MULTI-CULTI DIVERSITY AND TERMINOLOGY IN THE UK HOSPITALS
ADD THIS TO THE FACT THAT UK MOSLEM HEALTH WORKERS DON’T HAVE TO WASH ABOVE THE WRISTS…..RSK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7678181/I-want-a-nurse-not-a-ward-manager.html
I want a nurse, not a ‘ward manager’
The term ward Sister has been outlawed as it is deemed too “old-fashioned”. This endless tinkering with terminology has got to stop, writes Judith Woods.
By Judith Woods
I’m going into hospital in a fortnight and have duly undergone a raft of impressive pre-admission procedures. There have been X-rays and scans, enough blood samples for a remake of The Vampire Diaries and all manner of unexpectedly thorough swabs. My dimensions have been weighed and measured, my heart has been comprehensively monitored, my chest liberally examined and a medical history taken in such lovingly comprehensive detail as to be worthy of Gibbons himself.
But something is preying on my mind. Something other than spinal surgery that my relentlessly upbeat consultant will insist on describing as “surprisingly painful”. Something other than MRSA and C difficile and who will mind the baby while my husband is working late and what about the big one’s gymnastics class and I hope to heaven the auxiliaries wash their hands properly and speak a bit of English and don’t leave me lying for days weeping on a trolley in my own effluvia.
Oh, I remember now; the hospital’s Diversity and Equality Plan. Yes of course. Are staff badges sufficiently non-gender specific? Do ward job titles reflect the changing male-to-female senior nurse leader ratio? How should I properly address the person in charge of the person who doles out the pain relief? Tell me! For the love of God, tell me before I go under the knife!
For as I navel-gaze and fret about my teeny-tiny, terrifying operation, real strides are being made in the field of NHS nomenclature. To whit; The term ward Sister has been outlawed as it is deemed too “old-fashioned”. Ta-dah!
This abolition hasn’t been instigated by the ward sisters themselves, mind you; they responded to a recent Royal College of Nursing poll by saying they wanted to keep their job title as it reflected the fact they were nurses. But what would they know about it? It was fuddy-duddy Luddites like them who probably objected when the name of the Post Office was changed to Consignia.
Anyway, ward “manager” is now the buzzword with the bureaucrats who run the shop – albeit so badly they’ve brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. The Health Service faces a financial black hole of £20 billion over the next five years as extra growth in funding is stopped, although demand for health care continues to rise.
Cuts and wage freezes are on the cards, whoever wins the election. Last week, a senior consultant wrote, in this paper, about the “billions” of taxpayer pounds “soaking into the sand”, wasted on the insane proliferation of management at the expense of greater clinical efficiency.
Despite the fact we spend nine per cent of GDP on health, women are more likely to die in childbirth in the UK than in Albania. Moreover, patients were admitted to mixed-sex wards nearly 20,000 times last year, although Labour pledged to end the practice.
But behind the scenes, where the facilitators, coordinators, compliance officers and commissioners don’t actually treat patients, cure diseases or do anything of much ethical value, they busy themselves endlessly tinkering with terminology.
One friend who went into hospital to have her first baby was taken aback when her midwife referred to her as a “client”, but then as anyone who’s ever worked in the service industry knows, “client” is euphemistic business-speak for “red-faced, shouty, large person”.
But I’m not a client, or a customer or a consumer, I’m a patient, which I’m telling you now, is a lot needier. I don’t want my care to be overseen by a number-crunching manager calculating my bed days and turfing me out into the car park in my open-backed nightie, still attached to my drip.
I want a proper ward sister on my side. An old-fashioned figure of authority, a Hattie Jacques to see off James Robertson Justice, who is firm, fair – and always washes her hands.
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