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Endless bureaucracy and paperwork #lifeistooshort – By Nicola Davies

Permit holders only(Time to read: 4 minutes)

By Nicola Davies

This week’s rant (because there’s a least one a week now) is about the endless bureaucracy and paperwork that we all suffer with. Don’t you just love the clip boards and their hi-viz jackets wandering around telling us what we should and shouldn’t be doing?!

CQC are paying us a visit again next week and it’s two years since their last visit to the seaside so we expected them along to be honest.  I had a list from the inspector of what he wanted as evidence prior to his trip, then we had a generic ‘to the Registered Manager’ email which requested slightly different evidence. OK then, let me just fell another forest for the evidence required that shows we’re doing what we should be doing. But it’s not just CQC who demand the hoops through which we must jump.

As a locality, we’ve recently attempted to get our sticky mitts on some funds to release some much-needed GP time. However, following submission of our first bid, we were told it didn’t meet the necessary criteria (actually, what they said was it was nice that we all wanted to play together… cue me banging my head on that same patch of office wall again) and so we were steered into another direction – a direction, I might add, that they want us to take. So I’m now stomping my feet like some petulant child as “this just isn’t what we wanted to do in the first place…” . Me having a strop isn’t pretty, I have to say, but sometimes you just have to lie down on the floor face down, banging your hands and feet on the floor like a two-year old… no?… oh, only me then!

We’ve now filled in more forms, redesigned the bid, increased the pathway, signposted one bit of c**p to another pile of c**p as you do in order to try and meet the criteria – and really all we’ve done is moved the goalposts somewhere we didn’t want, for a role that we’re now struggling to fill, for a post that no-one wants to line-manage directly.  What was the flippin’ point?!

But the straw that has finally broken this particular camel’s back (told you I got the hump!)is the Jobsworth at the local council who is giving me a headache over parking permits for GPs. To fill you in, we have a branch site with no on-site parking.  The GP and the nurse park on the road outside the surgery in a bay marked up accordingly for surgery use (forget the receptionist because apparently “she doesn’t count…”!).  Previously, the parish council ‘allowed’ the doctor and the nurse to park here gratis, but no more.   A new parking permit person has determined that I must pay for a permit – but not just for ‘A Doctor’ and ‘A Nurse’… no… for every specific car for every specific doctor – and the nurse is now not allowed to park – she must use the old NCP around the corner, because she isn’t a doctor, so she no longer counts either! I need to, therefore, buy permits for every doctor using the surgery, regardless of how little or often they are there, which seems a tad excessive, to be honest.

Now, I’m not saying I won’t pay – the permits aren’t really expensive – but it’s the principle and I know you will agree with me.  The docs and nurses provide a service to the residents of the parish – and the increasing number of tourists who keep said parish alive, so doesn’t that count as something quite useful to do? If I don’t spend money on lots of permits for people who provide the service on a sometimes ad hoc basis, they are in danger of getting a £70 parking fine – and that to me isn’t acceptable.  Needless to say, I have involved the parish council and our local councillor but part of me knows I won’t win… I’m just enjoying the fight!

I appreciate that we need rules and legislation and paperwork to sit with the rules etc but is it really necessary to take the bureaucratic stance that is, quite frankly, bonkers? And when you look at the stuff we deal with, day in, day out, the clipboard Jobsworths have us quite literally by the short ‘n’ curlies. We have to fill out this form, sign that form, or as is now the case, print it, sign it, scan it, send it back by email (then fax it because you don’t get a receipt response and Heaven forbid that your email isn’t working properly!). I thought the whole point of computers was to reduce the paper, yet my desk looks like the Philyra spewed up all over it. Philyra is apparently the great Goddess of Paper!

Anyway, I must finish now… I have 147 sets of evidence to provide ahead of my inspection. Yeah, OK, I might have exaggerated slightly… but I’m wading under a desk full of paper and I can’t actually find the document that tells me how many documents I must produce…

#lifeistooshort

By Nicola Davies

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Nicola Davies

Practice Manager regularly ranting about the NHS. 35 years in Primary Care and still getting irritated by constant change for change sake! West Country Women Awards Nominee 2022 https://westcountrywomenawards.co.uk/

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8 Responses to “Endless bureaucracy and paperwork #lifeistooshort – By Nicola Davies”
  1. Chris Andrew Says:

    I personally can’t deal with it any more. I love my surgery and the people I work with and pretty much my whole life goes into it, but with so many ‘barriers to Primary Care’ (NHSE is my main one at the moment, but then again I don’t (yet) have another CQC visit looming!) I just can’t do the bureaucracy that surrounds primary care any longer so am going to leave in a few months time. Best of luck with your CQC visit!

    Reply

    • Nicola Davies Says:

      Chris, that’s a shame you’re leaving – but is it any wonder there’s a recruitment/retention crisis – and we’re not even talking about PMs here!! So many very experienced people disheartened/disillusioned………
      Best wishes for your move!

      Reply

  2. Steve Mowatt Says:

    …and breathe!
    I’m thinking that some of that funding should be used for regular hot rock massages for you!

    You know I’m with you on the loathing of the tick box culture and non-conformity of CQC. We recently did a mock CQC inspection and it was the changes in KLOEs and required evidence that had slipped, not the clinical care, the organisational management or the customer service aspects.

    Now you’ve got me needing some relaxation therapy….

    Reply

    • Nicola Davies Says:

      Hot rocks?!! Now that sounds like a great idea – I could potentially claim that as a vital enhanced service!!
      (or at the very least, a vital treatment for my ever decreasing mental health!)

      Reply

  3. Mary Says:

    I grind my teeth in complete sympathy!
    On the gov.local front, similar bureaucrats in the Highways Department round here won’t contemplate a pedestrian crossing for the major road outside our surgery – on a site where there are 2 GP surgeries, a cottage hospital, a care home for the elderly, a care home for severely disabled young people, and a private “sheltered” apartment block for the over 55s. Too complicated – it would mean they’d – wait for it – “have to dig up the pavement” to install the necessary (when has that ever stopped anyone, from British Gas onwards?) .. and apparently there haven’t been enough deaths yet.

    Reply

  4. Nicola Davies Says:

    I share your pain Mary……..I’ve just heard in the same village where our branch is (and parking is the issue) they’re now deciding to put double yellow lines throughout the whole village – so everyone (including those who are disabled) will have to park in the NCP……..the world has finally gone stark raving bonkers!

    Reply

  5. Alan Moore Says:

    It seems to me that Philyra is not the most appropriate. More like Sysiphus – who was condemned to a lifetime pushing a rock uphill only to see it roll back down again and to have to repeat the useless process.

    Reply

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