Nurses stuck at work as no-one to relieve them.

[Bristolbanshee777]

Have you seen this? Nurses in Glasgow were forced to work 24 hour shifts as there were no qualified nurses available to relieve them. This is a disgrace.

www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/10048287/nurses-scotland-working-24-hour-shifts-nhs-meltdown/

You can handover to a manager or supervisor

"It is the responsibility of the underworked, overpaid managers to maintain safe staffing levels.
They should have access to Bank Staff or Agency Staff - because they should have these systems set up"

Ah yes because the problem is that we have lots of bank and agency staff just ready to step in and work - it's "management" that are stopping them. Honestly, I'm so fed up of people blaming managers - if all these temporary staff exist, send them to me, I need them to have quite a skill set, as they work alone in peoples homes and need to be able to safely do rather a lot of complex care. Obviously, I'm just sitting on an underspent budget twiddling my thumbs and pushing my pen as an "overpaid, underworked (is 60hrs a week enough?) manager stopping the hoards of bank and agency nurses working in my team 🙄.

The problem with health and social care is all the infighting about who has it worse - quite frankly it's a bit (a lot) shit for everyone at the moment, and maybe if all staffing groups worked together rather than trying to undermine others about who has it worst, we may have some really big numbers of staff to put proper pressure on the government rather than blaming managers, denigrating other professions and arguing about which staff group is worse off.

Problem is management will threaten to report to the NMC for failure to uphold the code. The nmc are enough of a shower of shit to strike people off for not preserving safety.

and to be honest while it’s easy while sat at a desk reading about it to say you’d go home I think when faced with the reality knowing if you left people might die or be hungry or in pain then you’d stay.

but it’s a disgrace

And you can’t hand over to a manager if they’re not clinically trained. You can only hand over to a suitable person.

This is exactly what came to my mind with the ‘work to rule, just walk out’ crew.

The problem is HCP have been contracted into a corner, they cannot walk out without penalty, they know staying and making errors is also at their risk.

The hosp/Trusts seem to have no responsibility for understaffing (I’m sure the individuals feel awful, I’m referring to the framework absolving them).

Don't know how true this is but I saw on Twitter that Trust honchos are all under NDA.

The system has been set to protect those at the top while the powerless take the blame.

For the care workers - I see you and you’ve all been shafted for years. I hope you stand next to nurses and demand the same.

FYI - I am not a HCP just fucking petrified of getting ill in hosp.

Your trite, naive and simplistic analysis of the issues is exactly the kind of nonsense that perpetuates and worsens the crisis.

Although I am indeed sitting at a desk right now, I actually work at a hospital and I have been faced with similar situations. Admittedly I am not working for the NHS or even in the UK anymore, however the system where I work is also under stress and understaffed. And this is the way I conduct myself to deal with these issues. So far I have not been sacked, I have not been reported and my actions have actually gained me respect and consideration both from colleagues and management. I have written incident reports explaining the massive risk and the unacceptability of the situation, and at the end of the reports I have stated how concerned I am that these issues will end up in a tragedy happening, so if anything happens during my shift, there will be a paperwork trail of my concerns previously to it happening.

Believe me, I do practice what I preach. i never said it was easy. But the current situation in the NHS will not be improved by nurses - or any other health professional - doing 24 hour shifts and leaving themselves vulnerable to exhaustion and human error. Also, why on earth will you sacrifice your life, your children, your partnerships... just to compensate for the Government's failures to invest in public health? What will you tell your children when they tell you that you were never there for them because "your patients" were more important? (note: I don't mean "you" the poster, but the health professionals who sacrifice their own lives and wellbeing in order to try to put a plaster on these massive, festering tragedy of health system.

This has happened to me in a care home. Luckily the facility owner is also a qualified nurse and I called him in for the night shift. He is very good about coming in. It's happened to me twice.

My analysis of the situation comes from 7 years working in the health system in patient-facing care, in situations of understaffing and with overstressed, burnt out colleagues. Your judgment of my analysis comes from some lines you've read on an online forum. Nuff said.

I agree

They should just bloody go home. It's so unsafe to work that long continuously anyway, so they're putting patients at risk by being martyrs