This month’s offering concerns the issue of parasites. Not the sort you’d find in the guts of a third-world country inhabitant, but those that make up the OH provider industry.
I don’t really include nurses in this group, but of course there are a few who would sell their soul to the highest bidder to get the word ‘Manager’ in their title. No – my main focus here is on the business development managers (BDM), the venture capitalists, and those who believe they can ‘lead’ a business just because they are called ‘doctor’.
Let’s get this straight here and now – doctors are not business magnates. They treat the sick, and often don’t do that very well, either.
BDM’s, on the other hand, fall into two categories:
- Little spivs who can add up
- Middle class failures who took media studies at the local Poly that’s now a Uni.
They sell items of service to unsuspecting clients that know no better. They pay nurses as little as they can get away with and never honour continuing professional development (CPD) promises. The BDM’s fight the docs for pole position in the organisation, and these modern-day Fagin’s rub their dirty little hands together as they chat up Tracey the receptionist who answers the phone with: “Elf & Safety R Us,” to my mortification.
Meanwhile, the venture capitalists reduce us all to apples and pears, mere market stall commodities.
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Working for this lot’s no better than working for the NHS – low pay, no CPD, long hours (unpaid, of course) = exploitation. Is it any wonder there are so few OH nurses?
But take heart: what goes around comes around, and many services are going back in-house. Finance directors have seen through the middle men – the leeches that suck the enthusiasm, innovation and integrity from OH professionals, and reduce them to battery hens. It makes me clucking mad.
