DCH crisis: Tears as nurses face cuts (From Dorset Echo)

Good for you Mrs Miller for standing up to be counted! If you are suddenly made redundant , we will all know why. Outrage about the Olympics pales into insignificance compared to this, in my opinion. The NHS is apparently 'safe' with this government, well it doesnt seem like that to me. Time to wake up and smell the coffee - we will all have to have private health insurance before long- what the premiums will be for some of us is anybody's guess.

Words cant express how disgusted I feel at the hospital management for paying this man such preposterous
amounts, while simultaneously planning these cuts .

By the way,after 32 years of hard work and service to the NHS Mrs Miller deserves a medal, but no doubt it will be the Chief Exec. who gets one.

! ! ! ! DISGUSTING ! ! ! !No other word for it. I have recently spent two weeks on Lulworth Ward where the Nurse's and the HCA's were absolutely brilliant, although very short staffed I think I saw agancy staff on nearly every shift. It's having an effect on patients as well if you ring for assistance you have to wait up to twenty minutes and believe me thats not good if you are bod bound and want to use the Toilet.
Pay them what they are worth for Godsake. Cut out the Fat Cats salaries and get rid of some of the hfgher and middle amnagement

janeaustens jibe about this government So this is happened is it in the couple of months This government has been in power

Derek Smith and Sue Sutherland have proved useless for me and it seems they will have my blood on their hands. I do not know how they sleep. Well done, Mrs Miller.

Well said Mrs Miller. It's about time the fat cats at the top were put in their place. Patients NEED care, management have got to make cuts where it is needed atn high non-medical staff level. Cut the amount of secretaries and their secretaries and admin staff. This is a hospital for the sick and infirm, not an office block for managers and admin.

Quote: "This is a hospital for the sick and infirm," Quite agree so why are 8 fulltime professionals looking after drug addicts and alcoholics! Quote: "The ward currently has 29 acute patients, including drug addicts and alcoholics, who are cared for each morning by four health care support workers and four staff nurses – known as seniors." No wonder the NHS has limited resources.

Sandra Miller is right and deserves everyones support. DCH is there to treat sick people, not to make CEO's (temporary or not) rich. Derek Smith should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for taking such a grotesque sum. NHS Trust Chairman, Jeffrey Ellwood should step down from the Chairmanship, after defending the indefensible.
I have been in management and directorships all my working life and these payments are totally out of order and not what the market rate is for such work(?)

This is Conservative at it's usual lying best. NHS is safe in our hands - well, at least the Managers are safe. The nurses are just there to be abused and used by the management, and if anyone has to go, then it falls on the lowly nurses. WHY? Because Conservative Government has and always will be about looking after the FAT-CATS at the expense of the minnows. DISGUSTING is too smaller word for this. Think they forget that it is the nurses that keep a hospital running., and i know they may not like the idea, but i think they may have to consider industrial action in order to get the Government to listen. I know that being the professional people that they are, they will not consider all out strike action, but think they must consider a total work to rule, including finishing their hours at exactly the correct time and not doing extra time as they do now, quite often with no overtime pay or thanks from the management. In my day, the Matron supported her troops in times of strife, but this seems to have gone by the wayside. These nurses do a fantastic job at minimum pay for their expertise. The people on the street should write to their MP and say exactly what they think of this idea. And yes, radiator - Portland, This is from this Government that has been in power just a few months - You may remember the election pledges of both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, that NHS funding was ring-fenced and safe in their hands, yet at the first sign of having to cut-back on expenditure, they ditch that promise and do exactly the opposite. If they want to save money, cut back the cost of their wages and that of higher management and penalise thos bankers who put us in this position, not just by inflicting them with paltry penalties that they can cover in a day, but by hitting them with multi-million pounds fines if they pay over the odds bonuses that do not reflect what they really put into society and/or their pockets. Too many FAT-CATS in this country and the idea of government of the people, by the people for the people has gone and it is time this country's citizens demanded it back. SO COME ON - SUPPORT THE NURSES AND OUR FRONT-LINE SERVICES. 25% cutback on police, probably the same on the fire and ambulance services - where does it end.

How on earth is it the Conservatives fault? Thhey have only been in office, with the Lib-Dems for two months. No, this is a classic case of Socialist spending without thinking.

Mike12 If you want to make a political point about this, I think you will find that he was hired and served his tenure under a Labour government.
It is precisely that kind of irresponsible spending that has got this county into the situation it finds its self now.

Well done Mrs Miller I am in no doubt that you are right - one supposes that the overpaid managers have "private" health cover and have no idea what it is like at ground level on the understaffed and under funded wards which are staffed so superbly by dedicated and undervalued staff. The huge salary of the "fat cat" manager against the pittance of the nursing staff is unspeakable.

I accept what you say, Xcabie, but the main point of my argument was the fact that during the election the lib-dems and the conservatives both promised to ringfence the health service. within months, this pledge has been broken, as it was in the 70s when Maggie came to power. Time and again, the conservatives have agreed at election time that certain services would be safe from cuts, only to backtrack on that promise immediately after they got into power. Look at your history. Yes, the socialists labour party got us into this doo-doo and for that they were punished at the ballot box. Look at your history when it comes to the way conservatives try to sort out the problems inherited by previous labour governments and you will see that it has always been the lower levels of the staffing hierarchy that have suffered in any cutbacks. This is true of the nurses, the miners, the police, the fire service and the ambulance service. It is never top-level management that get the heave-ho, just the lowly, poorest paid yet hardest working people in these big organisations that get it in the neck. You watch what happens to council jobs in the next 12 months. loss of bin-men, road sweepers, library services, adult services, disability services and social work services, but all at the lower level. If the managers of all these sectors were to be paid a sensible wage instead of the massive sums they get for sitting on their backsides doing nothing. If these managers, and the MPs and all the other high paid layabouts that get paid for doing, in reality, nothing, then the budget deficit could be reduced quite quickly. But, that won't happen - WHY - well it is these high level managers that will help keep the government in power by making it look like they have reduced costs to the tax payer whilst in fact all they have done is reduced the level of service that we, the public get for all the hard-earned council tax and income tax we pay. Then in January we have the increase in VAT coming in, which in reality will have no effect because the people who might have spent against it will be unemployed or on much reduced hours that they cannot afford. How can we reduce the amount of spending. Well, lets look at some facts. A person on minimum wage with children gets child benefit, working tax credit and whatever wages they get, minus National Insurance and PAYE. Let us then look at the person who is making say £80,000 per year. If he/she has has children, they get child benefit - something that they, as high earners do not need, yet they get it all the same. There is no such thing as the perfect system of government or it's associated responsibilities, but for high earners to get child benefit is an oxy-moron. they don't need it and should not get it. That in itself would probably slash the benefit bill by about 3/4 billion. That is more than will be saved by these cuts at DCH to the nursing staff and they are a **** sight more important than some high earners getting money they don't need. MPs do not need to earn so much, and if you think that the expenses scandal is a thing of the past - think again -it is still there, only better hidden, and this does not only apply to MPs and Peers, it is still happening in the public sector with high ranking officials. If MPs cut their pay to £45,000 per year and a set allowance for the whole year, regardless of how much they actually spend on expenses. Do we mere mortals get travelling expenses allowance in our wages - of course not, yet some of us lowly workers fork out thousands per year to get to work, either by train or car, and then if going by car we have to pay parking fees. We don't get a luncheon allowance of any type, it comes out of our wages. the ordinary British worker has been ripped off year after year after year by each successive government, be it labour or conservative. The people need to wake up and see what is really happening to them - they are all being taken for mugs and because we have all been brought up that we must keep our stiff upper lip, we do not really complain, we just grin and bare it as part of life. I could go on for hours, and don't even get me started on the waste of money we spend on the immigrants, and yes, that is most definitely the fault of the last (administration) - bunch of idiots we called a government. This is not England anymore, not Great Britain, we are not even English anymore. The whole country has been taken over by immigrants. The Government is banging on about creating jobs for the people, but from what i have seen over the last few years, all of these jobs will go to foreigners. If we went to their country to look for work we would be turned away because we are not from their country, but they come here, get jobs and are given houses. This is one of the main reasons our country is in the doo-doo. I am not racist and never will be, but i do think it is time that jobs in England were given back to Englishmen and women. I know that this is not Politically Correct and I make no apologies for it. Well, I have been banging on long enough now and I hope that this will bring a few helpful and useful comments, and one last thing, I, like the rest of society, have to right to say things as i see them, and i trust that people will respect that right, just as i will respect their rights to freedom of speech. have a good weekend.

When I worked at DCH two years ago there were always too many managers, accountants and clerks. We had no idea how much they were being paid up till now and I'm shocked to read the massive figures in the Echo. I don't think you can blame the Conservative Government, this explosion of managers came about under Labour and they did nothing to control it. Now the nursing and support staff are being cut and all the managers are still there. Who will have the courage to sack half of them?