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COMMUNICATION AND RELATIONSHIPS
The post holder will be expected to provide and receive highly complex, sensitive information where cooperation and agreement will be required. This could include writing documents such as press releases, presentations and briefings that interpret sensitive information. It could also include explaining complex and sensitive issues to a hostile or antagonistic audience including journalists, MPs, stakeholders and patients.The postholder will be able to influence internal and external audiences and ensure that messages are understood.
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How interesting that NHS managers regard patients as a "hostile or antganoistic audience". I wonder why that would be then? This was highlighted on Grant Shapps' online forum.
Realising that calling patients hostile was stupid, the PCT then signed up to the Shapps Forum to apologise for causing offence with "clumsy" and "inappropriate" language.
So perhaps they do need that Comms Mgr after all.
23 comments:
Give Henry Deedes a link to Total Politics will you Iain?
Henry Deedes - running to catch up!
http://www.annaraccoon.com/?p=1473
The ad says a hostile audience could include patients. As indeed it could. Your headline is a rather wild leap.
what did it pay ?
It will be the agency who wrote this. Cheap point, as always.
Got anything worth saying on your "blog"?
Well, having been bitten, pushed and verbally abused whilst working as an HCA (not that I minded, it's a great job and I loved it, through it's absurdly underpaid), I think that's pretty fair! They're just saying you may have to explain tricky things to patients who don't want to hear them - is that so wrong?
To be fair, some patients are "hostile and antagonistic". And many are not really intelligent enough to make sense of what are really a series of complicated systems.
Consider: Average IQ is 100. I bet most people who read this blog have IQs of over 120.
People get hostile and antagonistic because the system is to hard to grasp.
Perhaps, Iain, they were thinking about your hostile and aggressive blog post? I have seen some in the media behave like this and some patients also behave like this. What a nice sheltered life you must lead...
Notice it says nothing about ensuring what is said is the truth.
No interest if it is a lie, just ensure the message gets across.
This comes out of the labyrinthine NHS pay-grading structure, called "Agenda for Change" in which certain factors accrue higher pay points. What has happened is that somebody has cut and pasted this from the internal job specification.
So for example,"explaining complex and sensitive issues" indicates a certain pay grade under "Agenda for Change", "explaining complex and sensitive issues to a hostile or antagonistic audience" however, would bump up the increment.
That is how jobs in the NHS are assessed for pay.
My Mum is a nurse, some of the families she has to deal with are absolutely and without question hostile and antagonistic. Sometimes they might be justified, other times they might not be. But like all human beings, they can be hostile on occasion
For some reason, this reminds me of the Yes Minister episode where a new hospital has opened in North London, staffed by 500 administrators, but which doesn't have any nurses, doctors or patients in it.
Come on Iain, it's an ad. written by a retiring spin doctor for his replacement.
And credit where it's due? Who was the Parliamentary candidate who compalined about the offensive language?
Clue: not Grant Shapps
I am a journalist. And I resent being defined as "hostile and antagonistic."
Unless, of course, the idiots behind this advert think journalists, MPs and patients think we should be "hostile and antagonistic"?
I mean, I could learn to be "hostile and antagonistic," if they'd rather...
Despairing Liberal, you clearly do not understand how things work.
The statement would, even if written by an agency, have been signed off by the advertiser before publication.
Do try to keep up.
"People get hostile and antagonistic because the system is to hard to grasp"
Perhaps. But some of them are just scum who abuse the staff. In the last few years we have had a lot of contact with hospitals for various reasons. Among the things we have witnessed are:-
* a 16 year old with broken hands attempting to kick nurses because they refused to allow him to smoke on the ward. Eventually security had to be called and he was discharged from the hospital after attacking them and a Doctor (kick boxing style)because they refused to remove his cast (which had only been on a few days)
* very drunk people in A&E who are rude and threatening
* a male patient of about 60 on a ward shouting, swearing at and abusing staff. He had chronic respiratory problems but would not keep his oxygen mask on as he was perpetually eating a huge bag of sweets and objected to being asked to stop to breathe
* relatives complaining because they hadn't actually been there when a relative died! Apparently this was the nurses fault as they should have been able to predict the exact moment
Most of the staff we have met have been excellent - professional and committed. Some have been incompetent and some downright lazy. But they do have a lot to put up with and, from what we have seen, 'hostile and antagonistic' ain't the half of it!
Oh yes, thatsnews, the people issuing them in hospital trusts are always so diligent and attentive!
However, it is sadly you who hasn't a clue. My wife works in a recruitment agency with NHS clients and she has confirmed that these things are sometimes, in a hurry, dictated over the phone as "vague ideas" with an instruction to the agency to "smarten it up" and rush it out, sight unseen. So basically you are wrong.
Amazingly some hospitals have a role titled "Complaints Manager". Evidently an irony bypass is a primary requirement but, more saliently, what do we glean about priorities?
Iain
I'm surprised that no one has picked up on the explanation given by Wrinkled Weasel.
If "explaining complex and sensitive issues to a hostile or antagonistic audience" does deliver a higher level of pay then guess what? Issues will be kept complex and sensitive and audiences will be kept hostile and antagonistic.
Now, having a pay structure that rewarded "dealing with issues by finding simple solutions that are in tune with patients needs and understanding" really would make sense.
Firstly care would improve and, secondly, the post of communications manager could be done away with altogether.
R56
"You are what you say", as my lovely stepdaughter apparently said to someone rude to her, at really quite a young age.
Classic. How those New Labour management types hate those they are meant to be working on behalf of. Holders of the true belief, we are all laggards and infidels.
The true terrorists are New Labour, as they have inserted themselves into the country like a nasty virus, masquerading as human beings.
Off with their heads, off with their focus groups.
@ The Grim Reaper said...
//
For some reason, this reminds me of the Yes Minister episode where a new hospital has opened in North London, staffed by 500 administrators, but which doesn't have any nurses, doctors or patients in it.
//
Or the joke about the health system with more managers than beds.
What? It's not a joke?
@ Despairing Liberal
Why should we believe you?
Well the comments certainly show that the NHS doesn't always inspire harmony and consensus.
Perhaps the advert should have included: dogmatic, entrenched, cynical, furious, populist and self-serving to cover all the bases.
@theJof
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