Is it just me who is puzzled?

It was on the Lancaster Hospital’s things to do list.
Cancellation of non-essential meetings/activities in order to redirect clinician time to patient facing activities.

^W3 Well, in this case it depends on what the meetings were for, have we got actual information?

So sorry W3.
I simply copied and pasted the article from the hospital.
They didn’t specify what the non-essential meetings/activities were for.
If they think they aren’t essential I am not in a position to argue with that.

Good clinical governance staff can be very valuable. Non clinical but can really lead to streamlined and good quality working systems. I appreciated our clinical governance staff and they really improved our service.

Wes Streeting wants hospitals and trusts that are struggling to improve, aren't doctors (maybe managers) from hospitals that are doing well to advise and guide them so they can improve? Surely they will have to have meetings to work out what is going well and what isn't. At this time of year it is probably very difficult to cope with demand but I'm sure they will still get criticised if they don't manage to improve which presumably should magically happen.

Where I worked all meetings involving clinicians took place on the same day of each week, in designated administration sessions. Clinical sessions weren’t cancelled so meetings could be attended. I would assume that must have been happening in the Lancaster Infirmary, as otherwise not attending meetings wouldn’t affect their productivity as clinicians.

A proportion of the meetings are about getting the correct money for procedures that have been done, or for new procedures that will be done: that does impact patients because ensuring you're getting the correct money for what you've done is a very time-effective way of ensuring the money's going to be there to offer the treatments to the next raft of patients coming along.

There certainly was a lot of meetings to plan meetings

When I worked for a nationalised industry we had a long running joke about meetings to talk about the meetings.

The meetings I was talking about were not clinical ie not about patients but procedures/admin activities. 🥱

A lot (not all) of the meetings are desirable. There is a bit of a meetings culture, but in the last few years at least 50% of mine scheduled got cancelled due to one participant being too busy & everyone jumping on the bandwagon & agreeing to postpone, because everyone was too busy & very few prioritised meetings over their day to day role.

My sister was a PA for the NHS. It was her job to set up/organise meetings. She said the ridiculous things they had meetings about and the cost, including buffets would make your hair curl.

Well, in this case it depends on what the meetings were for, have we got actual information?

I can imagine for example forward planning meetings where its very desirable that clinicians be involved tho not utterly essential and so on.

Aveline

I couldn't agree more. Before I retired from NHS I used to 'cost' meetings in my head. I'd add up the hours used at the pay point people were at on the pay scales. Such a huge consumer of clinical time.

That is funny Aveline . I used to do the exact same thing at my meetings I was forced to attend. Mainly because they were incredibly boring, useless, and I liked mathematics.

I couldn't agree more. Before I retired from NHS I used to 'cost' meetings in my head. I'd add up the hours used at the pay point people were at on the pay scales. Such a huge consumer of clinical time.