Do nursing staff not wash patients anymore or change sheets?

My experience of having my elderly dad with advanced dementia and Parkinsons, wife and myself in various NHS hospitals over the last few years is that nursing personal care is absolutely woeful.

When my dad was in hospital for several weeks, my brother and I took turns to be at the hospital almost every day otherwise basic tasks like washing and feeding would get missed. He was also incontinent and I arrived to find him in unchanged sheets multiple times.

My wife was seriously ill last year and the NHS were frankly useless. We had to pay £10,000 to go private to get decent care including all of the above personal care.

I was in hospital for a couple of weeks last summer. I was not able to mobilise, had surgery on my leg, catheter in etc . I was also menstruating. I asked for some assistance with hygiene- could they bring me some soap and water or wet wipes so I could wash and put on fresh underwear and sanitary towels. I was told by a senior nurse” you washed yesterday” as though wanted to wash every day in the height of summer, on a sticky smelly hospital ward, while menstruating was somehow an odd request.!!
Bizarre standard of hygiene. As for brushing teeth…

When I had my last baby if had a c/s and when I walked for the first time I had a massive blood leak that went on the floor. I tried my best to wipe it up with toilet roll, and the smears on the floor were still there 4 days later and my bloody sheets hadn't been changed. The staff were run off their feet, including the HCAs so I understood why.
There is definitely more of an expectation in geriatric wards that family assume a role of personal care. There isn't the time for the nurses to be doing daily bathing or even changing clothes. I don't think it's anything to do with attitudes of nurses, they seem to be required to do more paperwork now than patient care.

As much as I want to disagree with this, I do think your right.
Im a nurse, trained 20yrs ago and have gone on to do more qualifications and nurse at a higher level, the way the profession and health system has changed does require this to a large extent. But at same time I love to still have the opportunity to change clothes, make a cuppa, give a freshen up (I work in district nursing) for patients as well as use my skills to prescribe medications. I do see degree level new nurses with their eyes on the prize from day one of becoming advanced practitioners and sadly don’t seem to want to retain the core principles of a caring profession with the most basic but essential tasks I view as being privileged to do as a nurse. Sad but true. Not saying this is the case for all obviously before anyone comes at me.

And the wage erosion. We can’t recruit and retain band 2 for love nor money. 20 years ago the band 2 wage was significantly more than NMW. Now they’ve got rid of band 1 and 2 is pretty much on a parity after an emergency early pay rise. Round here Tesco, Lidl and Amazon all pay more. So not only did we have an exodus of band 2s we can’t replace them because we get few applicants and a lot of what we do get are ‘interesting’. I think we’ve probably failed to recruit for about half the jobs we’ve put out in the last 5 years.

MN will tell you that the pension is good so you have to suck up the pay. But if you need to pay the rent now an excellent t pension in 40 years is fuck all good.

Having said that, I have been in several times over the past 2 years and have had sheet changes everyday and mostly been offered a bowl if I haven’t already showered/managed a sink wash myself.

The HCA usually do a basic bed wash. When my mother was discharged years ago her hair was manky dirty, she always had neat clean hair.
I find it sad that they take full plates of food away often when the patient is too sick to feed themselves are left hungry.
My sister is a hca in a nursing home, patients always come back under weight and dirty, in the care home they’re fed if necessary, washed properly in the shower.

does she want washing herself? I’m not sure if I was weak and incredibly unwell I could tolerate it?

When I was in hospital they came every day and asked if I needed help washing. I didn't but others on the ward did and were given the appropriate amount of help. I was only in 3 days and the bedsheets were definitely changed at least once.
Both my elderly parents spent a lot of time in hospital in the last few years and they've always been well looked after and kept clean.
In my opinion, this should be what happens. Obivously it varies from hospital to hospital but this is a basic level of care and not doing it is really not acceptable.

When my youngest was in hospital at age 10, I was in there with him and carried out a lot of his non medical care and was happy to do so. He was ok with that too, but I can’t imagine him letting me help him with washing and toileting at the age of 20! When my mum was admitted to the cancer wing of our local hospital due to a reaction to her chemotherapy, it was a huge shock to my system (it would have been a shock to my mum too if she hadn’t been somewhat distracted by the fact that everything was exploding from every orifice.) They popped her into a bed in her filthy pyjamas, hooked her up to a drip and that was it. I left her clean pyjamas and arrived back the next day to find she was still lying in her own filth. I spoke to one of the nurses, explained that my mum needed to be washed and changed and the reaction was what I can only describe as the same as I get from my teenager when I ask him to bring down his laundry. There was no way on this earth my mum would have even considered letting me do it and that remained the case throughout subsequent years of dementia. I fully expect an adult to be treated with dignity and have their basic needs met while in hospital. Relatives shouldn’t have to pick up the slack. Mostly I blame understaffing and too much bureaucracy and admin, but I do also think that there are some nurses whose brains don’t even register that the person they are supposed to be caring for is not in fact being cared for. That they didn’t sign up for monitoring this whole hygiene and personal care lark.

This is nothing new . I was hospitalised for a week 10 yrs ago , private room with bathroom and aside from doing my obs a couple of times a day and handing out drugs I didn’t see a nurse or an HCA unless I actually called one in to help . I had such a low BP 65/ that I could barely stand and had to crawl to the bathroom . The cleaners never did anything either aside from change the bin bag once . When my late mum was in hospital pre covid we looked after her , different hospital , same lack of care , they couldn’t even get the drugs right .

The more I hear of modern hospital and nursing "care", the more terrified I am of being ill especially as I am single and my mum is old and ill herself.

The appropriate healthcare professionals are trained in things like moving people in a hospital environment, infection control and personal care, your average mum actually isn't. There's a reason those roles exist.

On some wards, having children in for months at a time is fairly normal too such as oncology, gastro etc so it would be incredibly difficult for those wards to have staff available.

What would help at least a little is one parent getting fed. This happens if you are breastfeeding only in the majority of hospitals though some hospitals do have charities that feed one parent now and it would've been an absolute god send.

It's essential care, not basic care, I trained in the 80s and part of qualifying was passing a "bedbath" assessment, it's dreadful to think nurses and hca no longer feel patient comfort is important. No nurse, at whatever grade, is above making a.bed or helping someone have a wash.

You are a loving mum in a very upsetting situation.There should be more care.If the nurses were rushed off their feet it would be different but you are right to expect more. Apparently the head nurse sets the tone for each shift, some expecting higher standards from the nurses and hcas. I hope your daughter is better soon and you are both safely home. She has you fighting her corner but how will others without their loved ones fare?

Yes I am thinking the same! The teachers are getting a day off from being slagged off thankfully and so it’s our turn today!

Because its a hospital and hygiene of patients is part of healthcare .

I have read through most of these replies and just want to add my voice to the view that some nursing staff in some hospitals are appalling. My poor mum, elderly, confused, incontinent but gentle and polite, was left to fend for herself during many of her hospital stays. She really did try to be clean, but she couldn't do it. Some horrible nurses who sat chatting and laughing while vulnerable people were trying to ask for help. I was shouted at by one nurse for trying to find a bowl of warm water so that I could wash my mother. It was a psychologically damaging experience visiting my mother and witnessing what was going on in the ward.

i agree with you they should have staff available for this. I don’t think it would be feasible for there to be staff available to look after absolutely every child who is there for all their basic needs. but in your case you absolutely should have been able to have breaks during that time, that’s so unfair and stressful.

My 19 year old son had surgery a few years ago. He was helped into the shower every day, and helped with washing until his mobility returned.

My DD has a degree, will always help wash patients, turn etc
Degrees first introduced in the 60s, almost universal by the 90s, compulsary 2010s.

FiL was in hospital recently, HCA's generally do the washing, change sheets etc, if not being done, why wouldn't a relative complain to the ward sister?

Got enough time to post on MN.

On nurses hanging around doing nothing, most people wouldn't know a Staff nurse uniform from an AHP one or an HCA uniform.

Plus, they all tend not to go to the staff rooms (if they exist as some turned into emg wards) so take breaks on the ward.

Funny how we've gone from bashing pots for NHS workers, to just "Bashing" NHS staff.

As she was considered an infection risk and wasn't allowed to be on the main wards, and had hepatitis in particular, I do still think the pools of her blood and pus along the corridors should have been cleaned up in a 5 hour window. I know I'd be upset if I knew I was carrying active hepatitis and aggressive hospital infections into my loved one's ward with my feet...

That does sound ridiculous though. I work in a school. Our cleaners clean up all the bodily fluids as do all staff. Inclusive of the times the fluids were dysentry diarrhoea and blood. I clean up puke multiple times a week... It's bizarre that people who choose to clean hospitals clean less grimy things than school cleaners.

My son was in hospital for 10 months and they just didn't have the staff to provide the care. I did always get the impression that it wasn't by choice but that they just didn't have anyone available.

So I had to get used to a new routine of minimal food, dashing to the loo when desperate and minimal showers.

I’m not talking about the op I was replying to a post about paediatric nursing