Crisis talks

This is me in NHS Manager mode, sitting in on a teleconference with several people in a room twenty miles away and half a dozen others strung out across the patch, trying to work out how we support services in crisis. If you've ever wondered what NHS Managers do the simple answer is that there is no simple answer, but what would surprise most people is how closely we work with doctors, nurses and other clinicians and how few clipboards and memos there are.

Most NHS managers were nurses, doctors or have come through some "factory floor" route. For my part I cleaned up vomit, talked to psychiatric patients, quite literally got assaulted stopping people committing suicide, and worked as an advocate and advice worker before going into more senior roles. It's not an image the tabloid press would recognise with their simplistic vilification of bureaucrats and "pen pushers" but most of us gave up expecting anything else a long time ago.

I'm on call for another few days - hopefully no more ten o'clock at night calls until I hand over to someone else.