Managing the United Kingdom Health Service Essay

Managing the United Kingdom Health Service - Essay Example This has been totally missing from the management at NHS. Management is can be defined both as art and science. It is the art of bringing out efficiency of people and making them more effective than they would have been with you. There are four basic pillars: plan, organize, direct, and monitor. The basic role of a manager is to make the staff more effective. Making them do work more efficiently than they are doing presently. If you add value to your staff's work, you are a successful manager. However, in NHS, managers are mere implementers who have no active decision making power. They merely implement the rules and regulations dictated by the Government. There is no way that they can add value to their or their staff's work. The managers at NHS feel that their role is unrecognised by patients, colleagues, the public and the government. Managers at NHS have less autonomy and less involvement in key decision making than their staff assume. And they are subjected to increasing control. Without a plan you will never succeed. If you happen to make it to the goal, it will have been by luck or chance and is not repeatable. You may make it as a flash-in-the-pan, an overnight sensation, but you will never have the record of accomplishment of accomplishments of which success is made. This important element of effective management is missing at NHS. Infact the organisation lacks serious planning and focus. As a result, the quality of services has been detortiating and ultimately the managers are planned by both government as well as public for inefficient services even though they have no power to run the organisation with a vision of their own. A study reveal that the notion of management had become divorced from clinical practice, even though many managers were doctors or nurses who had taken on the role to try to make a difference. To them, what was now called management was just an extension of the profession. Organize Organising and priortising work to ensure smooth, timely as well as quality deliveries and services form the core of good management. The lack of proper management results in poor organisation and prioritisation of work at NHS. Direct Directing your subordinates not as you are directing them but as if you are guiding them how to perform their specific job role. I like to think of this part like conducting an orchestra. Everyone in the orchestra has the music in front of them. They know which section is playing which piece and when. Now you need only to tap the podium lightly with your