Main description:

What is it like for hospital administrators dealing with surgeons on the warpath? Or consultant medical staff fighting amongst themselves over car parking spaces? How about the `new age' travellers parking their caravan in the hospital car park and refusing to move on? It's Never Easy These Days is a memoir about working in and managing public and private hospitals in Britain from the late 1970s to the end of the 1990s. During this time, a lot changed both within the country and its healthcare system. The public are well aware of the role that doctors and nurses play, but who deals with the six foot six inch giant incensed when a sticky `No Parking' label is placed on the windscreen of his Jaguar? Or the woman living next door to the hospital who takes a hammer to the wooden fence put up beside her house? Most of the staff would agree that the pigeons colonising the ridges and rooftops of the hospital must be removed, but who has to arrange the solution to the problem? The hospital manager of course! Then there are also the lurking spectres of politicians and their policies. How are the waiting lists best handled to make sure there are no patients exceeding the waiting time limits? And who deals with the local MP during his hospital rounds at Christmas and election time? Find out the answers and more in It's Never Easy These Days, an eye-opening memoir that provides a candid and sometimes comical account of hospital life from a different perspective. Those interested in the NHS and the history of hospital management will find this a fascinating read.