Morecambe Bay Hospitals Trust under fire: Staff's morale 'has hit rock bottom' (From The Westmorland Gazette)
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Morecambe Bay Hospitals Trust under fire: Staff's morale 'has hit rock bottom'
9:00am Thursday 1st December 2011 in Health
PATIENT CARE: Staff are suffering from ‘draconian policies’ claims UHMBT leader Sean Gibson
THE morale of nurses and doctors at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust is at ‘rock bottom’, according to a union leader.
Unison, which represents around 2,000 employees at UHMBT, has slammed trust directors for overstretching staff and bringing in cost-cutting policies.
North West organiser Sean Gibson said management had made the working lives of staff miserable by reducing employee numbers to ‘an absolute minimum’.
“Staff are being worked to the bone,” he said. “There’s little confidence with the leadership in the trust and it’s getting worse.”
The union hit out at directors for ‘draconian policies’ which they said put staff under pressure and risked patient safety. Mr Gibson said sickness policy at the trust, brought in this year, amounted to a choice between staff working while they were ill or facing a pay freeze.
“If they have more than three instances of sickness they don’t get a pay rise,” he said. “Many employees haven’t had one of these for two years and can’t afford to lose out on any potential rise in income, so this is forcing them to work when they are sick.
“The initiative is specifically to drive down the bottom line but it puts patients’ safety at risk.”
The trust said it had a controlled mechanism for staff numbers and was recruiting more nurses for the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.
UHMBT chief executive Tony Halsall praised staff for working hard ‘during difficult times’.
“It’s hard work in the NHS, it’s a national issue.”
He said sickness policy was aimed to encourage staff to improve their attendance record.
“You have to be able to say that pay is a reward for turning up for work,” he said. “No one loses anything with this policy, it doesn’t cut pay back.”
Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron said staff professionalism was ‘immense’, despite the tough situation faced by staff in local health services.
“As a patient it would be difficult to spot signs of low morale,” he said.
“I know it exists because of my line of work but, no matter how they feel, nurses and doctors always act extremely positively to their patients.”
Comments(4)
Guanajuato
says...
2:33pm Thu 1 Dec 11
If the management have lost the confidence of the medical staff and of the wider community, they HAVE to go.
chrismc
says...
2:25am Sun 4 Dec 11
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gadgetgadget
says...
10:02am Mon 5 Dec 11
My experience of RLI last week was excellent up until they moved my other half from A&E to MAU and then suddenly the paperwork seemed to disappear and assumptions have been made about diagnosis (in MAU) without first establishing what actually happened first in A&E.
Even worse no discharge summary was given to the GP by RLI and he's now having to chase what was sent between A&E (incl Ambulance staff) and MAU to see what the diagnosis should or could have been prior to discharge (and especially being as the CT scanner was not working in RLI).
Needless to say this has caused additional un-necesssary stress to someone who exhibited all the symptoms of a stroke/TIA.
BTW the CT scanner was down from Tuesday to Wednesday last week and they were allowing people to travel for scheduled scans without informing them the scanner was down !
There's no wonder staff morale has hit rock bottom !
gadgetgadget says...
9:34am Thu 1 Dec 11
I can personally vouch for the high professionalism towards patients & families from the vast majority of medical staff both at WGH & RLI - however they are being constantly let down by access to faciliies and that purely boils down to managerial decisions.