Well, my contract is now owned by a new trust. They cancelled the welcome event, so we feel unwelcome and uneasy. Communication is all indirect and via an email ‘newsletter’ not by being able to have proper conversations in which we can ask questions and hear answers. We’ve had to fill in more forms than I could have predicted – new payroll registration forms, new car registration forms, induction booking forms, CRB forms, etc etc. Every one of us is having to have a new police check and do the full 3 day induction progam as if we have never worked in the NHS before. That wastes the equivalent of 6 months of staff time by my calculations (maybe worth £25,000?), when they could just have done a one day ‘what’s different here and welcome’ day.

On our ID badges (for those of us that they have managed to print them for, and after they were returned to have the title Dr added) it says above the photograph “improving your working life”. Everyone I’ve asked so far has said “they haven’t done anything for mine yet”.

We are told there will be no change until the new year, maybe until next summer. Yet I have no role clarity as they haven’t advertised my old post, or guaranteed my new post, so I feel like I am juggling both. I’ve found it impossible to scope a new service in light of all of this, yet I know if I don’t create what I want with enough certainty others will have more scope to impose on me from above. Its rather demotivating. I find myself counting the future as “training this month, a holiday next month, then xmas and then we will see”.

The IT changes have been a nightmare – lots of problems getting email set up and no access to my old email address, lots of problems getting access to my documents, lots of problems even signing in! I’ve had to spend two whole afternoons chasing and then sitting with IT staff until things that worked before work properly again, which has eaten up all my admin time. And being unable to access the patient database has meant chaos for the admin staff, who can’t even find out who to put people through to when they call, or check when future appointments are!

Its really downheartening. Everyone looks tired and glum. There is a palpable atmosphere of pessimism emerging, and no-one is seems to want to do more than they are oblidged to for this new ‘business’. We are told they have appointed a new head of service, but he’s going to have his work cut out for him when he starts next month!

Addendum: I’m actually feeling a little more optimistic now than when I wrote the above. I guess I’ve got it clear in my head that I don’t have to stay if I don’t want to, as I’ve got the option of my private work or jobs elsewhere. So, with that in mind I can set out my stall. I was quite inspired by a talk I heard at a regional network meeting about how to market the value of CP to commissioners. I finally understood the language of creating a competitive marketplace and why services are being put out to tender. It added to my feeling that with chaos and change comes opportunity – as there is scope to put good ideas out there as an easy option for those in power to grab when the alternative is doing the legwork themselves. I like the idea of publicising and interweaving the service amongst local stakeholders, so that if it were changed or cut there would be other people to complain apart from me.

Apart from that I’ve also been to two nice CPD events, had the parking ticket I was issued at work rescinded, and had a positive conversation with my head of service who seems to be singing from the same songsheet as me. Oh, and I’m going on holiday soon. So the world looks more rosey