We too have been in the position of either being attached to a
particular Directorate, or being split amongst all of them. We chose
Clinical Support Services - it may not be politically the most powerful
in the Trust, but we have found them very supportive as we are all
"minority" disciplines and there are no vested interests, political
agendas or inflated egos.
Splitting physio up into individual directorates would cause problems.
First, as Martin pointed out, the difficulties of cross-covering
sickness (or, as has happened where we are, an epidemic of maternity
leave.)
Secondly, what about rotations and students - would a directorate that
has ownership of its share of physios be happy to lose its juniors and
senior IIs if they rotate and leave a gap in the rotation?
Also - skill mix - everyone wants experienced senior physios but they
don't seem to realise that they are grown, not picked off a shelf
ready-made. What staffing levels and grades will the Directorate
request? This has already become an issue with one of our consultants
who doesn't want junior staff treating their patients.
We also have Clinical Specialist physios, Respiratory and Neuro. Their
advantage is cross-specialty expertise, eg the Resp CPS sorts out resp
problems in all areas, not just surgical. Splitting off into
directorates would lose this valuable cross-specialty resource.
I'm not sure how well other disciplines understand the concept of
rotation and broad experience that therapists have. Our nurses, for
instance rotate - from acute surgical to subacute surgical to high
dependency surgical, but don't seem to rotate between specialties. I
think also our role needs to be clear. At one point in the discussions
it was suggested that OTs should be rostered to start at 7am so they
could be extra pairs of hands to help with washing and dressing. We
explained that an OT would probably spend an hour with a patient
facilitating washing and dressing, they didn't do it for the patient and
cetainly were unlikely to make the job any quicker, and when did they
think we were going to do home visits?
So - no experience of being split up, but we thought long and hard
enough over it to decide that it would not be in the best interests of
the Department.
Regards,
Carol David
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