ARE YOU BEING BULLIED AT WORK?
"As an NHS manager, I will observe the following principles: make the care and safety of patients my first concern and act to protect them from risk .... I will be honest and act with integrity .... I will seek to ensure that NHS Staff are valued as colleagues; given all reasonable protection from harassment and bullying; provided with a safe working environment"
Extracts from The Code of Conduct for NHS Managers.
PRINT, COMPLETE, AND RETURN THE UNISON NUH BULLYING SURVEY FORM NOW!
Something grows like a cancer within the heart of the NHS and this Trust, pumping its bile into the bloodstream of an organization whose integrity is slowly being eaten away by the metastatic effects of bullying and stress.
Bullying, occurs in a variety of ways, from subtle to outrageous, from psychological to physical, from colleagues bullying colleagues to managers bullying managers, even managers bullying whole departments, and according to the recent National NHS Staff Survey Results, this Trust has the fifth least supportive line managers in 170 Acute Trusts in England, and the 16th worst in the whole of the NHS. Bullying is attacking the very fabric of the NHS and its ability to provide the care to the patients that we are all employed to contribute to providing.
Morag Wilson was the Dietetics Manager at Wythenshawe Hospital. Morag was under unbearable pressure, caused by a combination of the effects that the inequities of Agenda For Change were having on her staff, subsequently feeling ostracized by those staff, and she was also said to be extremely upset by a failing student who had been a victim of discrimination. Morag became so desperate that she tried several times to stab herself in the heart with a kitchen knife, before jumping 100ft to her death into the Manchester Ship Canal. Coroner John Pollard, the Coroner involved in bringing Harold Shipman's crimes to light, urged the NHS to consider the impact of reforms on staff as he recorded a suicide verdict. He said: "I find it extremely sad that a young woman with such a lot going for her has been reduced to this state of despair. "When people introduce these rules and systems, perhaps a bit more thought as to what effect they will have on people would be helpful. That is no help to Morag but it may be to others in future and I hope it will be taken note of."
Bullying, and the consequential stress it causes, can kill staff, and it can kill the patients whose interests those staff are obligated to keep paramount, and whose safety those staff are employed to ensure. It is that simple. Bullying causes stress which leads to life-threatening illness, to costly absenteeism, to poor concentration, to errors in judgment .... and careless mistakes. If incidents of bullying were available in packs of 20, there would be a large warning on the front with a picture of the body of a member of staff or a patient on the reverse. The working environment of the NHS, including this Trust, has never exactly been a utopian fantasy of employment, particularly for those groups of staff thought of, and treated as, the lower trophic levels of the hierarchical food chain, and if anyone comes to work in the NHS expecting to suckle at the warm lactating breast of their maternal employer, then boy, did they get on the wrong train! And therein lies the point; because what gives the NHS, and this Trust, it's heart and it’s soul, is the fact that there are so many passionate, committed and loyal staff who stay in the service regardless of how they are treated, regardless of how undervalued they made to feel, and regardless of what the Daily Telegraph calls the "ice-hearted bureaucracy" within the NHS, and Sir Ian Kennedy, the former Chair of The Health Commission, refers to as the "corrosive nature of bullying among NHS staff and managers" that is "permeating the delivery of care".
Richard Pocock, was a Mental Health Nurse at North East Essex Mental Health NHS Trust, and was subjected to "a vindictive, oppressive, ruthless and macho style of management"; and whilst management were made aware that Richard was suicidal, they failed to do anything about it. Richard subsequently committed suicide, leaving a widow, and three children. His widow received an out of court settlement of £25,000 from the Trust.
In the recent NUH Staff Survey, one of the ‘Key Findings’ was regarding staff’s perceptions of the effectiveness of action from the Trust towards violence and harassment. This Trust was in the worst 20% of all the Acute Trusts in England, placing us 147th out of 170, and we were also in the worst 20% of all Acute Trusts for staff suffering from work-related stress (146th out of 170). Those figures might also go some way to explain that we are the 6th worst Trust for having effective communication between staff and senior management, and may also be contributory to the fact that the job satisfaction of the staff at this Trust makes us a disgraceful third worst of all Acute Trusts in the country, and the 15th worst in all of the 392 NHS Trusts in this country who took part in the survey. Perhaps those figures will improve as the Trust strives to become a Foundation Trust?
Without wishing to jump on what has perhaps become the bandwagon of Mid-Staffordshire “The Death Hospital”, there were concerns raised in the Healthcare Commission’s Report related to bullying of staff, and that those staff had no process to raise concerns, without fear of retributions from bullying management. As Charlotte Chantry in the Health Service Journal puts it, the NHS often creates leaders who like to assert power rather than empower others and is too quick to take two or three people out and string them up when things go wrong, instead of changing organizational cultures. Worryingly, as bad as things were at Mid-Staffordshire, they faired significantly better than the NUH in their staff survey.
Brian Gilfillan, 36, a conscientious hospital employee, who had an unblemished record working for the National Health Service for the whole of his working life, hanged himself from a tree in the grounds of Forth Park Hospital in Kirkaldy, after being told he could be sacked for “fraud”. His 'crime' was that he forged the signature of his manager, not for personal gain, but had been seeking “to ensure the continued smooth running of the department”, and as the only way of requisitioning extra maternity forms, had forged his manager's signature on a requisition. His managers insisted on a disciplinary hearing as they considered his actions a breach of trust.
Brian had worked all his adult life as a records officer with NHS Fife, and up until his death, he had earned a reputation for his astonishing commitment to his job. He was known to take work home and correct mistakes made by colleagues and was even once reprimanded for working beyond his required hours.
At a 'Fatal Accident Enquiry', Sheriff Andrew McCulloch said that Brian's three managers, Ann Starkie, Valerie Anderson and Karen Laird, who had dealt with the disciplinary procedure, had incorrectly labelled the supervisor’s behaviour as “fraud”. He added: “It is clear that training is required in the proper interpretation of the more serious categories of misconduct. Three employees all misdirected themselves with regard to fraud. It is quite clear that there was no fraud on the part of Mr Gilfillan.
William Gilfillan, 71, the dead man’s father, said “I’m bitter against them. I see them as having taken my son away from me. It is quite obvious that there are people in jobs that are not qualified for the positions they hold.”
UNISON is taking on an increasing caseload of bullying and related stress issues at this Trust, and we have consistently raised this issue at the highest levels of Management in the Trust, but we have yet to be convinced that that this issue is even being acknowledged, let alone taken seriously or addressed. But then it's much easier to dismiss a problem by convincing yourself it isn't a problem. After all, you don't have to spend time and valuable resources finding a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Click HERE for a copy of a Bullying Survey that we ask you print, complete, and return to UNISON at:
UNISON NUH Branch 20122, Union Building, City Hospital Campus, Hucknall Road, Nottingham, NG5 1PB
Finally, when managers, placed in a position of trust, actually allow themselves to be recorded bullying and ridiculing the very member of staff who they know is recording them, then maybe that is a sign that they feel that as a Manager their impunity is guaranteed, no matter how outrageous their behaviour, and that is a sign that there is something seriously wrong here. UNISON is also currently involved with an open and shut case of bullying by a manager that has been dragging on for over four months. What does it take to consider the magnitude, the extent, and the potential lethal consequences of this problem? A murder? A couple of suicides? Half a dozen breakdowns? The deaths of hundreds of patients maybe? Why are lessons never learned? What happened at Mid-Staffordshire Hospital should NEVER be allowed to happen again, because a year later and several (Foundation) Trusts are even worse than Mid-Staffordshire. Everyone should read the Healthcare Commission Report on Mid-Staffordshire, and understand why it happened. This Trust needs to prioritize the welfare of its staff and ingenuously see them as its most valuable asset - mainly BECAUSE WE ARE - and actively and enthusiastically engage in staff engagement and ingrain that philosophy into it's management culture, by disciplinary force if necessary, rather than merely pay lip-service to these terms with vacuous trite hyperbole whilst engaging in driving their 'most valuable assets' into the ground.
The Staff Survey proves that the diplomacy of the staff and senior management relationship isn't working, so in the interests of the well-being of staff and the lives of patients, perhaps it's time for some undiplomatic honesty and bluntness. We feel that this Trust needs to get it's act together, get it's head out of the sand, or the clouds, and realize that it’s not just other Trusts where bullying and stress are happening, it is happening here, it is happening now, it's effects are destructive, it's consequences can be devastating, it needs to be stopped, and it needs to be stopped NOW.
