Surviving Work in Healthcare

The book takes as its starting point the crisis of healthcare in the UK: impossible health targets managed through command and control management and a stomach-churning rise in racism, whistleblowing and victimisation in the NHS. The use of nationally set productivity targets combined with austerity cuts have increasingly put clinical best-practice into direct conflict with funding. Health targets have become politically controlled, and performance has become a cynical exercise in ticking boxes, cascaded within trusts and bulldozed through frontline services. This has led directly to a precarious system of employment relations, subject to the continual restructuring of services rather than the goal of creating functioning interdisciplinary teams that stand a chance of capturing clinical excellence. This book is written for workers and managers who are on the frontline of the battle for decent healthcare. The content of this book is based on the 'ordinary' expertise of the people who are actually surviving it and helpful ideas about making the best out of a bad lot. Surviving Work in Healthcare will be of interest to healthcare professionals and anyone working on the frontline of healthcare as well as students of management, human resources and psychology.

Dr Elizabeth Cotton is a writer and educator working in the field of mental health at work. She teaches and writes academically about employment relations and precarious work, business and management, adult education, solidarity and team working. Elizabeth worked as an organiser and educator for the Miners' International and has worked with activists from thirty-five developing and transition economies. She has worked as a psychotherapist in the NHS and runs Surviving Work (www.survivingwork.org), a free resource for working people on how to do it. She has recently set up a joint resource with the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust for people working on the frontline of healthcare (www.survivingworkinhealth.org) and is currently researching future trends in mental health services and jobs in the UK.

Preface Chapter 1. Understanding Healthcare Systems Chapter 2. Start where you are Chapter 3. Precarious Work Chapter 4. Precarious Workers Chapter 5. Walk the Line Chapter 6. Groups and Gangs Chapter 7. How to make friends and influence people Chapter 8. Making the best out of a bad lot Chapter 9. Helpful Stuff for Human Beings