It's harder than you think to count months back from December

One thing I’ve learned from a few hospitalisations over the last year is that it is harder than you think to count the months backwards from December.

I could see nursing staff getting worried as I hesitated around February 2020 but that was just me having a flashback to when pubs were open. As an explanation, it seemed to work and – along with my refusal to believe that Boris Johnson was prime minister – they deemed me to be semi-compos mentis.

The other thing I learned was that no matter how many failed tries any staff member has to insert a cannula, there is always a genius on the ward who can be summoned to do it first time.

But the major lesson was that nurses appear to have no workload management system whatsoever and are constantly run off their feet. 

Ubuntu and the power of being kind

Today (16 March) is World Social Work Day. Its theme is Ubuntu, which Nelson Mandela explained as: “The profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievement of others.” Desmond Tutu defined it simply as: “My humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.” (First published in Morning Star 16 March 2021)

One of my social work bosses, though never mentioning Ubuntu, encapsulated the humanity aspect in one word. Amidst the restorative practice he championed, genuinely involving children and families in decisions in real life, not just in policies, he conceded that social workers must sometimes take action that overrides that to protect a child.  

His view, however, was that, no matter what we had to do, there was no excuse for not being ‘kind’. 

Do the Tories really have it in for council staff? (rhetorical).

Edinburgh’s Evening News runs a story today that Tory councillor Susan Webber backed the public sector pay freeze (as did her party) but took an even more punitive lunge by saying of public service workers on WhatsApp: “I was thinking of a vote-winning policy called salary sacrifice where they only get 80 per cent and have to struggle like the others on furlough. Then they might want this sorry state to get resolved faster.” https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/politics/edinburgh-tory-candidates-whatsapp-messages-spark-concerns-over-suitability-to-become-msp-3161957

I’m not sure many Edinburgh council workers will actually see that as a vote-winner.