Are patients not washed any more in hospital?

[Shortkiwi]

I am a nurse of over 40yrs plus. My 93 yr old father has been in hospital for a week. We have visited every day and had to wash and shave him in the afternoon or evening because it hasn’t been done. When I asked if he could be showered one evening, for the next day, I think they showered him but without using soap or shampoo, basically hosed him down from what he reported. His hair was definitely not washed. His teeth have not been cleaned without us doing them. Shaving is definitely not on the agenda. When I was a young nurse it was a given that patients were bathed each day, either in the bathroom or in bed. Teeth/dentures were cleaned and male patients shaved. We were admonished if these things weren’t done. Dad’s ward was very quiet today with several nurses chatting at the nurses station. They were very happy to get us any personal items we didn’t have. I just think if it wasn’t for us he wouldn’t be clean. He actually said, through his dementia, how much better he felt today after we showered him and washed his hair and said it would last him for a while! Which it won’t of course!
We had a list, in the old days, in terms of total patient care, in which we had to tick off items of personal hygiene for every patient in both our theory and practice. I’m sad for those that might not have relatives to attend to personal hygiene these days. It has never been discussed that we would do it, it’s just not been done. Basically, we have had to take the initiative. Years ago there were charts and care plans at the end of the bed, now it’s all computerised. I can excuse the 3 days of hell in A&E but not these last 4 days on the ward. My Dad is not mobile unless he has a lot of help and he is confused.

I visited my Dad today, he’s 2 weeks post op and still nil by mouth. He has nutrition into his central line at the moment. He had been very unwell and can only get out of bed into the chair with 2 nurses so he’s totally dependent.
We visited at 2pm and he hadn’t been given any opportunity to wash or brush his teeth. He hasn’t been sending them away, the only time he has had today when he wasn’t available were when the surgeon was there syringing out an abscess and when the physio was there.
I asked and they brought me warm water and cloths so I did his face and hands and brushed his teeth. He had a full wash yesterday.
If I go tomorrow and he hasn’t been fully washed I will ask them to do it while I assist so I can help him in future. If it becomes a regular thing I’ll very politely and nicely ask to speak to the sister/ matron. I think hands and face and teeth twice a day but a bed bath minimum every other day should be ok?

@RosesAndHellebores you aren't a nurse and if you are then the demands on your ward aren't the same as mine. Medications, admissions and discharges, wound and oxygen care, ward rounds and mixing antibiotics, inserting catheters all trump a wash. I am not available all day for when someone decides they are ready to be washed. I set aside time in the morning to work with the HCA's to get our patients washed. If you are watching TV/ sipping on a cup of tea (which I can remake a fresh one for you after the wash) and tell me to wait, I will tell you now is my free time for washes and that's it, it's their choice. I'm not convincing grown adults to wash. As long as their hygiene isn't impacting their recovery then I'm not arsed. A man won't die from not having a shave. But he will die if I don't mix his antibiotics and he gets sepsis.

Basic dignity and respect for personal care is being offered a wash and being fussy is to say, sorry I want my morning tea first as you have just said. I've been in and out of hospital all my life, the whole ward wouldn't function if everyone wanted a different wash time, a different breakfast time, a different time for their medication and so on. If you have dementia then it's different and flexibility is needed but otherwise you have too high expectations for a tax funded service.

We did not expect the doc to stay extra hours, just a minute or 2. Every minute counts when you are not breathing and lack of oxegen could of led to brain damage. If that doc was on his way home and came accross a life threatening accident, would he just stand there and do nowt just because hes not getting paid for it or would he of helped till ambulance got there?
Like you say, actions have consequences and due to the attitudes of the nhs, not many people have respect nor surport the nhs strikes. Many people are against it. Their must b a reason why!!

Hope your dad gets better soon. Yes, do be firm because I bet the staff forgot to come back because they are busy. Unfortunately we do need to be firm in order for good care. It should not happen but that's how it is right now and standards shouldn't drop to below a basic level.

Your child was in A+E, not in the hospital corridor or on the street. Ofcourse that is different. They were also in the area where the urgent patients come in so bare in mind every patient is not breathing or maybe in a worse condition if they need resuscitation. On the way out that could be 5 extra patients you want the doctor to see? Is it fair that the doctor stops for your child and not someone else's? It probably wouldn't take a minute or so for them too. Also you don't know what type of doctor they are in A+E, not all doctors are trained to look after children.

@Mumofone545 I appreciate it must have been a terrifying situation for you, but you have no way of knowing how many hours that doctor had already been working. It's possible he had put in a 12+ hours shift or more and was at the point where his medical judgement was impaired through lack of sleep.

@Rapz1212 your final words nailed it. "Too high expectations for a tax funded service". Who do you think pays the tax? The NHS is funded by the people for the people. The people are no longer sucking it up.

Vive la revolution.

But that is the peoples problem, we are paying a 5 health service and bearly receiving a 2 service.
Im pretty sure for that 2 or 3 mins that doc may of stayed behind to help my son, had he of spoke to his manager, a pay ajustment could of been done.
In retail im pretty sure many staff do not leave the building ontime due to the customers askin for help.
One thing you nhs staff have failed to say is where do they want this money to come from? Ok lets change tax from 20% to 40% lower the threashold for high tax bracket, double the council tax and charge £25 for pescriptions then you can be paid the over rated pay you are asking for and people like me can quit our jobs and claim uc and not pay taxes and get free pescriptions has i would be on a lot more money on benefits than i am now, but i choose to work and because of that i have to pay for my perscriptions which means i can not afford the inhalers i need has the pescriptions are too high while joe blogs next doir smokes 20 a day, obestly overweight, does not work and gets everything for free.
Yes lets go private with healthcare so you can get an higher wage and less people will be visiting a&e due to not having the nessassary insurance then death rates can go up which someone had said in a previous comment they did not want!

If we all go private, it does not increase the number of Drs. It simply means that better off people can see a Dr more easily because poorer people are seeing no one. So less demand for appointments.

It would be like NHS dentistry i.e. hardly anyone will have an NHS dentist. And lots of people will have no dentist.

Nurse here too. I’ve left nursing and this being one of the main reasons. Nurses don’t have time to attend to the activities of daily living ( as we called them in our day ) anymore. We have moved away from the bedside. More responsibility in the job, more paper work, poor stafffing levels etc have caused all this. It’s so sad.

Health care assistants now do that part of the job, but again, they are short staffed and over stretched also.

My DM was in hospital recently for a prolonged period of time and her hygiene was neglected by staff. Visiting was restricted on the ward, so we had very little access. When we did got in, she was very unkept looking. It was obvious her hair and teeth hadn’t been cleaned in days.

Such a sad state of affairs.

Exactly, and then the nhs wil become over paid and under worked and the country will crash and burn with only the nhs to blame

@Mumofone545 and if the doctor was to end up staying an extra 2 hours becaise they ended up treating several patients on there way out then maybe its the structure that needs changing and not the wages

Yes, I can tell you from experience it will not be 2mins and a jolly hand over to someone else, you will be stuck there for a good 2hrs and then likely roped into other stuff and linger again. It’s simply because of this broken structure people ARE striking. They are striking because of the demands of a broken system and they can’t cope to the point they literally have to walk past a case like this. As a side issue they are not being paid for being g overworked in a broken system but that’s really a side issue but they want pay to match all the extra you do. As for your wonderful (and obviously you believe), it’s okay, that Dr could have just walked back in and their manager would have gladly paid for that extra 2mins after they had clicked off. Well, after rolling around the floor laughing - nope. Doesn’t work like this. That Dr would not have been paid for that 2mins. Nor would they have been paid for the extra couple of hours they would then have realistically helped for in the situation you describe. That ‘extra pay’ doesn’t exist. You have no idea at all how any of this works and are living in la la land.

maybe have 2/3 doctors stood around the exits (something they seem to be good at -standing around)

What. An. Arsehole.
Tell that to people just finishing 20 hour shifts where overall they have managed 2 cups of coffee and an emergency bag of crisps because they are rushed off their feet.

And no. You can’t have highly trained and skilled healthcare professionals just standing around several doors looking at their bellybuttons all day just in case an emergency comes through. You talk about wasting tax payers money, well that’s up there!

My child was in the hospital car park until the paramedic saw my dh in distress and went over who then took my ds through the ambulance entrance. Surely all docs are trained in keeping a patient breathing.
If i was to leave work 5/10 mins late unpaid due to helping people out and that person left a little happier, than i shall do because i respect my job not my pay packet. Still sounds to me like many nhs care about the money side of things rather than the caring aspect hence the saying, if your not happy with your pay and conditions, work elsewhere!

It’s not 5/10 minutes though is it? Half of NHS staff work 5+ hours of unpaid overtime per week. And they’re not even paid well for their official hours. I hate this ‘oh if they REALLY wanted to help people they would do it for free’ shit, do you think they can pay for bills and food via their ‘thank you’ letters?

Lots of posts about staff not providing washes/ bed baths - almost none saying I just got on and did it myself for my family member.

I caught a bit of a programme recently on the radio where there was a discussion of working hours in the NHS. Someone had called up talking about working 12 plus hours shifts. Nicola Sturgeon categorically denied this was happening. She says no one is being asked to do this after talking to a nursing manager. That’s what you’re dealing with I suppose. Politicians just won’t accept what crisis situation the NHS is in, and won’t believe the accounts of people who work in it .
What has fundamentally changed in nursing over the past fifty years which has led to this? Is pay really much worse than then? Why were standards of hygiene, supervision and staffing better then? We need to go back to basics and look at what is fundamentally wrong with the system now.
Same with GPS. They used to have some diagnostic skills once. They used to be able to think for themselves, not just dole out drugs or refer on . A doctor used to know their patients history and read their notes. It’s a farce now.

Why were standards of hygiene, supervision and staffing better then? We need to go back to basics and look at what is fundamentally wrong with the system now.
……… …….
because EVERYONE is living 20 years longer and everyone is at some point needing medication and treatment. There didn’t used to be scans /ultrasounds etc . There didn’t used to be triple bypasses and good care for diabetes / kidney failure/ lung disease. People died of pneumonia and complications . Now there are many many more patients who are more ill. And more elderly who need looked after in care homes or there own homes.

@Mumofone545 and that is what the NHS has always relied on nurses and doctors working back or working through their breaks or having to physically run from patient to patient. The NHS has treated staff abysmally as these are ‘ vocational’ careers and therefore these staff are expected to accept these unsafe and unreasonable conditions. Staff are making a choice they are leaving or striking.

I work 6 nights a week, i always start approx 40-45 mins early to surport my overstreched colleagues and end up working breaks and sometimes do not get out ontime, all this unpaid but i dont go about moaning or strikeing, im greatfull for whatever payrise i get but unfortunatly, our payrises usually comes with a loss of a premium pay or benefit. Our last payrise was the only one in my 20 years working for my company, that i have not lost any premium or benefit in the payrise but then again, so much has been taken away that there just aint nowt left to take but im still working there because im there for the job, when the time comes where it becomes about money, i will leave for better pay.

I think some of the public are forgetting HCPs are human beings, who need sleep and rest. I would not want to be treated by someone who had worked too long. It's unsafe then people complain again that their care went wrong. Nursing and medicine has changed so much in the last 50 years , people living longer with complex comorbidities, an aging population. There's so much paperwork to fill in which is a legal requirement and you can lose your registration if you don't.

My mother was washed everyday "slapped around, bush bash bosh" as she called it, but wasn't helped to brush her teeth. That was a job for relatives. She also wasn't helped to go to the toilet, fed her a diet of carbs and then said she was constipated. They put pants on her and gave her laxatives so she would poop herself, which kept them happy.

Individual staff were mostly fantastic, it was the general way things were done which wasn't great.

It must be awful for those whose relatives

If i was to leave work 5/10 mins late unpaid due to helping people out and that person left a little happier, than i shall do because i respect my job not my pay packet. Still sounds to me like many nhs care about the money side of things rather than the caring aspect hence the saying, if your not happy with your pay and conditions, work elsewhere!

Which bit do you not comprehend? I can guarantee you in that situation the Dr would not have left 5/10mins unpaid. You just don’t get how this works so please stop peddling this crap.

Recently been to hospital, both occasions the care assistants were fabulous. Some nurses were great some needed a bomb up their backsides. A few nurses just didn't care, noise at an unbelievable level. Wake you up for stupid reasons when you where due to be woken an hour later to take blood pressure. One nurse sat in the corner for over an hour to do paperwork, fine it needs to be done. Night shift came on and paperwork hadn't been done.