A report this week calls on NHS staff, particularly nurses to lose weight to set an example to staff as a whole. Apparently 700,000 of the NHS's 1.2 million staff are overweight. This is a good example of how policies dreamt up by the Civil Service can be a lot more difficult to deliver in the real world. In this case we're talking about the Department of Health's 'Healthy Weight Healthy Lives' campaign which has been going on for a year, evidently without much success.
The problem is that it is difficult to promote healthy eating and exercise with any credibility when you, yourself, are carrying a few surplus pounds. One of the key themes of recent government policy on health and work is that individuals have to take responsibility for their own lifestyle and the impact on their health.
But it would take a brave manager to tell a nurse who looks like Hattie Jacques to keep her mits off the cream puffs on top of the filing cupboard and use the stairs instead of the lift. I know a lot of occupational health nurses, the group usually responsible for health promotion, and I will not be making any remarks about their weight, whatever the Department of Health says.
Trivia fact: did you know Hattie Jacques really was nurse at one point?
Comments (1)
Do the government really have details of the weight/height of their NHS nursing staff? Or are we talking about a sample? And, given that most 'staff' seem to be supplied by agencies - do the agencies know this info? When I changed doctors practice a couple of years ago, the practice nurse was all in a tiz to get her data from me in the allotted 20 mins. No sooner was I in the door than she'd got her blood pressure pad around my arm (tut tut - how to get an incorrect reading), and then proceeded to go down her list of questions (I had to say no a lot). Of course she was finished in no time because I don't drink, smoke, involve myself in dangerous or extreme actiivities, overeat or suffer on-going complaints. As far as I could tell, there was very little thinking going on, least of all 'observation' - no wonder NHS staff can't advise patients - it has FA to do with the staffs own physical attributes.
Posted by Bina | April 14, 2009 11:15 AM
Posted on April 14, 2009 11:15