Civilian Receptionists- Yay or Nay?

 

Doctors' receptionists have become a social phenomenon. They are regarded as one of the "public enemy" professions along with traffic wardens, bailiffs and taxmen. Every GP's surgery has them and they are a gauntlet that every patient must run; but for some reason acute care units never had them at all until very recently. This could be because the job is comparatively simple. A GP's receptionist is also a secretary, handling medical records and clinic referrals etc, but reception duty in a hospital is very different and much easier. Your job involves being nice and sympathetic to people who arrive, knowing that they might be in physical or emotional pain and discomfort. You then give them directions to where they need to go within the hospital. If they have any mobility problems you can call a porter to help them. Reception in NHS hospitals used to be done by the porters. The job was the principle task of the senior porter, often along with a basic grade assistant known as a "desk porter". In the old days he would often wear a white shirt instead of the general issue light blue. This task would be combined with dispatch. At some point the decision was made to replace the porters on reception with civilian receptionists and I know why. It came about at around the same time as the sentence: "but it doesn't look good" became a catchphrase. When Mediclean was granted the contract to run the JRH domestics and porters they immediately started emphasizing their corporate image. The entrance and main street were redesigned to make them look like a hotel. We were given new uniforms that looked smarter, which was nice; but as it turned out this was no compliment. At the same time, Mediclean began removing us from the view of both visitors and staff. They employed a dispatcher, what they called a "controller" (The first one was actually a very likeable chap called John, husband of the contract manageress); and they brought in receptionists for Monday-to-Friday-nine-to-five. The receptionists were all young, female and conventionally good-looking. They dressed in smart suits and wore lots of jewellery. One of them once told me that the manager had informed her that her principle job was to "sit there and look pretty". The problem is though that a pretty girl is not necessarily much good at anything else if she is not trained properly and does not stay long enough to gain experience. In those days nobody received proper training unless one of the few experts took it upon themselves, which was basically me and a handful of others. Management across the entire trust stopped caring about the quality of the service they provided, and in fact it was their public duty to provide. Instead they spent their whole time checking that everything "looked good". The wards were being staffed by total dullards resulting in an unsanitary level of cleanliness, but it didn't matter so long as the main street parquet was polished and the receptionist's earrings sparkled.
 
We had mixed feelings about the civilian receptionists. Senior porters hated it because they felt they were being insulted by being shielded from public gaze; and they were right. It turned them into primarily administrators who spent most of their time in the Mediclean offices. Most of the lodge boys disliked reception duty and so were generally pleased, although a few of us enjoyed reception work and so looked forward to lates, nights and weekend shifts so we could do it. This is not the first time HP's have acted against their own interest for the sake of short term and limited gain, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/02/delivery-suite.html. The receptionists themselves were a mixed bunch. Despite their glamour I never felt serious attraction for any of them. There were two I got to know very well; one I liked and the other I didn't. I'll call the first one "Lesley". She was a down-to-earth and friendly girl who liked talking to the porters and socialized a lot with us off duty. She ended up marrying a porter and they had a baby. The second one I'll call "Rebecca". She was far more aloof and isolated. She did not ignore the porters, but the way she dealt with us made me feel uncomfortable. She was very insincere and twofaced. It was difficult to know what she really thought about anything because she had an annoying habit of poking her nose into our personal business and manipulating those involved. If two porters were having an argument about anything she would immediately wade in with her 36G's and take the side of one of them. We quickly noticed that this was not because of some high moral principle; she would back whichever porter she found the most attractive and considered the higher in status. As a result she could promote one belief one day and then promote with equal gusto its antithesis the following day; and she really thought we wouldn't notice? Rebecca regarded the gossip and office politics of the Facilities department as a real life soap opera, and of which she was a dedicated commentator. Civilian receptionists were a product of a particular ethos in the NHS during the 90's and early 2000's. I think NHS management knew deep down that their institution was rotting away and they just tried to cover it up with cosmetics, like a dodgy second-hand car dealer painting over the rust. Of course it didn't work and eventually this led to a national scandal, see: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-12-21-nhs-hospitals-outsource-cleaning-‘linked-higher-rates-mrsa’. This media outcry came about ten years too late... We warned them! We bloody well warned them! Remind you of anything? See: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2014/01/man-falls-to-his-death-at-jr.html. I long for the day when hospital managers will say: "how good is this working?" instead of "does it look good?". At the moment that day is sadly a long way off.

Lockdown Memories

 

Lest we forget... And I know a lot of you want to forget. It's understandable. The Covid 19 pandemic hit a hard stop in November 2021. It was a remarkable occurrence that has never happened before in politics. What had been the "current thing" for the previous eighteen months just vanished overnight down the Memory Hole. The bigger issues associated with that can be found in the background link below and lie outside the remit of the HPWA. It is possible we hospital porters might have to go through the same thing again. The World Health Organization keeps talking about "the next pandemic". What next pandemic? How do they know? Whatever the answer the HP's will be on the front line of dealing with it, like all healthcare providers. Joe Albro is a porter at Harrogate District Hospital. He says he walks 23,000 to 30,000 steps a day; yes indeed! At least we keep fit with our job. He is engaged to be married to a girl in HR, presumably not a girl like the ones I knew, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/05/ive-got-posting-in-thailand.html. He joined the porters in 2019, not knowing that six months later he'd be at the pandemic coalface. "The job was already busy, but when Covid happened it got crazy. The second wave has been manic. You can work non-stop some days, walking everywhere and pushing stuff around. It is exhausting. It doesn't worry me working here, especially as we've got all the correct PPE." Contrary to popular belief, a lot of the personal protective equipment we used in the lockdown was that which we used anyway in some situations because we're all trained for quarantine conditions, what we call "barrier". Joe is very inspired because he had to care for his mother who has multiple sclerosis. Of all the traumatic elements of the job, the part he finds the most difficult to deal with is patients with dementia. Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-55984765. I salute my EP&DBP Joe Albro! I wonder what he's doing now. Is he still in HPing? Did he get married to his admin sweetheart? If he's still one of us, what will he be having to deal with in the years to come. Whatever the answer, I wish him all the best.
See here for background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/02/coronavirus-portal.html.

HP Seeks Missing Boy

 

When a young person goes missing it is terrifying and worrying for their parents and everybody else who is close to them. When the disappearance is permanent and has no apparent explanation it is even worse. One of the most disturbing examples of just such an occasion happened in Glasgow on New Year's Day 1966. A teenage boy called Alex Cleghorn was first-footing with his two older brothers, a Scottish New Year tradition involving visiting a stranger's house bearing gifts. The three boys were walking along Govan Road in the east of the city when the two older boys, David and William, suddenly realized Alex was no longer beside them. They looked around, but he was nowhere to be seen. The police investigated, but to this day Alex is listed as a missing person. Members of Alex' family still comment on articles and social media posts about this case. It has divided the family. Some people think Alex was simply drunk and wandered off, but that doesn't explain why he never came back or contacted home. I expect fingers pointed at the brothers, as so often happens in these cases. Six years later on New Year's Day 1972 David and William retraced their steps in the forlorn hope that somehow their little brother might return. This sounds to me rather like the "Missing 411" cases investigated by David Paulides, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/03/portal-caught-on-film.html. However, it is very rare for a person to disappear so suddenly in the presence of witnesses. Source: https://www.tiktok.com/@creepyglasgow_gal/video/7251064614119623963.
 
Luckily, a hospital porter is coming to the rescue. Andy Owens lives in West Yorkshire and his bio states that he "works as a hospital porter", but in fact nobody works as a HP. HPing is not a job; it's a calling, a way of life. It's what we are and what we do; it is not a job, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/its-not-job.html. Andy is the author of several books on the supernatural. He describes himself as "an open-minded skeptic" which makes a change from the usual kind. He is writing a new book called The British X-Files in which he describes his plan to get to the truth. See here for his website: https://owensandy.com. I have already contacted Andy and we've exchanged some emails. You might think that success is unlikely, but sometime missing people do come back, often in an equally mysterious way, for example: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2018/02/missing-skier.html. I also went missing for a while myself, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/10/ive-had-missing-time.html. I wish MEP&DBP Andy all the very best of luck in his mission. If anybody can find Alex, a HP can!
See here for more information: 

https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/skeptics-portal.html.

A HP's Life without Dignity Statements

 

I know what it is like to live as a hospital porter without dignity statements because I did so for the first few years of my career. I describe two experiences from that period here: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/how-dare-you.html and: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/well-take-it-from-here.html. There were many others. Deep down, maybe I should be grateful for those dark days because without them would there be a HPWA at all? What is it like to endure twenty-three years of that nightmare? I'm glad I never found out. But how do HP's who don't know about the dignity statement cope? What about those who positively reject it, for a recent example see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/02/it-doesnt-work.html? You can just bite your tongue and take it, but is that healthy? The brilliant 2003 comedy film Anger Management has Jack Nicholson, in one of his best performances, playing a psychotherapist. In one scene he tells one of his patients: "There are two kinds of angry people in this world, explosive and implosive. Explosive is the kind of individual you see screaming at the cashier for not taking their coupons. Implosive is the cashier who remains quiet day after day and finally shoots everyone in the store." Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw24BjNsnkw. You'll be relieved to know that I've never witnessed a HP shooting anybody in a hospital, but I have seen them blow their fuses and start shouting at the top of their voice, sometimes throwing objects around in their fury; and I've seen some civilians doing the same. Psychologists use a lot of physical metaphors when referring to emotion, like "bottling up" and "letting it out". What about the perfect stoic who bites his tongue for his entire career? I knew a porter who was six months away from retirement and he transformed into a docile sheep. As a result the rest of his section, and the civilians, used him as a walking punch-bag. We knew it was because he was just biding his time, running the calendar down; longing for that happy day when he walked out of the lodge for the last time. But memories of humiliation can torment; I've felt them. Injustice without recourse is a mental torture, and like all very intense negative emotions, it can lead to depression and post-traumatic stress that can cause physical ailments. I often wonder how much that man really enjoyed his retirement.
 
I know you'll sometimes hear phrases like "rise above it!" and "water off a duck's back!", but how honest is that? I also know many people who forgive their abusers, either from a sense of duty because of a religious belief or as a way to find personal peace. However, there is a shadow to that desire for peace. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out that abusers never forgive their victims, it is only the victim who has to forgive their abuser; and he believed this was fundamentally an expression of powerlessness. For a person without power at the mercy of another who is cruel and sadistic, you have to forgive for your own selfish needs, to avoid the only alternative which is to sit and seethe in ineffectual rage for your entire life. It was a part of what he called "slave morality". Source: https://fdrpodcasts.com/5412/how-to-never-be-bullied. In a hospital, being the type who screams at the cashier is not an option either, it will quickly get you discharged. People like that also have trouble holding down a civvy job. The only option is the dignity statement. It is the most gratifying revenge of all, and the most potent because it includes total impunity. It leads to the most sublime inner peace in a situation fraught with even the worst structural violence. There is no valour in false modesty; I believe I have made a world-changing breakthrough, one that can brighten up the lives or all my brother and sister porters; and anybody else who chooses to try it. If any readers disagree and think they have a better solution, feel free to let me know.

"It Doesn't Work!"

 

I've said many times that it doesn't bother me so much when civilians look down at porters, but it causes me a lot of distress when porters look down on porters. I recently wrote about a very disturbing conversation I had with a fellow HP in which he argued for his own worthlessness and became annoyed with me for disagreeing with him, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-delegation-argument.html; and he is not alone. Most of my brother and sister porters really like the idea of dignity statements. As you know, they work best when you have another HP with you when you are carrying one out. However, there were a handful who were rather irritated about the concept. "It doesn't work, Ben! They don't care!" they used to say to me. I found this cynicism over dignity statements upsetting, especially because it was coming from a HP. Ironically these HP's tended to be the individuals who complained the most about nastiness and passive aggression from civilian staff. What I offered them was a solution to passive aggression, a viable and potent defence against what they seemed to hate so much; but they just threw is away like a piece of rubbish. The fact of the matter is, dignity statements do work! How do I know that? Because everybody knows what humiliation is; it is as universal to the human experience as birth and death. What I do not understand is the desire to inflict it onto others without provocation. I have never experienced that, but I do know those who have that desire exist and that the dignity statement completely disarms them. It disarms them because they always know when they fire a humiliation missile at somebody and it bounces off. My cynics sometimes point to an example of where a dignity statement allegedly did not work. A civilian friend of mine, a HCA, once came to me and told me that she had been talking to "Miss stuck-up little bitch nurse" (one of many!) and the nurse had mentioned to my friend that I had DS'ed her a few days previously. "Why does Ben do that?" she apparently asked. "What does he mean by it?" However, I am almost certain that the nurse said this to my friend because she knew this HCA was my friend and would report back to me that the nurse had said this. It was a forlorn attempt to neutralize the dignity statement. Despite me explaining this to my portering cynic, he stubbornly insisted dignity statements were "a waste of time!" and that "they just make you look stupid!" It is sad, but some people deep down do not want to be free.

Would I Ever Have Left?

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/01/ten-years-on.html.
There's a question a lot of people have asked me and I have asked it to myself: Is there any situation in which I would have willingly hung up my gas spanner? After serious consideration I have decided that the answer is almost certainly no. When I look back at what I endured during my twenty-three years of service; and none of that made me even consider it, what could hit me in the future that could be worse? My brother and sister hospital porters still serving keep me informed and they tell me that in the decade without me that has just passed, things have got far worse. (I'm not claiming there is a causal link there!) I have reported a lot of these nightmares on the HPWA and The Gas Spanner radio show. However, had I been serving, none of these ordeals would have induced me to leave. It's possible I would have been dismissed because of my stubbornness when it comes to matters of principle; this almost happened twice before, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/02/delivery-suite.html and: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2017/07/odo.html. But to instigate my own departure from HPing? No way! I was so institutionalized that I actually couldn't imagine myself as anything but a HP. As I've said before, it's more than "just a job, mate". Envisioning myself as anything other than a HP was like envisioning myself as a centaur or a leprechaun. Not only that, but on a practical level, what else could I do? I have no formal education, no qualifications except a GCSE pass in English and French. I have no skills outside those needed for HPing and it's hard to see how most of those could be applied to any civilian profession; they are exclusive to the work HP's do. As a result I now work in a simple self-employed civilian state. I was also socially institutionalized. I lived inside a relationship bubble containing my brother/sister porters and people they all knew or were related to. I once joked about this, that I knew nobody else outside that bubble, but even at the time my laughter had a slightly sombre undertone. There are no support organizations for ex-HP's (except the HPWA of course!) or in fact for any NHS veterans. We literally jump into the dark, landing in, what for many of us, is a completely alien world. This does not affect all HP's. There are some of us who get through our service with "one foot in the lodge", doing our duties without really caring about it or getting deeply involved emotionally. I don't understand those people, but I know they exist. I was never one of them; I could never be one of them. This is a big subject that I cover elsewhere, but I do believe in fate, to a certain extent. We are definitely the directors of our own lives, yet we direct within the framework of a basic storyline, some changes in our lives are ordained by "higher forces". If what happened to me in 2012 was "meant to happen", that it was simply the time in my life that I needed to move on from HPing, then this destiny was fulfilled the only way it ever could be; I was forced out.
See here for more background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/its-not-job.html.

Hospital Civilians Drug Patients

 

One of the best things about being a hospital porter is that you know you're one of the hospital good guys. Now, I am very well aware that we're definitely not perfect, for example: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2021/05/paul-farrell-jailed.html; but generally speaking we're lilywhites compared to the civilian professions. Very often when some act of scumbaggery occurs in a hospital, fingers instinctively point at the porters, but this is a myth that is losing credibility with each turning of the news cycle. Catherine Hudson was a nurse at the Blackpool Victoria Hospital and she has just been sentenced to seven years in prison for gross malpractice. Her accomplice, Charlotte Wilmot, has been described as a "healthcare worker" which probably means a nursing auxiliary or HCA; and she has got three years. The two served on a stroke unit and during nightshifts gave their patients extra sedation to keep them quiet in order to make the nurses' jobs easier. Hudson and Wilmot made spiteful jokes to each other on Whatsapp. I don't think that alone is necessarily insidious, as I've said before, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2020/05/sick-hospital-video.html; but in this case it does seem to have served as incitement to genuine malice. Source: https://news.sky.com/story/nurse-and-healthcare-worker-jailed-after-patients-sedated-for-easy-shift-13029474. This "culture of abuse" went on for at least a year. It ended when a student nurse, known only as "Nurse A" for legal reasons, blew the whistle. She had been doing a stint on the hospital wards and discovered Hudson and Wilmot's conspiracy. Management at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust made a public statement praising the decency and courage of Nurse A... but in private I am sure they are cursing her name. I suspect once she qualifies she will be blacklisted and find a lot of career obstacles mysteriously appearing in her path. I am sure this "culture of abuse" is everywhere, and management know it and look the other way. Occasionally it pops up, like in this case and the terrible one in the background link below; but the only thing managers lament is the scandal it causes. It's the law of the jungle on those wards and the patients are the prey.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/12/nhs-nurses-destroy-patients-doll.html.