Categories: uncategorized
Date: 19 January 2005 19:29:03
As I drove to work this morning I was planning my leaving speech in my head. Which probably wasn't the best way to start the day, as it meant that by the time I got to work I was in a thoroughly bad mood and it was the last place in the world I wanted to spend any time at all, let alone the best part of the day.
Anyway, in case I need to refer to refer to it in a few months' time, the gist of the speech was that the NHS is full of change for change's sake, change which is more dependent on a new minister's or new manager's desire to make a mark and a name for themselves than to make things better for patients/clients or staff; that staff are busting guts to care for their clients way above and beyond the call of duty but nobody does a thing to care for those staff; that when I started hospital nursing I noticed that a lot of the old-timers were really battle-hardened and seemed really emotionally hardened to their patients and it was only a few months into it that I realised I was going the same way as it was the only way to deal with the stress and crap; that although it's taken longer the same thing is now happening to me in the community, I'm cynical, unsympathetic and judgmental a lot of the time and that continuing to work in the NHS is turning me into the type of person that I can't stand. And that once I leave, and spend a few years researching and having some fun working hard at something I enjoy, when I finish maybe I won't go back to the NHS but do a horticulture course and get a job in a garden centre (I can't tell you how appealing that thought is right now). Except that like a fool I probably will end up back in the NHS, because despite having seen it from the inside, and knowing all its faults and how it works staff till they're on their knees, the feeling that working in a caring profession is more worthy and important than working in a shop or whatever is so pervasive it's almost impossible to get completely out of your system.