Comment / Working for the HFMA

There were agitated conversations about finance and turnaround issues. The main income source was charitable donations. And in the final episode we saw several men writing begging letters – 20,000 in total.

While the programme highlighted how awful healthcare was in these times, the same basic values of the service were on display. The charitable nature of real people wanting the very best for their patients was manifest and this extended to the non-clerical staff as well as the frontline.

Those values are evident in our association today with a vast array of volunteer effort taking place the length and breadth of the UK. I am personally grateful to everyone who organises a branch conference, speaks at an event or undertakes voluntary work for us. It is that charitable strength that underpins our success.

For some things, we need paid help. In Bristol, and working from home across the country, we have a first rate team of professionals who support the association and me. They work tirelessly to develop services and to help produce products such as this excellent magazine, for example. We need more, however. If you are looking for some more technical work or know somebody who is: read on.

We are looking for writers, editors and technically qualified people who can help us with a number of projects. We’re just about to upscale our e-learning efforts to develop an intermediate certificate to move further on from our excellent introductory product. 

We need technically qualified people – doers – people who can make things happen who can help us by authoring modules on wide-ranging areas. We have no fixed notion of how people could be employed: fixed period contracts; secondments for days of the week; contract work on a daily or project basis, or anything will be considered.

In addition we have several books/projects we want to commission, such as in the primary care, foundation trust and mental health sectors. We don’t currently have the workforce to start this work. We need people, who can research a particular topic, perhaps undertake a survey or canvass opinions and then write it up.

We are interested in hearing from anyone who can help us, probably a qualified CCAB accountant with some years of practical experience. We’re not looking for a lifetime commitment and if you’re retired, on a career break for whatever reason or just want to do something different – please come and talk to us.  We are open to suggestions.

You can make a very real contribution to our agenda – if you are interested just email me in confidence at: [email protected]