David, if you did indeed have knowlege of the NHS, you would know that the Medical Records department is staffed mainly by females. In the 1980's, there were not the same monitoring standards as there are today, indeed departments didn't even have PC's. You should also have known that hospital trusts didn't appear until 1989 - prior to that, hospitals were financed by the Regional Health Authorities.
The overwhelming majority of applications were from females, that doesn't mean I employed solely females, in fact I took on a male with relevant experience and he went on to become a Medical Records Officer in charge of a department in another part of Sussex. Remember also that there were 3 million unemployed, so I got literally dozens of application forms for every vacancy.
I never said I didn't employ ethnic minorities either, I said I rejected those not born in the UK, my department had a mix of a few Asians, but in Sussex, the populace is more inclined to be white British as opposed to say, Leicester which has a high Asian population. I also had a good range of ages, I said the average age was 22 so out of 150 there was a fair amount over 30 / 40 and 50+.
I agree with Ken, I employed the best I could for my department, I was never interested in making sure I had the right 'split' genderwise, or any other wise. If I felt an applicant could do the work, then I employed them, I couldn't care if they were orange with pink spots. Patients needed to be seen and treated, so I, perhaps wrongly in your eyes, focused on making sure the work was done accurately and efficiently in the best interests of the patients.
The modern HR department is not even comparable to what it was 20 odd years ago. That's why they never got involved in interviewing, they left it to me and my deputy to deal with.
Col
