Saturday 6 April 2013

Malicious, Malfunctioning, Cowardly or Just Plain Incompetent - Some managers

So what am I trying to expose about these malfunctioning, inept or possibly downright evil  managers.  Is evil too strong a word for the worst sort?  The accusations against the senior nurses at present before the Nursing and Midwifery Council from Mid Staffs Hospital, describe severely bullying behaviour that destroys people.  Surely that’s evil, whatever the pressures on the people perpetrating such behaviour?

I have known a couple of people who have been very badly treated and who have become obsessed with fighting back through employment tribunals, running out of money, destroying their marriages and becoming convinced that there is a great conspiracy going on out there.

Does the truth prevail or will it finally be revealed? 
There are people who have been struck off by the NMC who are entirely innocent.  There are other staff who have been disciplined for things they didn’t do.  I think these numbers are substantial.

Where are the unions?  That will have to wait for another blog!

I’ve often thought about these managers, how they can do these things.  Who are they?  Where is their integrity?  As they have often been suppressing the truth, are they safe to have working in the NHS?  I think not.  If they lie in these proportions, what else are they capable of?

Teachers say that failed teachers often end up working as Ofsted inspectors.  Sometimes nursing staff wonder if the same process is in action in the NHS.   One thing these management people are very good at, is talking.  They are very convincing, especially to their superiors.

The whole culture can become very destructive.  Terry Dennis, of the wonderful Dignified Revolution campaign group  (www.dignifiedrevolution.org.uk)  has produced two papers about toxic organisations and difficult colleagues, available to download at www.healthcarealliances.co.uk. 
( See Articles. ) Mr Dennis quotes well known psychological experiments that demonstrate how managers can lose the plot and how other staff join in, for a variety of reasons. 

One of the shocks for many suspended people, is the way people they thought were friends, turn against them.  Many people say that they found out who their friends really were when they suffered their nightmare experience.

As the managers are currently wholly unaccountable to any outside agency, they are free to behave in these ways until the day they retire, leaving a trail of destruction behind them.

Hopefully all this will change since the release of the Francis Report into Mid Staffs and the concerted actions of groups like Patients First (www.patientsfirst.org.uk) and Cure the NHS (www.curethenhs.co.uk ).

So on that optimistic note, I’ll stop.
With best wishes
Julie

2 comments:

  1. Julie, you are right they are evil, and shamelessly too. Accountability will come home to roost and they will pay for the wrongs they have committed eventually! I am certain, though never quite as soon as I might want it to.

    I do think with the changing value system in the NHS (etc) it means that the value system of "honesty, vocation and do your best "etc, has gone and has been replaced with this" me promoting me, and if you stand in my way or show any altruistic tendencies I will crush you" behavior from Management.

    Its all pathological, but if everyone who is in Power is pathologically bent in some way, who can see the deficiencies of the next Manager through their own sieve of pathologies?

    where will it end?

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  2. By the way you are so right about discovering who ones friends really are, when NHSD reported me to the NMC for the allegations they had concocted themselves but without any factual basis.( Showing how appalling their own practice was,) there was a mighty parting of the sheep and the goats and people who had been "oh such good friends" suddenly wanted nothing to do with me, perhaps because they thought being reported to the NMC was an infectious disease?

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