07 Mar 2011
Posted in Rants, Work at 7:29 pm by alby
I was recommended to do a course at work last week. It was called “Resourceful Secrets for Change” and was based on NLP. I’m not a fan of what I’ve seen of NLP – it seems pretty much made-up and the bits that seem sensible appear to be summarisable as “be nice to people” and “treat them as they wish to be treated”. Well worth a long series of expensive training courses then.
The rest of NLP seems based on the premise that copying behaviours that happen when things work well leads to things going well. EG. When you meet someone and get on well then things like mirroring happen – ie when they take a drink, so do you… Well apparently if you consciously adopt these mirroring techniques then rapport will follow. Not sure about that.
So anyway the course kicks off with the 2 presenters (very slick and practiced) letting us know what we’re in for. My open-mindedness lasted as long as it took one of them to utter the immortal words “Me and Vicky are the best people here”. How odd.
Apparently we live in 2 worlds. The first, the external world is governed, would you believe, by Newtonian physics. Not sure that many physicists would be happy with that definition. I thought we’d got past that in the 1920′s, you know what with Einstein and everything.
Things improved a little with the “second world, the internal world”. This apparently is governed by “Quantum physics”. I believe I failed to stifle what can only be described as a “guffaw”. The first of my obvious skeptic moments of the day.
Then we talked about “energy”. Yes this energy was vague and unidentified. You know this energy, the kind that people can pass on or suck out of you. Yes that energy. They did present a demonstration of this to allow us to figure it out. They had a doll, we had a circle of us and wouldn’t you know it the doll played music when we completed the circle (with 2 people holding one hand of the doll each).
This demo was completed by the presenters telling us to break the circle, and wouldn’t you know it the music stopped. Wow! A palpable “ooh” came from some of the course-goers. I couldn’t help thinking “isn’t this simple electrical conduction?” Breaking the circle breaks the circuit, completing it, well, completes it. Derr! Ah well maybe it wasn’t conduction but some sort of personal energy circle we managed to create.
Then there was the classic power band demo. Have a look at this link for details. Instead of the band they had you doing the test while lying and when telling the truth. Apparently you are weaker when you lie. As if. They mentioned studies but there was no documentary evidence shown. Pfft.
And on it went, nonsense “thoughts are holographic pictures”, argument from authority “we’ve worked with Paul McKenna”, laughable simplification “good and bad brain juice” and finished with bad meditation as relaxation. It felt like being at a cult indoctrination.
I tried to inject some explicit skepticism at one point. We had to look at someone and talk about a subject without moving eyes (ie not to gaze into the distance to figure stuff out, the way we all do when conversing naturally). As you may expect the conversation was more monotonous. Their reasoning was that this happens because your eyes and their movement somehow links to thoughts and losing that means you can’t summon up thoughts as easily. I argued that surely the act of forcing your eyes to stay still adds a layer of complexity rather than takes something away. IE The need to consciously act in an unnatural manner, hence thoughts become harder as you’re now multi-tasking. They totally brushed over their answer to my point. Grr.
So a wasted day? Not completely, I did see 3 patients as well that day. I can’t believe that in a time of belt-tightening the local trust is spending money on this nonsense. There were 35 people there that day, and this was one of 3 days worth of courses. So let’s say 100 people doing the course. I could have seen more than a dozen patients that day instead of listening to people spouting bullshit and probably getting paid far more for it than I do.
Not happy.
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26 Jan 2011
Posted in Life, Work at 2:20 pm by alby
Finally!
I’ve just spent the last few days writing an academic essay again. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a proper one of these. We had a practice one a few weeks back but that was only 1000 words and didn’t count for anything. This one counts as about 17% of my year’s work.
It’s been quite a while since I managed one of these. It’s not actually completely done and R wants to review it before I’m proper done too. Mind you as far as I’m concerned I only have the referencing stuff to do.
It’s a strange course this year. It’s a masters in “Advancing Health Care Practice“. My main problem with it is that the first year is all the tedious airy-fairy stuff about “leadership”. You know the kind of thing, all meaningless buzzwords and little actual objective knowledge. At least that what it feels like. I’d far rather be doing next year’s course which is looking at healthcare research.
Only another 2 essays and one final “bring everything together” assignment and I’m done with this subject.
Huzzah!
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11 Jan 2011
Posted in Life, Work at 9:13 pm by alby
Latest news for me is that the lovely private practice that I work at has run out of work for me. A major shame. My last day is this Friday.
I didn’t get a huge amount of work from them (half day a week) but it was a nice bonus and the people there are lovely. I was only maternity cover anyway and should have finished back in September last year so they’ve not been bad to me. They might still be able to offer me Saturday working and a Pilates class or two, fingers crossed.
Does mean it gives me a little more time with the family (yay), more time to work on my own thing (yay) and a little less money (urgh).
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05 Jan 2011
Posted in News, Work at 12:46 pm by alby
It seems that the government have put forward a nice and fair plan to save the UK some money by cutting down on wage costs in the NHS.
Staff are to be asked if we wish to have no pay rise (despite one already being negotiated, albeit a rather poor deal at best), no increments (we’re on a system where, assuming you’re doing well in the job you go up within a pay band every year until you hit the top of that pay band) and with compulsory increased pension contributions from our wages. And all this is return for a “no compulsory redundancies” promise.
So less take-home money year on year, no incentive to do well and in return they won’t sack us. Nice.
(aside – I quite like the idea of higher pension contributions – but I bet those will be to get our existing benefits not anything better)
Which government was it who said that frontline services wouldn’t be hit? I can’t quite remember.
So this was fun reading and then I hit the pay off. This amazing once in a lifetime deal is for pay band 1-6 staff only. Guess what band I’m in? Could it be 7? Why yes I believe it is.
So less take-home pay (and furthermore reducing cf the cost of living over a couple of years) and I would still be at risk of compulsory redundancy? Not sure the incentives are quite there yet for me to vote for this.
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23 Dec 2010
Posted in Work at 9:18 am by alby
Further to yesterday’s message noting lots of people not coming to their appointments.
I totalled up the stats and we had a rather impressive 22 people failing to attend at the clinic I was at. So for the 3 staff there we averaged 7 patients each not coming.
That’s half a full day’s worth. 1 of us could have taken the day off and there still would have been an excess of staff in the clinic.
What a waste of money. Let’s see the scummy Tax Payer’s Alliance come out about that one instead of their ludicrous agreement that NICE shouldn’t do its job. Words don’t have enough bile to explain just how I feel about the TPA. Scum.
Anyhoo, hopefully today’s lists a bit more full.
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22 Dec 2010
Posted in Work at 1:12 pm by alby
I’m in work today and it’s mildly snowy. Loads of patients not showing up or phoning to cancel as expected.
But then we have a duty to be at work and they keep sending us emails to reinforce this.
We’ve just had one saying the usual “try and get to work, contact your manager if you can’t get here, a day missed will be counted as annual leave…” etc etc.
The main thrust was to answer questions such as “if it carries on snowing can I go early?” and so forth.
The answer seems to be “no but ask your line manager” (mine’s on her hols).
And then the absolute best line I can remember in any email ever:
The situation is being monitored closely by ET and all staff will be notified of any changes to normal working arrangements, should there be any significant update.
Just wow!
I’m expecting a phone call; ”ET… Go home!”
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20 Aug 2010
Posted in Work at 2:12 pm by alby
GP referral from this morning:
Thank you for seeing this lady. Unfortunately I haven’t made a note of the reason for my referral so profuse apologies but I wonder if you would be willing to see her on a routine basis.
I have tried to ring her this evening but her phone is switched off and unfortunately I am about to go on holiday.
I will try and get some more information about the referral when I return if she hasn’t been seen. If you would put her on the waiting list, that would be great though.”
Wow.
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18 Aug 2010
Posted in Rants, Work at 4:28 pm by alby
At work we occasionally (sometimes often) have to use interpreters with our patients.
The commonest languages (Gujurati, Punjabi etc) are supported by a partner organisation. They’re very good.
For those languages that they don’t cover we use the local city council’s interpreting service. The interpreters again are usually very good.
With both sets of staff we have to fill in a form for them to take back to the office. This lets the office know that they turned up on time and did their job well etc.
Now the council staff have a set of questions including this one:
Are you aware of the council’s interpreting service?
This might be a good question if you were asking it to a random person with no need of an interpreting service.
However, I’ve just spent any amount of time up to an hour or so with a patient and one of your interpreters! So what do you think I’m going to answer to that stupid question? It’s one of your interpreters who’s handing me the form with the question on it!
If anyone can think of anything witty and erudite that won’t get me sacked that I can write in answer to that next time I’ll be much obliged.
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30 Jun 2010
Posted in Life, Work at 6:45 pm by alby
I just got home after my last day at Willowbrook Medical Centre.
I started there on 1st April 2002, a notable day really. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that Willowbrook is basically where I really learned what physio is and how to do it properly.
In my time there I’ve worked with a number of folk but the core team of staff has stayed pretty static.
The room was really too small for 2 staff to be there at the same time, the heating was all over the place and the car park is a pain (those 2 “spaces” aren’t actually “spaces” they’re places to walk through, that’s why your car is touching both cars to your sides!)
But the people were what counted. I’m going to miss them.
I’m not actually leaving the team, just that site. We work across the city so I’m going to be in Leicester some more,just I’ll be working over on the west side.
Strange feeling this evening.
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07 Jun 2010
Posted in People, Work at 6:13 pm by alby
I’m one of work’s recruiters. As such I have to attend occasional courses to make sure that I’m not doing it wrong.
One such course was this morning. Odd thing it was.
In these days of belt-tightening there were no fewer than 3 presenters for the course, and no more than 6 or 7 participants.
One of the presenters started off and was a good speaker; she should be, she’s a manager. At one point she handed over to a young lady (no more than 17 or 18 I’d guess) who was visbly nervous.
This young lass stood up and started to speak very quietly. I was expecting a “speak up” from the crowd but, before anyone had a chance to say it, the lass just clammed up.
She looked nervously at her feet, made as if starting up again and then stopped again, more looking at her feet.
Silence for a bit.
The first presenter stepped in with “It’s her first presentation, she’s a little nervous”. And asked her “Are you ok?”
The reply came back in a slightly more firm “Yes, I can do this.”
She couldn’t.
The refrain “I can do this” was repeated lots of times before she began shaking. At this point the manager stepped in and ushered her back to her chair.
The rest of the session was taken by the manager.
Now I see the point of the young lass having a go. I’ll admit to being surprised by that level of nervousness; I suppose I’m used to physios standing up and teaching in front of large groups. Poor girl.
So yes, good idea for the manager being there. Nice idea to have a younger staff member present to have a go at presenting. But at no point was there any indication of why the 3rd HR staff member was there.
As far as I can see a total waste of money.
Oh yes and why are they bothering to update me on the trust’s recruitment policy anyway, there’s a recruitment freeze on!
Spending money everywhere except where it’s needed!
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