Report comment

Coming from the Private sector and looking at senior management within the NHS. I am amazed at the gulf of difference.
The NHS is very politically driven, say the right things and tick the right boxes.
Private sector, making sure the job is done!
The NHS is re-active rather than pro-active.
I have to disagree that Nurses are not the right people to run the NHS. That is part of the problem now. Nurses do a fantastic job but it is far removed to actually running the business.
To run an NHS business you need to understand, infrastructure, Assets, pathways, legislation.... The list goes on, which can be far removed from Nursing. You do however need Nurse directors because they understand Operational issues of actually how it runs the service.
The focus for anyone to run the business is to know that the business is all about the patient.
If I was working at the top of the NHS, I don't need to know how to heal a patient but I need an appreciation of the pathways and actually how it is done. From my experience I know that I could drastically improve things by improving systems which would benefit all my clinical staff.
The problem that we have in the NHS is old heads / old ideas. I have forever suggested ways of changing things and actually managed to change a couple.
There is discussion that managers within services should have the power to make changes if it improves patient care. This will never happen.
What I have now learnt in my five years in the NHS is that you have to align yourself with a high flyer to be able to get on. The problem is I don't fit in with the "YES" sir culture and I do question decisions. I am here to challenge as well as be challenged.

I never understood why people within the NHS didn't seem upto changing things and I now know why. Because most have already tried and hit the brick wall of Senior Managers.... After trying and failing so many times you then switch your thinking, to just getting the job done and letting them get on with it. I am now part of that thinking and have new found respect for a lot of the people who work here.
Not to say that I have given up, I am knowing trying a different direction. Change won't come from within the NHS it will only come from the outside.
I wish anyone luck who wants to be a leader in the NHS.
However a note of warning would you want to be in charge of an Oil tanker, which you don't know where it's going, how much fuel you've got and you are not allowed to steer it!