Smile! You are under surveillance

Yesterday The Guardian reported on how "Nurses are to be scored on how compassionate they are towards patients as part of a government plan to improve quality in the NHS".

The current health secretary, Alan Johnson, "believes putting a smile on the face of nurses and encouraging empathetic care is as important to recovery as the skill of doctors in the operating theatre."

The initiative will take the form of a "compassion index".

It will be compiled by health regulators using surveys of patients' views while in hospital, including feedback about the attitude of staff.

I'm not convinced the NHS is the right place for tactics typically cynically exploited by retail outlets, airlines, hotels and call centres ('smiling down the phone' and telly ads).

See Nurses to be rated on how compassionate and smiley they are by John Carvel for more details.

The encroachment of management speak into everyday life and how to deal with it

A story covered by the BBC News web-site today looks at how the business agenda has all but smothered formal education.

For example, instead of education establishments being assessed on the basis of teaching as an art or discipline, education establishments are increasingly judged on 'delivery', 'performance indicators', quantitative 'audits', 'effeciency gains', 'funding systems that respond to customer demand', etc., etc...

At the heart of the article is a Professor Pring, the lead author of a report, published this week by the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training, which looks at how the aims and values of education have come to be "dominated by the language of management".

Education is by no means a unique situation, and Orwellian-like speak is evident in nearly every domain of modern life.

So how should we respond to these threats (if you see it as threat)?

Well, for one, find the time to challenge anyone and everyone who uses the 'market forces' argument for the most basic dilemma!

For more details see Lesson one: no Orwellian language by Mike Baker.

Men with good jobs live longer

Statistics released from the ONS yesterday suggest a link between the quality of the job you have and the chances of a premature death (see figure or visit blog if you are reading this blog elsewhere).

This extract from the ONS article pretty much sums up the disparity:

Men in routine jobs are 2.8 times more likely to die between the ages of 25 and 64 years than men in higher managerial posts.

From 2001 to 2003, the mortality rate of working age men in routine occupations in England and Wales was 513 deaths per 100,000 compared to only 182 among large employers and higher managers.

What's most interesting is how there appears to be a clear correlation between the main feature of good jobs - high employee control and security - and not so good jobs - low employee control and security.

Having said that, work isn't everything and it is likely that, for instance, those with high control in the workplace probably have a greater say in their life outside of work, i.e. greater disposable income, more likely to have skills and knowledge to make greater demands of health and educational services, etc.

See Health Inequalities: Death rates highest for routine workers for more details.