Situations vacant - The NHS

My husband often asks me why people to choose to work in the NHS, and more specifically a hospital?  What is it about being a health care professional that appeals to so many people?  I worked as a radiographer for just over eleven years.  What made me stick it out so long?

The news is constantly full of tales of hospitals with no money, falling and failing services and staff shortages.  Why do people, knowing this, still choose to undertake three years of study to become a health care professional?

The answer that we get when interviewing potential undergraduate students is always the same.  They want to help people.  They like the idea of making someone better.  Some of them have very little idea about working for NHS.  They may have spent a day in a department but that can not have given them a thorough insight into day to day life in a large hospital.  These students can have no concept of the pressures that will be put upon them during the course of a career in dealing with the public.  They cannot possibly comprehend the frustration of wanting to help someone but being unable to because there is no time or resources or most frequently it is not their job.

There are another group of students thought.  Usually, but not exclusively, older than the typical undergraduate.  These people have often chosen a health profession as a second career.  They may have had experience of hospitals before, either as a patient themselves or as the carer of a patient.  Frequently they have had experience of large organisations during their first career.  Some even have a health care background, either in care or rehabilitation type institutions, or even in a large hospital.  Students such as this are entering the profession with their eyes wide open. So why do they do it?  What makes them want to start again in a workplace where morale is so publicly low?

As usual these students say they want to help people and to be able to make a difference in someone’s life, or at the end of someone’s life as in my profession.  The common denominator with all the different types of student is a common wish to help and heal.  They have consciously made a decision to ignore the press instigated media folk devil that is NHS employment, or at least work with it and indeed, within it.

One question that begs to be asked is when do these mature, experienced adults become disillusioned with their working environment?  Of course we would all like to think that they don’t.  In an ideal world they would qualify and work in their chosen hospital until retirement.  It would be nice to know that they have managed to continue to care for their patients with the compassion and passion that they had when they attended for that so important initial interview.  In reality it is a very different story.  Anecdotal evidence suggests many mature students stay with the NHS only a few years post qualification.  Then they move on and out of the NHS.  Some downshift and seek out an easier life, a life outside the NHS.  Others have worked long enough in their previous career to retire with a good pension, well before normal retirement age.

Disillusionment with the job does not necessarily only begin once the health professional is qualified.  When I speak to my second years, and especially the third years I am always amazed how cynical they are about the department they work in and the job they do.  They are more than aware of the pressures that will be loaded upon them in just a year or so.  Job cuts and losses, discontent with the new pay structure, soaring waiting lists and tightening targets from government, to name but a few.  Already they have experience of departments with machinery standing idle because there is no staff to run them.  They are already working extended days and are experiencing the exhaustion that comes from constantly being on your feet, running to try to keep to time.  The frustrations and anger of the qualified staff rubs of on them easily because they are being relied on as staff members instead of supernumerary students.  They are just as likely to get shouted at by patients or relatives when there is a breakdown or a list runs late.

Is it any wonder they become conditioned and disillusioned so quickly?