Sometimes things just go quiet. Life just happens and you find yourself just carrying on, and that is really how it is for me right now. Finishing my masters gave me a renewed enthusiasm fired by a greater feeling of energy for my new job and I got on with things that had been pending but which I had put on the back burner while I finished my dissertation. But generally I do feel extremely weary and that feeling is fueled by the knowledge that I am off on holiday in less than a week.

Yesterday I attended a meeting where a group of people who need to implement a government ‘must do’ spent an hour listing reasons why they wouldn’t be able to do it. Now money is a big factor, and I completely agree that the government is often naive in the extreme when implementing new things. Start up costs are often available, but little thought is given to how it will be sustained. But sometimes people’s negativity just begins to get on my nerves.  It took 55 minutes of moaning, which thankfully was followed by 5 minutes of a suggestion of how doing one part of the equation differently might save enough money to actually pay for it to reach a conclusion. All of this on a Friday afternoon.

People working in management in the NHS have got into the habit of putting up barriers, they are ground down by the financial situation that many have found themselves in. But sometimes I think they ought to sit and listen to themselves and wonder how others might see them. I guess one of my problems is that I tend to try to see the bright side, to look for positive alternatives and often I am in the minority doing that. Maybe this particular change is going to be more expensive than the unit would like, maybe it is going to mean many of them have to work differently, maybe they are all weary from being NHS managers but put yourself in my position or the position of another person from outside and wonder what exactly you are coming across like to others!

This post was difficult, and might not make sense, this is because if I go into specifics about the meeting etc. then I think I will be recognisable, and whats more will be breaching confidentiality.  You  might think that if you don’t work directly with patients that it would be easy to blog about work without breaching confidentiality, but my current job is so specialised that if anything it is getting more, not less difficult!