just too busy to blog

OK so I've not done anything to this blog for ages. When i first started out I had the crazy idea I could keep 3 blogs going on different subjects but now i find that i'm too busy to keep just this blog going. I heard on TV that loads of people write blogs and send e mails in work time. There's no chance for this in the NHS, or perhaps more accurately no time to do this for fun. I spend a significant amount oftime every day sorting out e mails but they are all work related. That's just about all I've got time for. I was wiondering if excessive blogging is a sign of something, I'm not sure what, maybe not having enough going on that's more important or more interesting than sitting in front of a computer screen.

Is a ban on pain killers coming?

People are becoming addicts to over the counter pain drugs, so runs a recent news story. The last time this type of thing hit the news was over co-proxamol and it's use in suicide attempts. I have heard first hand how the ban on co-proxamol has badly affected some people and there is the risk that with the typical knee jerk reaction so prevalent in health care policy that another group of drugs which benefit many people will be removed from chemists' shelves. Drug abuse is something which needs attention but there is a massively unequal reaction to the small number of pain killer addicts compared to policy designed to address alcoholism. Alcohol has never been more readily available but UK health and social policy does not do anything to effectively reduce alcohol abuse. The Government has a vested interest in keeping alcohol consuption high because of the tax revenue it generates. There is a seriuos need to get clearer priorities in healthcare policy and to have a more transparent perspective of vested political interest.

NHS change

I get fed up with NHS changes. Just when you think that you understand how things work and there is an element of stability then everything changes again. I think this is because of the managers within the NHS and reflects the problem of management within the public sector. In the private sector a manager is judged by their contribution to company profit. However in the public sector everything is different. Because managers in public services do not produce anything (and actually cost the organisation) then they have to create the illusion of productivity by initiating change. Through changing things in the NHS they can make it look like progress or improvement. The hardest thing to accept is the way that Agenda for Change was applied to management. The biggest component of AfC scoring was for clinical activity,so in my thinking this should have made clinicians more highly paid that managers lacking clinical contact or expertise. This is definiely not what happened. I heard a rumour that one of the reaons for NHS financial problems were the large salary increases for managers under AfC. Just a rumour or near the truth?