UK health service left shocked after survey participants rate Hitler as ‘cool’

LONDON - “Cool” is not a word usually associated with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, whose genocidal purges cost tens of millions of lives between the mid-1930s and 1945.

But that was the response of ambulance employees taking part in a National Health Service (NHS) survey when asked to rate Hitler in comparison to their own chief executive.

The survey, entitled Making Leadership Cool, is part of a 10,000-pound project that will help the NHS West Midlands Strategic Health Authority to devise a new leadership strategy.

The questionnaire was circulated to all 3,300 workers at West Midlands Ambulance Service last month after two paramedics applied for a bursary to carry out the survey.

Staff was asked to rate Ian Cumming, chief executive of the NHS West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, on a scale of one to five. They were also asked if being gay, funny or black made a leader cool.

One ambulance employee, who did not want to be named, said: “I’ve never been asked to compare my boss with Adolf Hitler before. It’s the most bizarre work survey I’ve ever had to take. How can being cool have anything to do with managing an NHS trust?”

The West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust defended the survey, saying that it “identified the key characteristics of good leadership”. (ANI)