Nhs Cutbacks...

[janzman]

..according to NHS Choices website the NHS in England employs some 1.6 million people of which....
40,236 are Doctors
351,446 are nursing staff
18,576 are ambulance staff
111,963 are hospital community health and dental staff
That's a total of 522,241 or slightly less than one third of the 1.6 million total payroll. To put it another way slightly more than two thirds are non-medical personnel.
Cuts need to be made ??? cut the pen pushers not the front line medical staff.

[woofgang]

no mention of Physios. Occupational Therapists, Radiographers, Ultrasound Specialists, lab staff, hotel and catering staff, Dieticians, Speech and Language Therapists, maintenance staff, receptionists, clinic managers, Radiotherapists.....shall I go on?

[boxtops]

Hear hear, woofgang!

I'm not a pen pusher, janzman - I happen not to be clinical, but I perform a useful job, supporting NHS front line staff, so do my colleagues. The NHS needs people to run the systems, not everyone can do admin or manage a team - many clinicians don't like admin, and some are not good at it, their forte is with patient care. You still need the support people, you need the secretarial and IT support, Occupational Health, the health and safety bods, personnel and training departments, and so on, to keep all the infrastructure going.

"Pen-pusher" cuts have had massive detrimental effect in the last couple of years. I've seen departments cut from 5 people 2 at one point, but they are still expected to do the same amount of work. Not everybody has to be front line, but the backroom staff free up the clinicians to do their job with patients.

[woofgang]

looks like we saw the OP off Boxy!