Consultants ‘bullied to agree job plans’
Over half of consultants have had a negative experience in their last NHS job planning meeting – and almost a quarter have experienced related bullying, a survey has revealed.
The BMA found 28% thought inappropriate techniques had been used to get their agreement.
Black, Asian, minority ethnic (BAME) women had the worst experience of job planning, with 39% reporting they were bullied at their last job planning meeting. 81% of BAME women disagreed that job planning was used effectively.
Of all groups whose data was analysed, BAME men had found meetings most antagonistic since electronic job planning was introduced, with 40% responding that they found meetings much more antagonistic.
NHS Improvement produced unilateral job planning guidance last year that directed all trusts to move to electronic job plan systems.
The BMA said: ‘While it is important to note that electronic job planning software is not the cause of bullying during job planning, it has been suggested that the rapid, mandated adoption of the software and the collation of the data centrally may have led to overzealous scrutiny of consultants’ programmed activities (PAs).
‘These results align with trends exposed by the widespread national 2017 NHS Staff survey which showed that bullying and harassment remains an extensive problem in the health sector with 24% of all NHS staff – one in four people – having reported that they have experienced bullying in some way.’
BMA consultants’ leader consultant anaesthetist Dr Robert Harwood said: ‘While we had heard anecdotally that this was an issue in some trusts, we did not know how widespread it was. These figures are troubling and show that there is a clear issue with bullying.
‘Particularly worrying is the numbers of BAME women who have been bullied during the electronic job planning process. This is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.’
He said the survey did not explore the consequences of undue pressure or bullying during job planning, but it was not unrealistic to suggest that it might be linked to stress, burn-out and early retirement.
The BMA wanted to ensure there was a clear understanding of the issues and people were confident to raise concerns and report problems when they happened.