To think the nurses shouldn't keep telling my uncle that my dying grandma is sitting up in bed and eating?

[deaconblue]

My grandma is 88 and has been in hospital with a chest infection. My mum and 2 brothers were told yesterday she probably only has 48 hours to live. My other uncle lives further away and has been ringing to check on her. Yesterday he was told her SATS were much improved (they are significantly worse) and this morning he was told she was sitting up in bed, having eaten a good breakfast (not true, she can't sit up and hasn't eaten for 4 days)
If staff do not know the answer to a relative's question why on earth do they not go and find out an accurate answer? He had decided not to make the 2 hour trip today because of what he was told this morning and now may not make it before she dies.

Seriously, take on the care for 10 confused and incontinant elderly patients as well as 12 acutely ill dying patients who will die if you don't monitor and act constantly and see how clean, fed, and cared for your elderly patients stay.

Give that a go for 12 hours and get back to me. Oh yes, and you will have to answer the phone everytime it rings because management won't pay for ward clerks on many general wards. See what happens if you abandon your patient in type 2 respiratory failure in order to hold an old lady's hand. They'll hold you accountable for the death of the respiratory patient because you were off holding hands and helping people to the toilet. It isn't "disregard" by the nurses it is triage and priorising.

that is an excellent blog LovetheChaos. What the fuck can be done though?

Pofakkeddthechair, I am sorry for your mother and her friend. And I'm going to go against teh grain and say you are right the way the elderly (not all the time but too often) asr treated in care homes and some parts of the NHS is woeful.

As you say it is underfunded, under resourced, back breaking, not at all glamourous and most importantly, cultural to this country. It needs to be a national scandal how the elderly are treated in this country. Compare it to diseases of the young and you'll get my drift.

POFAKKEDDthechair I sympthatise. When I was working in theatres, my elderly GMil was admitted to hospital. I popped across mid-shift on one morning, to visit her. She was wearing an oxygen mask. I asked why, and was told she had a slight UTI.

Later that evening I popped back across, and I couldn't wake her. At all. Being a nosy nursey, I looked at her catheter, and her urine chart. No urine output recorded for over 4 hours. No urine in catheter. I went to a care assistant, and they told me that Sister was busy, and nurse was on her break, so I would have to wait. She was UNCONSCIOUS.

I kicked up a stink, and a doctor came. Straight away, fluids went up. WIthin half-an-hour, she was rousable. She said "I don't feel very well" and laughed. I said "no, you don't look very well!!!"

I talked to the doctor at length, and it was decided they would transfer her to HDU for monitoring. I phoned my MIL who had only just moved to France, and told them I thought they needed to come back to the UK. That night, she deteriorated, had to have ventilation, and further investigation revealed a massive bladder cancer. She was riddled.

My elderly 'Nan' (DH's Nan) went in because she was 'off her feet' and came out dead If I hadn't visited her on the ward that night, I think she would have died there and then.

Kill all the managers. No just kidding.

I don't know. I tried to change things for years.

Thankyou nellie. That sounds like quite an ordeal that you went through. I'm glad you were able to do something about it.

Loves - why will noone overhaul the system? I just cannot understand it.

I agree about the scandal of the care for the elderyl compared to "young" people.

The reason they couldn't initally find a place for my mum in the specialist unit dealing with her sort of injury was becasue she was 66 - ie one year over the limit of 65. The fact that she'd acquired the injury while on a long distance cycling holiday in India and was therefore fitter than most of the alcohol induced head-injured "youngsters" in the unit was beside the point

They won't because elderly folks in hospital beds don?t vote, relatives of these patients tend to fall in to one of 2 camps, they are either breaking their necks to care for the family and get in and visit grandma or whoever and are too stressed out to even remember that they have a vote. Or are so busy bitching they can?t be bothered.

And the average nurse has long ago relinquished the notion that any thing she/he does has any affect on the big picture, sad but true.

I once sat down and tried to write out what an average day was for me as a nurse on a general ward, OH as lovely and supportive as he was/is couldn?t believe it. A colleague read it and said oh you forgot to mention this and this and this. By the end of it all the things I had done in the first hour of being on the ward took more than two A4 pages.
Add on to this stupid fuckers saying oh you need to fill in this pieces of paper and that piece of paper and that one???..

When I first started in nursing I was an auxiliary nurse, it would take me and my staff nurse 10 minute to complete the paper work to admit a patient; as in I would do the majority of it and he/she would check it and sign off on it. (Bear in mijd that this was asking patient who were compos mentis, their full name, age, DOB, address who was NOK, who knew they were there etc).

By the time I did all my training and qualified as a staff nurse the paper work to admit a patient took over an hour and some fucker decided that it all had by be done by a staff nurse.
Now I?m not talking about the settling in to bed or the hand over from the other nurse, be they from A&E or ITU or another ward or the making sure that the patient is comfortable and safe and has all their belongings and that their skin is as good or bad as has been said in the handover etc etc. I?m talking about the actual forms that I had to fill in.
The checklist that I had to fill in to say that the patient needed bed rails (well no shit Sherlock the fact that she has a fractured hip and chest infection and thinks that she?s at home and we?re trying to rob her kind of lead me to believe that?yea maybe we shouldn?t let her out of bed.) but this form was not valid and we were not able to put rails up unless the patient agreed. So how do you see that conversation going?

Me:Hello Mrs X I?m Nurse 1
Mrs X: help police police call the police
Me: Mrs X you are in the hospital, I am a nurse and am trying to help you, you have a broken hip and it?s not safe for you to get out of bed.
Mrs X: Help please help me please help me.
Me (heart breaking at this point as I can see that this patient is terrified) I need for you to agree for us to put side rails on your bed, is that ok? (Knowing that in her state she can?t agree, but still having to ask)
Mrs X: they?re trying to tie me up please please help me please help me
So not having gotten agreement from the patient having no NOK available to ask I could use my nursing judgement and basic common sense to stick bed rails, which could get me fired and arrested for false imprisonment, thrown off the nursing register, never be able to hold a staff nurse post again and have a criminal record.

what would you do?

Oh prettybird I once worked in a hospital that stated that once a patient was over 70 they were Elderly Care?s problem and to be shipped off the general ward as soon as possible. We had a lady who chances were was quite like your Mum, a cyclist who looked after all the little old ladies in her village, helping with their washing cleaning etc, and did child minding 3 days a week rest of week was spent doing her charity work or gardening or on her allotment. She was 87???.. came in confused, had to fight with a (very young) doc who said ?well it?s to be expected at her age, transfer to Elderly care, dementia I reckon? WHF!!!!

This is where been built like a battleship helps (Hattie Jacques in her Carry on nurse role was always a role model) I freely admit that I bullied that doc in to sending this woman for head x-rays and then CT, turns out some dick had run her off the road the day before and she had concussion.
2 days later she was running around the ward helping feed the old dears (most of whom were 15/20 years younger that her)

Nurses are taught to nurse holistically to look at the patient as a whole being, doctors are taught to cure disease. For a few years we had it all in sync, but that all has hit the fan with the constant degradement of nurses.

Re: the patient above the little win that I had I still wonder if I missed anything wth my other 31 patients when I was fighting for this lady

But I do hope your Mum is doing better?

sorry I mixed up nellie and lougle. thankyou nellie for good wishes, and lougle I am glad you were able to help your gmil.

The staff within the system (and that includes even quite senior doctors) are powerless to change the stafffing ratios.

A national campaign may succeed but I doubt it - Bliss have been campaigning for years to get NICU's protected 1:1 staffing ratios. AFAIK that hasn't yet succeeded (tiny prem. babies obv. need less nursing than ill adults/ older children ).

No one on this thread has said that what happens is acceptable we have just tried to explain why it happens.

Kitta: she did eventually make (with hindsight) about a 70% recovery (the accident happened nearly 4 years ago) :)

However over a year ago she started deteriorating again and we eventually - about 6+ month later got a tentative diagnosis of a rare form of rapid onset dementia which means that although she still has all her memories, she has lost her emotional engagement with them - and to us. It's is almost certainly linked to/triggered by the accident, as the same part of the brain is affected :( It is horrible to watch the deterioration.

:(:(

Gasman - NICU's are chronically short staffed, with nationwide recruitment problems. So, no in otherwords.

I worked in a SCBU whilst doing midwifery training. 24 cots. One Sunday early shift there was a staff midwife and myself on duty.

I spent 8 hours looking after 6 babies on ventilators. It was just luck that nothing bad happened.

After finishing the shift I went back to the nurses home and howled my eyes out.

If only the public realised.