AIBU to think that Cameron is telling nurses to do things that they already do?

[MyNameIsNotNurse]

Or aim to do given the oppertunity.
Link

David Cameron's 'ideas'
Hourly checks on patients to make sure they have had enought to eat/drink and are comefortable.
Isn't this just basic care?
Also to have members of the public doing spot checks on their local hospitals, isn't this just going a bit too far?

I would really like him to do a 12 hour shift on a busy ward, with sick people needing more than just the hourly walk around to make sure that things are ok.
What about the patients who are in need of 15 minute observations. Patients with poor mobility who take more than 30 seconds to get to the toilet and needs assistance every step of the way. What about the drug rounds? Then multiply that by 30 pateints for 2 staff nurses (some with little experiance) If 1 patient is really ill thats 1 nurse down so 30 patients beeing looked after by 1 nurse, and maybe 1 or 2 HCA.

Why does he not discuss the staffing issues, which most wards have the mountains of paper work which each and every nurse has to get through every shift which takes away from the care of patients.
Most nurses I know stay behind to finish paperwork, turn into work when they or their family is not well, go without breaks, work 12hours a shift, do extra shifts and Given up our measily 3% payrise over 3 years.

He's just making a lot of noise saying we should do things we already do in order that the public think we're not doing them and we lose support?

I didn't expect tea either just:-

somebody to lift my starving newborns into my arms as having had a c/s I was incapable,somebody to help put them back too would have been nice.It's hard to hold 2 newborns alone when you can't move.

breakfast,lunch and tea would have been nice,you get starving hungry when bfing

clean sts and paper pants,they're not diamond encrusted.Sorry I ran out I had no idea how much blood you loose

somebody to check the clots I passed onto the floor weren't my insides,oh somebody to clear them up too would have been nice

clean sheets,checks to see how soiled my bedding was

the occasional enquiry as to how I was holding up with coping with 2 newborns

water within my reach

checks to see if I was in pain

checks to see if my terrified 6 year old son was ok

checks to see how I was holding up with loosing my babies

my urine measured hourly as instructed by the consultant repeatedly,kind of crucial is I had fluid flooding all my major organs

some pain relief when suffering from ohss

somebody to ask how I was when sobbing through the night

somebody to ask how I was when my family were miles away

somebody to think actually I didn't want to be in the same ward as a teenage abortion patient

.........

cup of tea,no thanks.

What about heirarchy? When I trained there were different levels of nurses, each attending to different aspects of care. Sister/Charge Nurse saw to the management, RGN saw to their things - mainly drugs and technicalities - SEN saw to the running of the care side and supervised the Auxilliaries so that people were clean, fed and generally cared for.

Now, the RGNs just seem to do junior doctor work and technicalities and the HCAs do their own thing. I suppose the Sister/Charge nurses still manage, but there's a huge gap between RGNs and HCAs and there needs to be something to fill it. This is where the SEN role was invaluable.

What i meant reduce is that as a society, if we valued care and dignity more then we would invest more into the nhs

instead footballers, bankers and popstars are revered and paid millions that they don't need. we all have helped to allow that by prefering image, beauty and power over self respect and decent humanity

and yet in a sickingly greedy and individualistic society we expect nurses to be the perfect picture of kindness and altruism

MrsDevere, negligent care should always be complained about. No contest.

Sorry that you went through what you did.

Agedknees, MrsDeVere had a very ill child and probably after everything she was dealing with, didn't have the strength to complain.

'and yet in a sickingly greedy and individualistic society we expect nurses to be the perfect picture of kindness and altruism'

Too true. Service to others isn't valued either and people seem to have lost this mindset. The carer who has been accepted for nursing in our place of work definitely isn't interested in 'service to others'. It's all about her I'm afraid. This is how people are these days. Old fashioned concepts are laughed at and devalued.

Oh and england voted a right wing government who support that greed and individualism

to some extent we are all culpable

mrshefferly sounds like you had your babies and received no care whatsoever afterwards

that to me sounds like a bizzare set up and one i have never encountered

indeed you should complain

1. I have never seen a ward with what I would call sufficient staffing. Ever. Normally it is one or two nurses run ragged.

1. That having been said, many seem to have compassion fatigue, but frankly I don't blame them.

I did not mean that. What I meant was substandard care is not on.

Boglach my care wasn't anything unusual I have countless friends who have had c/ss in different hospitals who experienced similar.

compassion fatigue Most of my colleagues have this. I'm not there often enough to have it, thankfully. I don't know how they manage to work full time in that kind of environment tbh. I'd go crazy and would have to leave. It's just too much and it's not even the NHS, which is worse than our environment.

Never enough staff. Never.

My baby dd was in hospital for 10 days with pneumonia before Christmas. I stayed with her most of the time, hence doing all her tube feeds and administering her meds. I was lucky as I could stay, some parents had to leave and the nurses then had to take over their feeds etc. One lovely nurse offered to do a feed during the night so I could get some sleep. It was only 1 feed out of 80, but I was grateful.

I reluctantly left her for 90 minutes one day and the nurse reassured me she'd be looked after. I came back to find her lying in a pool of vomit with a soiled nappy. I felt so guilty and sadly my trust in the nurses on that particular shift was gone.

As long as you're not bleeding to death, you don't receive much help after a c-section. This happened when I had ds1 and ds2 several years later.

People always want a scapegoat

the immigrants, the muslims, single mums etc

someone has to be blamed or else we are forced to look at our culture and accept we all have to change it

nurses are a good scapegoat for all the wrongs in the nhs

Yet people don't want to pay more taxes for better services because they want their posh cars and nice holidays..........oh and their breast implants too

The other NHS staff don't seem to be under as much pressure. I've never seen a miserable podiatrist, or a manic physio or a depressed radiographer. They aren't pressurised in the same way that nurses are. They only have to deal with one aspect of a patient's care, nurses are responsible for the entire patient which is a lot for one person to have to deal with. Other NHS staff are busy, but not critically understaffed or pressurised like nurses are.

Aged knees, sorry I was just explaining why MrsDeVere didn't complain, wasn't getting at you, sorry if it came across like that.

I disagree that we all want a picture perfect image of kindness to care for our every whim while in hospital. Some of us just want the basic nursing jobs (that should be done by nurses) to actually be completed.

That is not unrealistic or nurse bashing, but the truth as demonstrated by so many MNetters on this thread who have experienced terrible nursing care.

hiddenhome HCAs don't assist nurses any more like they used to

when I trained the staff nurse oversaw who needing what when (washes, feeds, turns, drinks) and asked THEIR HCA to help with that. Now (or at least where I work now) the HCAs work with the HCAs parallel to the nurses with their own to do list which they are relatively independant with. Nurses help the HCAs (not the other way round) with basic care when they can between drug rounds and discharges etc.

I don't know if that's good or bad in terms of patient care but certainly makes it difficult for the trained nurses to know what's going on with their patients.

I think it was better when I trained when the nurse looking after a bay was responsible for the whole picture of care and delegated as required, rather than the HCAs having their daily routine list to just get on with?

dunno?

Also don't even get me started on Doctors!! There are just as many inefficient, lazy and poor quality doctors out there. I have made more complaints about doctors than nurses for the record.

Also in the past I have made nominations for Nurse of the year awards when we received outstanding care. I have done that twice. I have also wrote a letter to a particularly amazing doctor who helped our son. It's not always about hating or wanting wrong, but when your loved ones are ill you do notice who puts in effort and who stands around talking at the nurses station.

After my CS I was left alone for 4 hours. Had a PPH.

Could not pass urine, so got myself out of bed alone and sat on the loo for 30 mins until I did pass urine.

Showered myself. No helpl.

No help with the baby.

Postnatal care in the NHS is the cinderella of maternity services.

Reduce the nurses need to be involved and to direct the care that the HCAs are carrying out. If the RGNs are too busy to do that you need partially qualified, competent staff to fulfill that role. No disrespect to HCAs, but they do need supervising and directing. When I trained, the nurses knew what the auxilliaries and students were involved with. I still think the SEN role is an ideal bridge between the RGN and the HCA. She could make sure that these feeds and hygiene and painkillers are given. I tell my HCAs that I worry about not getting all my stuff done and they just shrug and tell me not to worry. They don't have the same sense of responsibility that nurses have. They don't worry if someone isn't bathed or fed, they just do what they can. I do worry about it and try to do it myself if they don't have time.

You have to be on top of your support staff at all times. So they think you are bossy, hard cheese. So they think you are interfering, again hard cheese.

These are ill people. They need someone who advocates for them. Who cares for them.