time to meet their basic needs. You can’t think clearly. But that thinking plays into the hands of those who would blame the minutia of splitting the state funding pots rather than the system itself. It’s clear our current economic/social system isn’t working well, and barely working at all at the moment, and I think there are a collection of reasons for that. But it’s hard because our economic and political systems are based on short term need rather than the longer term necessary for functioning interconnected services. I’m not in healthcare, I’m in education. But I’m actually part of the system here, because a huge portion of the young people I teach go into allied healthcare professions - particularly biomed (who take these lab positions). I mean, you’ve got the teaching issues everyone knows about (what do you mean you don’t want to work 10 hours a day, including 7 frantic mentally strenuous hours with no real-terms breaks and no opportunity to go to the toilet etc., when you’d make far more working in an office, *I thought you cared about the kids*). But they also don’t really know what they’re doing with level 3 (A level and equivalent) education. Rebranding and tweaking the 3-part BTECs into T levels is… fine. But we need more hybrid options to develop a genuinely world competitive workforce, and ensure schools have the resources to educate ‘average students’ holistically to a high standard to prepare them. As in… it’s all very well to design/allow our most advanced courses and HE places to be about making that top 5-10% consistently high achieving students ‘world class!!!’. But if we want our ‘intellectual industries’ (because we don’t have resources to sell) to be enough to support a thriving economy, we need the majority of our population to be well educated and adaptable. Because that top 10% won’t stand for working in this kind of conditions. We need to stop ignoring that all the thought and resources and energy in our education goes into prizing the very top and dealing with the impact of our other failing systems (social care, housing, back to healthcare) on the students - so the rest becomes about sort of… dragging everyone else to an acceptable minimum. We love to brag about our ability to create world renowned HE institutions. We keep saying we want to make our selling point our STEM/creative industries. These labs could be the envy of the world - obviously there are reasons a lot of sample testing tends to be a domestic affair, but there are some services peripheral we could be selling to our neighbors. But we first treat educating the people who staff them like an afterthought, and then we treat and pay them like easily replaceable grunts. How the fuck are we supposed to make these services that we’re apparently going to sell in the future to have a buoyant economy - we need to develop them from what we already have, exactly the kind of medical analysis labs we’re taking about here. And we’d have a better health service. Win win! But we don’t, because… it’s not a clear definite path to make the rich richer, and it’s not ‘free market force’. This skill and labour is desperately needed, but because it goes via the state, as it must for this kind of need, we act like we don’t/shouldn’t need to pay for it. Plumbers and electricians are skilled workers we can’t do without. If I need a plumber in my house I employ them directly - I can’t do that myself, so their labour is valuable to me. The market means that I have to pay good money to incentivize them, and that means that plumbing businesses can make good money, so people start plumbing businesses - it mainly works. I need someone to analyze my blood test just as much, but the nature of medicine means that it needs to go through a system (would be in any private system also). The people at the top who decide how to fund the system aren’t the ones who need the blood test so they aren’t as interested in making sure it happens, it’s just one of a million theoretical tests to them. So they will try and ‘starve the market’ in order to save the money (‘if we tell them this is what we’ll pay for blood tests, the blood testers will have to do it for that much’), and then act surprised when the people doing the labour turn around and go ‘I don’t want to be in this market anymore then’. This is now a graduate thesis length essay, but I’ve been trying to figure out why the position/ideology the government keep going at is so fundamentally flawed. And I think it’s because - in their business masters they read these free market economics books, and they read the ‘public services’ chapter. They got as far as the ‘starve the market, you’re the only customer’ bit and… well that is as far as the book needs to go. Because it might well work for a bit, and the book wasn’t a study into the long term sociological needs of a functioning nation. Their job is to save money and sound like they’re doing good things for four years, while implementing an ideology that makes them feel nice because it implies they have money out of some natural moral flow towards where it should be. It’s like they *say* they get long term investment. But to an extent they don’t, and to another this isn’t the type that will make them look good. Building a wing on a hospital is a long term investment that looks good. ‘Improving children’s social services, so that more education resources can go into mid-above ability science education, so that we can build even better labs and pay even more public money to those who work there, so we can…’ and everyone is already bored and confused, because it’s too complicated and long, and they’re used to looking at a graph of the £ and throwing policy at it.

Valid point

>It is a complicated and skilled role that requires a keen mind and intelligence for the sheer level of difficulty, accuracy and responsibility that are required of you to do your role, since you will have to deal with a huge amount of patients tests, some of which are very sensitive, urgently important and some very dangerous samples. This is a crazy exaggeration of what a band 2 MLA does... sincerely from someone who's worked as one. It is not complicated nor skilled. It's the medical version of entry level work. Most MLAs work on sample receipt and data entry and do little to no lab work at all. I've worked in band 2-6 in multiple path labs - the average MLA is the same as a cashier at tesco or someone working the frier at mcdonalds. It's not easy piss take work but it's not skilled work, people work hard but it's not complicated. There's little to no responsibility at all you follow a set protocol and do what you're told. Not all work has to be high level and skilled. It's entry level work anyone can do with a week or so training. You don't have to exaggerate what people do to say they deserve a living wage, it just weakens the case that you feel the need to lie. We shouldn't need to do "complex" or have lots of "responsibility" to be deserving of a living wage. I'd rather work as an MLA any day for shit salary than a customer facing service role for the same shit salary - we don't need to be doing cutting edge complex work to be worth a living salary. People shouldn't need to be literally a doctor to be able to live. Just like someone working the check out at tesco doesn't need to be graduate manager to be worth it either - but it's not skilled work. The issue is we've made entry level so shit to the point people can't live on those jobs but entry level jobs still need to exist. Not everything needs to be complex skilled work or how would people even get jobs with no experience.

+1 MLAs are glorified data entry roles. Most of the work is labelling up samples and entering requests into the lims. No doubt the volume is high and staffing is low but the same can be said for other NHS departments. OP is rather overtly undermining the very real and very hard work that other band 2 and band 3 staff do.

Exactly - HCAs are unskilled band 2s - I could never work as a HCA it's probably the worst job you could get on band 2 for how difficult it is. It's still unskilled. Comparing typing stuff into LIMS to a HCA is just crabs in a bucket. Both jobs are entry level, both are difficult in different ways and both should be paid a living wage. We don't need to make either sound like you need years of experience or a degree to understand they're both worth a living wage. I see this a lot on posts about entry level work and it's always "well it's harder than McDonalds" to punch down on someone else. Entry level work has value and people need jobs that require no experience. They should be paid a living wage no matter how entry level a job is. Entry level doesn't mean "easy". But we really need to stop dressing up entry level jobs like it's some shameful thing that shouldn't exist or is less than other jobs.

Absolutely I would much rather put barcodes on samples than clean up shit and piss for a 13 hour shift 😂

I do apologise, but I sincerely disagree with the point: "little to no responsibility". Yes the majority of MLA work is humble sample reception and basic pre-processing - though even that varies from lab to lab according to need (I worked in a biochem lab where the MLAs were also doing pre-extraction techniques like urine aspirating etc) - but all lab roles require concentration and accuracy when it comes to diagnostic testing. Mismatch a sample when booking on and labelling, or assign the wrong test on LIMS, and you've at best potentially wasted NHS resources and time before capturing the errant sample. Worse case scenario, you've sent the sample down the wrong automated testing pathway and the patient ends up getting the wrong result. IQC should be good enough to filter out and capture deviant tests but they're not infallible. And that's before I get to the health hazards lab workers routinely have to mitigate against. Does a porter face the same level of occupational exposure to HIV for example? No. MLAs actually bear a considerable amount of responsibility compared to a porter, or a Tesco cashier. Not to denigrate anyone who does those jobs, they're both valuable roles in their own way. But they definitely shouldn't be on the same grade as a MLA. What I will say though in regards to OP's wider point is that I agree whole-heartedly that MLAs, HSWs and AP's definitely don't get paid enough for what they do (and I would know, I've worked among real heroes, as a band 2, band 3 and band 4 myself in those roles respectively - in pathology, genetics and microbiology) but having said that, I have found that a more significant factor in labs being unable to retain staff is the large number of students who are recruited for band 2 roles as a way of getting their foot in the door. They usually don't intend to stay in their roles for longer than a year, regardless of pay. Why the hell lab managers insist on filling band 2/3 vacancies with postgrad doctorates is simply beyond me.

It was too late a long time ago. The idea that different trusts are somehow a) in a market and b) in competition has hobbled the system.

I agree with the sentiment of your post, but feel like you come across as divisive at a few points. Just to highlight - I was a BMS who retrained in medicine. Can confirm BMS (3/4 year degree starting at band 5 £25,665) is not “a fraction” of what doctors pay (after 5/6 years £25,661 basic). I get paid more now because I do a crap ton of antisocial hours and work roughly 47hrs/week. The fact is we are all underpaid and understaffed. Also saying without the lab people wouldn’t know what was *actually* wrong seems needlessly inflammatory. Absolutely the lab is critical in my day to day work and I couldn’t practice safely without it, but as front line clinical staff we are also knowledgeable and it seems implied otherwise in your post.

My trust is upping all B2s to top B2 and considering rebanding some roles to B3 as a combat to the haemorrhage of staff and cost of living crisis. They seem largely constrained otherwise. From my POV, if nursing staff are successful at all in strike action everyone wins because of the AfC pay scales (a lot is made of nursing pay, but a lot of professions in hospitals are paid on these Ts and Cs). Everyone supporting each other.

Nurses and doctors get all the attention because the unions know they are an easy sell to garner sympathy with the public. Everyone knows what they do and they are the biggest group but 60%+ of the NHS workforce are in other roles. I'm in finance and we're the same. Our contract is the same Agenda for Change as the nurses. It's good because we benefit from the strength of the nurses union. Although, if there was no A4C then some roles would probably be paid more, and others even less so it's not clear cut whether there is a benefit. All of the media attention is on nurses pay and that usually means Band 5, particularly starting salary, but that's such a small subset of the NHS workforce to focus on. Nobody in the NHS gets paid particularly well. Senior management seems like it does but in reality, anyone with that much responsibility in a £500m turnover business with 5k+ staff in the private sector would be on far more. I know my salary in finance is good for the NHS but not as good as the private sector pays for someone with equivalent experience. The OP has a go at middle management but they are massively under pressure as well. They are told they need to greet more productivity out of their staff but every department is so short staffed they spend the majority of their time just trying to fill gaps in rotas, arguing with agencies over rates of pay etc. If the government did their job properly and properly funded training, pay etc so those gaps didn't exist then the managers could actually spend time managing. The whole system is struggling because of governmental decisions.

fine abundant cautious airport vast hospital rinse pen bake frighten *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Even my analytics team is short staffed. We've lost people over the last year and have promoted others to replace them, but that also leaves vacancies. They've not been filled. We do not work in a similar environment to lab guys or people on wards, but the thing is we could go to the private sector and make a lot more money. I'm strongly considering the private sector again once I've worked my two years and secured two years of NHS pension.

I was an MLA for 6 years and I loved it for a while but the bullshit was just too much to bear. The biggest kicker was the management thought it was better to hire a band 4 to assemble and package FIT tests to post out to patients, than pay us a band 3 for all of the responsibilities expected of us. We used to seperate positive HIV and Hep C bloods, do all of the entering, labelling, centrifuging, seeing to patients coming to the phleby clinic, exporting tests to different hospitals across the uk, man the phones answering queries and getting abuse for not being able to tell the anonymous person on the phone their results, not to mention they refused to give us air conditioning in a windowless room with 5 computers and 4 centrifuges. It was like working in satans arsehole. There was so much more that I can't remember off the top of my head, but the workload was intense. So I quit and now I'm a second year student nurse. Glutton for punishment I guess🤣

Ah so you went the opposite direction I see!!! Well good luck!! ;) (& Ps Don’t do forensic mental health nursing - not worth the danger and stress!) The stories from that job is even worse than the Lab shortages. It would really have peoples heads spinning!!!

Oh I've just gone for good ol' adult nursing. It's going well so far I definitely made the right choice. My pathology experience is coming in handy I'll tell you that!

Gloves and PPE? Lol

That's the one! Just missing the lab coat 😅

Thank you so much for writing this! It is a constant annoyance how little attention the state of bio-sciences in the UK gets. We punch so far above our weight yet I struggle think of many other sectors that demand so much of you from you while then turning around and offering such paltry compensation for your time and efforts. You just get lumped in under "STEM" so everyone assumes its a cushy life with a great wage. You try and explain you are working to the clock constantly for a salary that might just about have been around average 15-odd years ago and its like no one hears you. I left the clinic to go back to academia and now when I complain about work/life balance, poor pay, and poor job security in this sector I get told its better over in industry! Its just not, but no one, inevitably folks with zero experience of the sector, wants to listen. Its almost embarrassing sometimes, I have friends from my uni days who were more into IT stuff, gone into cybersecurity, now being given more as an annual bonus than I earn as my entire salary. Its not like we're any less skilled or are producing less value, there just seems to be no real interest in the industry other than using us as labrats to keep the machines ticking away. I hate to say it but I'm at the point where I just don't see it better and am preparing to emigrate in the next \~3 years once my current research project winds down. Wages would have to double just to keep pace with what is already openly on offer in most of our peer nations, and I just don't see any interest anywhere from anyone in making any moves towards even a fraction of that. I don't *want* to leave but its becoming impossible to make a rational case for staying here that isn't just sentiment and being close to family.

This is hard hitting. Sorry to hear this my dude. & All the best in your future endeavours!

I don't want to sound too pessimistic, but does OP or anyone with a background in the NHS believe it can actually be saved or salvaged? From my view, the tories have broken it beyond repair and I worry for what its future will be. No party can magic up new doctors, assistants, or nurses, no matter how much they increase pay. And even then, if they could, these doctors would require training which id wager with less staff cannot be provided sufficiently?

Sadly I don’t think so. anyone I know whom i work with thinks it last no more than a couple of years.

My mum became a lab assistant in the 90's but had to move into project management in 2006 because pay wasn't going to get any better. She's now head of medical imaging or something along those lines.. My mum's partner was chief of histopathology. Neither think the NHS is going to crumble in 2 years. That's a little hyperbolic.

NHS manager here - in short yes. NHS staff that require degrees or any other qualification should be fully paid for by the NHS so that the staff member never has a student loan, however that person should then enter a 5-year contract of employment with steady progression guaranteed before being able to work in the private sector. It costs a fortune for the NHS to employ locum staff which often only carry out the most basic tasks whilst on shift vs growing their own and actively retaining them. The lure of £££ with private work is far too high in a cost-of-living crisis and newly qualified staff like nurses are coming to their £26k starting wage with £30k worth of debt. No government in the last 30 years has handled this well, first with the implementation of tuition fees, then rise of tuition fees, then removal of bursaries and finally agenda for change. All nails in the coffin for NHS staffing and haven't been even touched on in the last 8 years. The other major issue is the sheer amount of admin processes which are completely stupid in the 21st century but still are alive and well in the NHS, namely paper based working. This is a side effect of a lot of different IT systems which often aren't interfaced due to inept IT management, poor private company products which cant even interface or simply wont due to potential market damage via competitive advantages and no foresight with the next big thing. An example of this is nurses having to paper request CT scans and then send them in the post to the radiology department because they dont have Soliton access due to licences or the PAS not having an interface with the radiology software so forcing paper based working. Its genuinely infuriating.

It will be another round of Labour having to enact a bunch of dodgy measures like expanding the PFIs to plug as many holes as possible, and then the Tories pretending like it's those emergency measures that created all the problems and not their own maliciousness in the decade prior to that.

Of course it can, it was functioning well only a little more than a decade ago. It just needs the will from the government snd from the public.

I feel like it’s already collapsed. With such low pay, long hours and horrible conditions, it’s a wonder anyone still works for the NHS. NHS dentistry is already a distant memory. I lost a relative to cancer because their operation kept getting delayed. I myself have been let down multiple times. I can’t even book a GP appointment without physically going to the surgery and convincing a unqualified receptionist that yes, I really do need to see a doctor. I had no choice but to see a private specialist last year, after being put on years waiting list. It cost me £250 for a 30 minute examination but I was seen within a few days.

I love nothing more than to read long posts that start with epigraphs from the poster themselves

For real. Some AAlewis vibes there lmao *tips fedora*

In this moment I am euphoric.

It's been systematically dismantled by the tories. Mission accomplished.

Oh aye it's all by design I think most people do actually know that, they just don't know what to do about it all. Back in the 70's it was said by some politicians that the NHS was never intended to be forever as it would become unsustainable (seems they could have been right)....it was just mainly to get the populations' health better from the affects of the War by Clement Atlee (Labour) in 1948. Tuberculosis was out of control, rationing was still in place and health was overall pretty dreadful. What wasn't accounted for was the population and immigration boom nor the huge need for new nurses and doctors as a result. Multiple attempts at reorganisation over the years has, in the long run, made things far worse with inefficient Trusts bloated management & clerical departments, dreadful infrastructure, little to no Government oversight and of course outsourcing. It's now considered a huge white elephant and I know in my heart it will be disbanded and once again we'll go back to the 19th & 20th Centuries and have to pay or die

Band 2 pay should be illegal. I nearly had a heart attack a few years ago when i realised there used to be a band 1

I was on ‘band 1 trainee’ for 4 years, which was actually just minimum wage. I was glad when they scrapped it but a lot of essential workers are still that badly paid.

I'm fully aware as my oldest friend is a GP and has been ranting as per above for decades :(

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I've given up trying to get my foot treated. It's painful. Trying to get insurance with my new job. I left America for a better life and I'm met with the same bullshit because it's the obvious intended effect.

OP - thank you for highlighting the wearying pace and pressure the labs are under and Band 2 and 3 is a tough pay scale to be on, trying to live.

I’m not lab staff, but I’m frontline ambo…. A paramedic was on LBC the other day talking about why we’re having strike votes….. might be of interest to some https://amp.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/shelagh-fogarty/paramedic-who-voted-to-strike-explains-why-he-wants-to-leave-nhs/

I worked as a porter when I was younger, most people see the doctors and nurses as the essential part of the NHS, to which they are, but then forgot that massive machine of people behind them Moving patients from room to room, taking them to x-ray and back, talking to patients with terminal illness and seeing loved ones come and go It's hard job and nobody seems to care about those little cogs that make it work

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It’s funny though. Our management seem to think that the lower bands are expendable. Why else are they allowing them to leave so easily? As a society we should all be paid fairly. Seems convenient to forget some of them are human too as they are treated like low level slaves. Quite a lot of intellectual elitism too in the NHS. I am QUALIFIED, I know more than YOU. Seen many doctors, consultants, even BMS talking down to lower bands like shit. It’s a individuals mentality yes, but sadly some people lack compassion or perspective.

Thank you for all the work you do, it is really appreciated. People just feel helpless and overwhelmed at the moment, which I suppose plays into the government's hands.

NP my dude. Well we don’t do it for thanks, or claps. And certainly not for the shite pay. Lol. We genuinely do it as we want to help people and find it interesting in what we do. But this is my warning. Not any more. Staff have had enough. People are leaving the job in droves and are getting sick of the stress. Would it be easier to go work for big pharma? Sure. Will everyone regret it when it’s gone? I’m certain.

I agree with you. I know medics who are being told to go and work abroad by colleagues. You can only do so much, then you have to look after yourself. I am surprised the nurses have lasted this long without striking. If I was younger, I would consider leaving this country.

Very well said. Although you do over play MLA importance and skill a bit. I do not think people know the pure amount of work hours go into one person. They seem to think that a doctor will show up and run the tests throw a few pills at it. Then a nurse will show up to be their personal handmaiden. The reality is, that they are only 2 people in a team that can grow rapidly.

Whenever Ive look for jobs online over the last decade, the job boards are littered with NHS admin/manager jobs that have job descriptions that would require a genius to try and decode what they actually do (probably not a lot). Can’t help but think a lot of the nhs problems are self inflicted

I couldn’t do my clinical job without admin support, they work really hard and are often pretty specialised which is probably why you don’t understand the ads.

Thank you. I'm tired of people shitting on admin & clerical roles as if we don't matter. I understand the front line are literally at the coal face and i have nothing but respect and admiration for them. But it takes more than doctors and nurses to run the NHS.

Thank you for this post. I’m a MLA. 3 years of service to the NHS. This post makes me feel noticed and validated. When I first started as an MLA I was so eager to learn and help, and so I sold my soul. I did overtime nonstop and often went above my banding to help out because of the work load. That work load is still increasing and our cries for help are being ignored. Recruiting in the NHS is a joke. 3 months to get a new staff member. And then by the time you’ve trained them another has left. I’m tired of it. Tired of waiting for change. I’m desperately trying to find a new job. One that can actually pay for my skill set. I still can’t believe I’m a band 2 when I have to deal with doctors/consultants and disclose patient results over the phone. Deal with specialist and rare samples that are sent across the country for testing. So preach it people. Please don’t forget the underpaid and overwork NHS scientists!!

Lol I’m a band 2 in an nhs pathology lab 2. You’re completely right mate about everything. We have such a quick staff turn around time where we have been so understaffed there have been 100s of samples getting 8 hours breached on a bad day meaning there renal profile tests will not give accurate results. It’s absolutely awful and depressing. Much love for posting this.

Yup. Also you mention how much doctors are paid. Unless they’re a consultant, divide their salary by the number of hours they actually work (not what they’re contracted that’s for damn sure) and you will find they earn less per hour than someone working in a supermarket shop floor.

There absolutely should be a significant increase in spending and staff pay, but the efficiency of the spending, procurement, management etc also needs to be reviewed. Funding won't solve all of the issues.

Thank you for highlighting the plight of the scientists and AHPs, they arent always remembered. Your generalisation of NHS management bothers me a little. There are good (clinical and non clinical) managers out there who are also leaving (and have been for years) because they refuse to work their teams to the bone to meet arbitrary targets and are tired of being a shield between their teams and unrealistic expectations. Most organisations have their fair share of poor managers and nobody really knows what their boss does all day but I'd hope that a larger than average percentage of managers joined the NHS because they care about people and patients. If you do stay in the NHS I hope you come across some good ones.

True, it was a rather sweeping generalisation. I think it may have riled one or two NHS managers up lol. Yes perhaps it’s not all true in that sense but there definitely are too many of those types in the NHS, having worked in many fields I have met FAR too many! Far too top heavy in many instances. And it draws the very best and very worst of people to work for it!

> I have just returned from working in the Pathology Laboratories today, where all of our MLAs (medical laboratory assistants - the lab workhorses) are quitting en mass. I had the same experience. A few biomedical scientists gone, but an overwhelming number of MLAs leaving or planning to leave. Hard work with shit pay. Also a lack career progression. There were a few rare band 4 positions, but not enough. Edit: Also getting the relevant qualifications for BMS positions is hard and expensive for no fucking reason. Maintaining high standards is great but we need more positions to allow people to complete their registration portfolios.

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Everyone I know who works for the NHS is incredibly proud of the work they do ... And could write a book on the BS they have to put up with. Anything from arsehole managers to bullying to policies and procedures. Pay rises aren't fixing that, they might be justified but they won't fix anything.

I am a BMS (with 10+ years experience) rotating through a few laboratories and I agree with almost everything said here. Our rate of pay is, relatively speaking, not bad compared to the "average" wage. It is however shockingly low imo for the responsibility we have to undertake and the hours we have to work that adversely impact the rest of your life. As with anything there are good and bad managers. My managers generally are pretty fair and supportive but I know the same can't be said for even other departments within my lab. A lot of the problem higher up is that, structurally, the NHS is determined to cut mamagement to save money while simultaneously drastically increasing the volume of work explicitly directed at management through UKAS/trust policy/quality initiatives. Staffing is the most contentious point though. I have worked in my labs for over 10 years and in that time one department that I don't work for has seen almost an entire top to bottom change of staff. In that department, in 10 years, there is one person still there who was there when I started. That is insane. My department's staff retention isn't much better with about 6/30 of the current staff of my department being there longer than my 10 years. There's also been several people including myself who have asked to reduce their hours because the work-life balance was non-existent and was in no way fairly compensated monetarily. Having several relatively young staff members all asking to reduce their hours to improve their quality of life, combined with a continual bleeding of staff, should be ringing alarm bells. I know this kind of situation isn't unique to my trust either. But nobody will do anything. The Tory government won't do anything about it. They are deliberately engineering the NHS to collapse through consistently poor pay that never actually improves in line with the rest of the country never mind inflation, underfunding department resources and staffing numbers and turning a blind eye to it all until it's too late. We're already at a point where countless years of experience have been lost, innumerable new hopeful professionals have been deterred and patient care is directly being compromised. It's only a matter of time until it comes crashing down.

AP band 4 (former MLA band 2) our staff are so devoted to giving a good service for our patients, we adore what we do…. But I’d leave if I was offered something even 5-10% more pay. The city I’m in my rent is 50% of my pay check, I’ll never have a house or a sustainable future staying with the nhs. At band 2 it was even worse. They’re leaving to work at fast food places, dominoes offers the same rate for our roles that require a university degree. I wish it wasn’t like this but the NHS is help together by the compassion and care of the staff

relieved obtainable boat historical aware plant whole dull steer ruthless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

No intention to have a go at doctors. Just highlighting there are other professions paid badly. Public only hears that. Could argue occupational therapy, psychology. The lot. MLAs, nursing assistants i.e. the lower bands especially deserve some recognition. It’s to easy to look down on a role like that as unskilled.

file bear depend murky voracious work plant pie crawl berserk *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

I am a nurse and I am so demoralised from what this government is doing to the NHS and this country. I just wonder when enough is enough? Most of society just seems so apathetic. We need a revolution at this point. We need to get this government out. I am hoping the increasing numbers of strikes turns into a general strike and this is finally the downfall of this government. Once Unison finish their NHS ballot, the TUC should look at calling a general strike and getting this over and down with. They are not going to leave and just keep bleeding us all dry, we need to force them out and return to some sembliance of competent governing. I am fed up for paying for all their mistakes and mismanagement.

It will be like brexit all over but instead of soverignty you just die. Maybe you can request to be buried with your blue passport

This should be on the front page of every newspaper every day. I am about to have my second round of chemotherapy after the first five years ago. According to my friends who are docs tests that would guide my treatment that took a few days back then now take weeks because the staff have been ground down and had to leave. Even five years ago you would hear the Tories talking about avoiding redundancies in "front facing staff". People would nod and go oh that's not too bad. What do they think "back-room staff" do? If you are lucky, you are just adding to the workload of the "front facing staff"! Now everything slows to a crawl and people die. Fingers crossed I guess and if I am very lucky, I might live to have a third round of treatment and when that happens this shitty government has been replaced by people who can save the NHS.

Sorry to hear your experience. Wishing you all the best with the chemo!

I worked as an MLA for a year and then a BMS for 2 years and can say without a doubt the most miserable I've ever felt in a job was working in NHS labs. The pay for what NHS lab workers do is horrific. I now get paid the exact same as I did as a scientist but WFH with no unsociable shift work and my mental health is now a thousand times better. There's just no incentive to stay working in the NHS anymore, yes the pension is better than most if not all private sector pensions but for me that's not worth being miserable for the next 35 years. Glad I'm out of there but really hoping the staff get the pay they deserve.

I unfortunately suffered greatly at the ineptitude of the NHS. This started pre-2010 but a lot has happened since that time and there has been a noticeable decline since around 2015. I was told point blank by a lovely locom GP that my care was abnormal and I could take it the NHS to court. Unfortunately it was long and messy because it went back to 2008, but the care I recieved from that point to 2018 was hilariously awful. Luckily I did recieve a sum, but it paled in comparison to essentially 9 years I "lost" and it only paid for my ongoing private treatment for the 3 conditions that arose from their malpractice. There was a point a while ago where I wanted to put effort into changing how the NHS deals with endocrine issues, but then I remembered 3 Gps in a row telling me I definitely didnt have one because I was too young and a male.

I would say wholeheartedly that many people in the UK don't realise just bad things until themselves _need that NHS care_ when they need it. Instead they'll try the entitlement and 'pay my taxes' lines, they'll even try to argue with staff or complain to management instead of acknowledging just how bad things are. They the wider public need to understand how bad things are without actually needing it before they really need it. The 'ignorance is bliss' and the rose tinted goggles needs to end in Blighty

The trouble is, the public know through experience, the media have an idea, yet ultimately there's a lot of apathy around the end of the NHS, maybe even denial, it's like not accepting your doting Grandmother is going to die. She's been around all your life, and there is an assumption she always will be, even though she's not as mobile and reliable as she once was.

I've been working in NHS labs for 12 years and honestly I don't know why. I nearly resigned multiple times over the years because of how mismanaged it is and how horrendous we are treated. Nobody in the public is aware of us, and those who are, don't care. Even the hospital staff from outside of the labs couldn't care less about where 60% of all patient diagnosis is coming from. A few years back the trust tried to privatise us and the only reason it didn't happen was because no company wanted to take us on because of the absolute state of the department. We worked all the way through covid, working with amplified covid samples, working with unacceptable PPE, doing obscene amounts of overtime because we knew that what we was doing was making a difference by finding these infections before they spread and by finding negative results meaning we can free up beds on the wards. But all we have heard from anyone is how hard and deserving the nurses are (which they are). It's demoralising, it's depressing, it's underpaid and it's completely unappreciated.

Currently working as an Assistant Psychologist within a Crisis Response Team, keep in mind this is a band 4 role. The primary role of the team is to complete telephone mental health triages with callers in various states of emotional distress and crisis, in other services this would be conducted by band 6 MH nurses who have the ability to assess and take accountability for risk. I'll add that the majority of the contacts involve individuals threatening to take overdoses, in the process of overdoses, or actively working towards ending their lives. Funding to our team has been cut to the extent that no band 6 nurses work within the team, instead outsourcing their roles to band 4's who lack the capacity and training to fully manage/assess risk; the team is often managed by a single clinical lead, juggling up to 5 safety huddles at once. When confronting the OPs manager about the sheer risk to the APs, he just said it's more cost-effective to cut out band 6's and hire more band 4's. So much corner cutting, so much wear and tear to the staff members.

This isn't a rant. It's an eloquent statement of fact. Full support from me.

The fact that so many idiots here think medical care should be privatised is astounding. Tell me you don't care about those with health conditions and/or those on low income without telling me you don't care about those with health conditions and/or those on low income 🙄

I've been an ED Consultant in the NHS for 20 years. And I've just taken out private healthcare. The NHS is finished. Take it from me. Do not rely on it. For your own sakes and the sake of your families.

This was a tragically beautifully expressed argument, and honestly it makes me ashamed that you even had to spend the time writing it out. I alone cannot put any more pressure on the government, but this, exactly this needs to be heard, and on behalf of your incredibly hard working team, all I can say is I'm deeply sorry. Your work, though a quiet sector in the eyes of the public, is genuinely incredible and respectable, and you should not deserve to be so sacrificed to your job in the way you are. I hope something is done. You deserve so, so much better than this.

TY for your kind words

>The reality is the MPs (and the public who are just as equally guilty) have absolutely no clue just how bad it is on the nursing wards or in the labs. What has the public done wrong?

Everyone forgets about the scientists and the allied health professionals, it's like we don't exist. Try to manage the ever ageing population of the biggest borough of London with 8 members of staff in the podiatry team. It's a joke. Hospitals like St George's have already sold their team to vita health. It feels like fighting a losing battle.

On a related note, I heard this statistic recently: > Two healthcare workers die by suicide every week on average, while a doctor takes their own life once every three weeks. I don't know how anyone can expect the NHS to carry on as it is currently for much longer when this is the toll it is taking on its staff.

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The NHS is being intentionally crashed. They do this to every public service in the USA and Canada. They’ll eventually get you to willingly vote to kill it by making it so terrible that everyone hates it.

Sounds like I ghost wrote this on my night shift in an NHS laboratory. One thing you didn't touch on is how the IBMS system is massively backed up. We have degree certified and portfolio completed individuals who are going on waiting lists with over 150 people to do their final presentation and be signed off to finally be a scientist. There is a global scientist shortage and a lot of our scientists are coming from Africa to fill the gaps. This in itself is not an issue however with visas etc it can take months from offering the job role before that staff member can even start. This has happened to our lab multiple times over the past two years and if the visa is rejected then the job offer has to go back to tender and start from scratch. Your MLAs need to band together and out in a case to get moved to band 3. Find Job descriptions from other labs and compare the roles and requirements in yours and raise it to HR/your pathology lead. It can take months but it can lead to change. Our biochem/haem 3's proved they essentially did the same job as the 4s and they were all moved up a band because of it.

That’s the plan, duh. Run a core element into the ground, get your Eton mate at Randox to pick up the work for a few bill, then when they inevitably do a shit job of it you can hold inquiries and point fingers and use it all as political fodder for your next leadership campaign. And when it’s well and truly fucked and you don’t have a chance at the top seat, you hop on a reality show and write a book, then settle into a high 6 figure job at one of the firms you awarded a major contract to. Rinse and repeat until enough of its private contracted already, then go to the public and say it’s impossible to pay for this, and start soft launching private healthcare. Badabing badaboom.

My mother was a nurse in the NHS for over 30 years and left due to progressively poor management, which impacted her physical and mental heath pretty significantly. As an outsider, an issue I often see is the portrayal of the NHS in the media. I’ve often seen or heard the line, ‘NHS makes £X losses’, and this headline can be seen applied to lots of public sectors. The NHS is a service. It won’t make money, it’s not how it works. It costs money to run, it’s not a loss, it’s the cost of universal health care. It can’t lose money. These are such damaging statements and often are big talking points. These are then used at examples showing the need for ‘reform’ and ‘efficiency’, such as unattainable targets, that then damage the NHS further.

I called an ambulance yesterday, to be told there was a 13 hour wait time. 😔 I don't have a bird eye view, but I can tell something is happening and it's not good.

I'm an A&E Nurse and I wholeheartedly agree. Everyday I'm at risk of losing my NMC pin and it scares the shit out of me. If somethings missed or not done it'll be on my head and the systematic issues will be ignored. You guys are great and I appreciate the hard work you do, nurses and doctors would be working blind without you. Sorry when I label my tubes incorrectly!

Much appreciated :) & Keep up the excellent work you do!

So what do we do? ​ I'm so sick of being aware of all these problems and absolutely nothing happening. The news is owned by the super rich so won't report the truth, we don't need revolution but we need SIGNIFICANT change!

Thank you. Nurse here. Had to take 5 minutes yesterday to just cry. Then hoped my patients didn’t see I’d been crying. It’s just not sustainable.

Why are you quoting yourself? Instantly makes me want to not give a shit about your post when you're that far up your own ass

It's ok though, the idiots will clap and smash pans in the street again...

Really quite strange you almost allude to the fact this is middle managements fault. When it is in fact the Governments. From my experience at my trust management are equally worked to the bone and at breaking point. It’s is more so the Senior Leadership Team of the Trust who are out of touch but well intentioned. We should be clubbing together rather than attacking each other like vultures. Which is what going into work feels like every day at the moment. Essentially we are all treated like shit to say we are looking after our nation from cradle to birth. Band 2-4s especially. Dirty work and insulting pay. I stand with my fellow colleagues - don’t you?

Thanks for your insight, it really hammers home how the parts of the NHS we don’t see are just as underfunded and at breaking point as the rest of it that the public can see on the news. As a doctor, we use pathology every single day in our work and as you point out, the system would collapse faster than you can say “efficiency cutbacks”. The problem is this is systemic across the whole NHS. The NHS is in the difficult position of being a victim of both it’s own failures and it’s own success. That may sound nonsensical but up until relatively recently (~2005), the NHS was very good at prevention of illness. You could see a GP and get your blood pressure tablet before you had a heart attack for example. Or you could get antibiotics before your infection needed hospital treatment. Now, with the shortage of GPs caused by over a decade of austerity and cutbacks, these problems become increasingly difficult to treat, they become worse more often, and the problem lands in the lap of the hospitals, who are always full to bursting. The NHS got by, riding the legacy of its previous successes until not that long ago, but as you say the system is now on its knees in multiple areas. We need a complete overhaul in terms of the amount of funding we as a country spend on the NHS, or we will lose it as a system free at the point of need, with it being chopped up and parcelled out to private companies. The whole system is in the middle of a very public, very messy collapse and it is the most vulnerable people who will suffer.

Sorry for the shit you’re going through OP. I used to be a nurse. I’m not a manager as it happens but you need to stop blindly lashing out at “management”. I mean, if it makes you feel better then fine -I used to do it too. It just won’t achieve anything and worse, it validates the tired Daily Mail and Tory MP myth that NHS failures are the fault of local management. No local system or the management structure that supports it is perfect. We’re in a perfect storm of central workforce and modernisation planning failure which is why it’s all turned to shit. Covid has made it collapse but the rot and neglect set in years ago. There are fewer managers in the NHS than other sectors, -look up the Kings Fund research. The NHS is over-administered but under-managed. By all means throw bricks. But aim them right, otherwise you’re just wasting effort.

How about selling off hospitals to say some mate or mates friends ,then renting them !

I was thinking the other day that if I had cancer or some other severe illness that needed NHS care, I would seriously join the nurses on the picket line.

there's a giant list that the NHS needs fixing, it just so happens we have a government that will do none of that, not even provide a fair wage for nurses. currently, we have the worst prime minister at the moment, who believes the NHS should be privatised, so once the NHS collapses, that fucker will sell it for scraps. the people can't even do anything - and I think the best we can do is when it comes to the next election, **everyone** should vote the tories out, and boycott the fuckers that oppose it.

I don’t really have much to say, other than I’m truly sorry for how bad it’s gotten for you and the thousands of other people who try to keep us healthy. You deserve better.

Well it's too late most people in government ( the business types I mean ) have been making false promises to fund and have done the opposite so the NHS would collapses and then sell it off to private companies to turn a profit. which is in motion as we speak so I wouldn't worry about your wage as you will be earning more when the NHS becomes privatised which I'm not a fan of.

You should quit, and you should mention this in your exit interview. When it comes to pay, the upper management don’t care about the number of people who dislike the pay scale. The only thing they care about is the staff retention rate, and the number of people for whom pay is a factor in their exit interview. If you quit, you’re doing something good for your own mental health, and you improve the case for a pay rise for those who are left.

Youre correct. I could quote myself also as I assumed that Brexit was mainly a ploy to split up the union when it happened (whether a good idea for other reasons) so that the NHS can be privatized as well as any other social program. You guys are getting American style healthcare under the austerity having been manufactured over the last few years. Sunak is a CEO garbage bag narcissist like every single other person in parliment and CEOs only know how to destroy companies these days because theyre all a bunch of nepotistic Dunning Krugers. I wouldn't wish US healthcare (none w lots of money paid anyway by the individual) on anyone. Hedge funds are salivating at your bad fortune. Oh and US healthcare, they like to experiment on the poor while giving them hope and messing them up worse. My blue collar town is full of pharma/doctor made junkies and back surgeries galore. Everyone I know with a back surgery has multiple more problems. It was experimentation. The biggest crooks in the world broke into yours.

Very long but relevant case study on the state of the NHS: https://youtu.be/v1eWIshUzr8

The Tories want it to burn or sell it for profit. Only logical reason why after 12 years they still haven't done anything to help it.