Nurses eating on shift...

[PatsyAndEddy]

Just back from hospital visiting a friend who had her tonsils out today. She had to fast from 10 pm last night and didn't get taken for her op until 2pm, that's a long time without food for anyone!

She missed dinner on the ward but they got her a sandwich but she's really sore and hungry!

On the ward her bed is right next to the nurses station. She said they were sitting munching on a large bag of kettle chips in front of her between the three of them. She commented on how she thought that was a but mean, they snapped back saying 'well we have to eat' at which point my friend reminded them that's what they're breaks were for.

I don't think she's flavour of the month in the ward! She can be a bit of a grump at the best of times but starving, sore and groggy I think she reached her limit!

We're the nurses being unreasonable, eating on shift?

Actually it wasn't a rant, it was my opinion and the use of the word whore was a metaphor (allegory?) For the Madonna/Whore complex that exists in sexual relationships. I am a radical feminist.

Neither of those things make my opinion 'crazy.'

Mental illness isn't a nice word to throw around after someone has said they found it hurtful, especially using it in a form that suggests safety. AKA >Back away from the crazy< If I wasn't explicit enough, being someone who has MH issues, calling me crazy for my political opinions is hurtful. Call me a bitch, a cunt, a slag, whatever. Just please don't dismiss my opinions as crazy.

Obviously I have no moderating abilities, but I do find it disrespectful and hurtful.

Also you didn't address any of my points? {confused]

Of course I did not address any of your points, there aren't any to a dress.

Radical? You don't say.

Not everything is a feminist issue, keep that in mind and you might feel less stress

It isn't the nurses fault that she couldn't eat! If you have surgery, you have to fast, end of!

I couldn't eat from 8pm one night, until late afternoon the next day when I was sterilized. I don't blame anyone.

To be honest, if the hard working over stretched nurses were eating I wouldn't have begrudged them, because they were fantastic.

As long as it didn't interfere with your friends care, I think she was wrong to mention it.

I'm a nurse (day off today) and this thread has been on my mind all day.

If it is tactless for nurses to eat in front of someone post-op, is it also tactless for nurses to WALK near immobile patients? Or BREATHE near intubated patients????

If we had any empathy we should just roll around in wheelchairs, and turn blue, right?!!

Exactly right betty, got it in one

Thanks.

But you missed the point, Patsy.

This thread has gone a bit wild.
I didn't think so many people held nurses in such low esteem.
It is shameful.

The thread about nurses belittling patients by calling them by terms of endearment was bizarre too.
We would have something to complain about if they were being called, fat bitch etc.

I am very grateful for the excellent care that my family have received over the years from the NHS, especially the nurses.

God forbid, that as well as working for 12 hours they may have toilet needs or need to eat.

Great point Sisterbetty, but lost on the OP, I fear.

I remember an old school orthopaedic consultant remarking in surprise to me that "Sister is pregnant", (I was 8 months gone at this stage and had seen this guy every week).
The rest of the participants of the ward round were amused when I explained that just because I was a Sister, it didn't make me a nun!
Nurses should not eat, pee, defecate and certainly not have sex.

Uhh I think Betty was disagreeing with your original post?

And no need to be patronising about my stress levels, you started a thread that turned political and I merely asked you not call me 'a crazy' for having an opinion? I think that's reasonable.

Nurses and their treatment is a political issue to me and the other posters who brought it up first. Doesn't makes us 'crazies.'

Oh, and thinking there aren't any points to my post is your own political opinion. So, if you don't feel they are relevant, please just call me a bitch for thinking your friend is one, not degrade my beliefs then refuse to address them, especially when you misunderstood them to begin with. (My Madonna/Whore analogy)

I do hope (as I said, sadly) that things go the way the poster I quoted think they will. High time people treated nurses - Male AND female - With the respect that is reflected in not only their wages, but so people like you mentioned in your OP are the minority.

Society needs to stop expecting they can speak however they want to people in positions such as you mentioned in your OP. Customers/patients/etc with similar rants are finally starting to be villainised when they stupidly go to the DM and such with their sob stories about these minor scenarios, I hope people in these jobs continue to gain further public support until it simply isn't okay for the sort of childish behaviour your friend exhibited to be deemed socially acceptable.

Disclaimer< Of course people should complain when nurses and the like are genuinely not being reasonable, if my posts didn't reflect that. :)

Sorry, I posted before I received MNHQ's email. Ignore me on those 'crazy' related fronts!

Nurses? Having SEX?! Bollocks Sauvigon, in the pornos women are always plumbers filthy from the job, didn't you know? Nurses only appear in the documentaries about their courage in the wars and as Florence Nightingale types.

Dirty, dirty mind.

This thread flags up the much bigger issue, which is that, yes, many people are beginning to hate HCP's, because they and their relatives have been badly treated in hospitals. NOT because of nurses eating crisps I might add , but by genuine lack of caring.
I have had 3 hospital stays, and 1 relative who died in hospital, and unfortunately none of these experiences were good.
In fact they were downright scary. Blood all over the toilets, elderly people who couldnt feed themselves being ignored and going hungry, catheters left in for days after they should have been removed, meds cocked up or just not given, jaundice going unnoticed.
The nurses in the HDU were amazing, but on the general wards, it was really bad.
BUT I don't blame (most) individual nurses for this.
They are working in appalling conditions, with a bullying management, seriously understaffed and overworked, and the way things are run I am amazed there are not more scandals like Mid Staffs.
When workers in any profession are treated like shit they do a shit job.
It's not rocket science.
There is a real feeling of animosity between nurses and patients, that goes both ways. Nurses are resentful and patients are vulnerable and scared.
The NHS is at a crisis point, and it won't get better until staff start being treated better.
Bringing back staff rooms and canteens so nurses can at least get a cup of tea and some dinner would be a good place to start.

I think nurses rarely get breaks

What this thread has lost sight of is that every patient deserves respect, every patient deserves to be treated with dignity, every patient deserves to receive competent and timely care. Unfortunately there have been too many occasions I have observed that doesn't seem to happen and the frequency outweighs the times when care has been exemplary.

So it's reasonable to eat in front of people who are starving? I think that's downright disrespectful

I was ill recently, I had a terrible sore throat & couldn't eat. Even swallowing my own saliva was horrendous. I am not kidding when I say I didn't eat for 2 days, not even soup! It was all I could do to sip water!

My dh & dds had to eat, and they did so in front/around of me. I was hungry, I don't see how op's friend was "starving" after a short fast!

I wonder if dd & dds were being "downright disrespectful" to eat in front of me...I certainly didn't see it like that!

Married - The OP was about if nurses are unreasonable to eat. Hence people are taking about nurses eating and break provision.

Trying to snidely claim nurses have "lost sight" of the importance of treating patients well, when all we are doing is discussing the OP is a low tactic and yet another way to smear us.

Special agent

Where does anyone disagree on this thread that every patient deserves respect, every patient deserves to be treated with dignity, every patient deserves to receive competent and timely care?
Just extrapolating your own narrow experience is extremely short-sighted.
I could say that I have been threatened, physically assaulted and once sexually assaulted by patients so all patients are violent but that would make me an ignorant cunt, so I don't.

But married why is that? Is that because nurses wont or can't deliver that kind of care cos of staffing/ management issues? What many nurses are trying to point out is that it is because of the latter. It is lazy and unfair to cut, cut, cut and then blame nurses when standards slip. It is unrealistic.

Also, what about dignity and respect for hcps at work? It is difficult to convey how stressful it is to be responsible for the wellbeing of people in your care when conditions are unsafe and are sometimes an accident waiting to happen. The burden of responsibility can be huge. It would not be unusual to be unable to sleep after work as it is so difficult to unwind and forget about the day's experiences. We are only human.

If you want good care you pay good wages. In the USA for example, a nurses starting salary is apparently the equivalent of £33,000 (with an often lower cost of living), the average nurse is earning between £43,000-£45,000 and there is career progression options too.

I was thinking the other day when I was working on a very busy shift where noone had eaten, nobody had a break nor was likely to get one and people were complaining that their discharge papers weren't ready or they didn't know who was looking after them that people have ridiculously high standards for the NHS considering the amount they are willing to pay for it. I think the NHS should change its focus, basic healthcare, we should skip the niceties for the provision of the basics. Competent timely care exactly. Kindness, individualized care all that stuff is a bonus, I don't see why underpaid staff should have any obligation to provide it. If you survive undamaged they've done their job. It is not what patients want, it is not what staff want to do but it is what is paid for.

I think it is getting to the stage when nurses and midwives will strike, if we can find a motivational enough leader I think there is growing willingness to strike or at least to provide emergency care only. I hope it will happen, I think people take the healthcare system for granted, that they pay in. Well they pay less than in most countries for cheaper healthcare, it is time they appreciated what they have.

Kindness, individualized care all that stuff is a bonus
I'm afraid I disagree, it is an integral part of nursing.

If someone is wetting themselves on a tampon from need of a bathroom break, or even fainting and being expected to chipper up in twenty minutes... I'm afraid for my own emergency care. I do not blame the nurses, I place the blame squarely where it belongs: Government cuts.

However this thread seems more about your cunt friend's princess expectations than actual nurse behaviour.

So in answer to your OP:

Your friend is a mindless, selfish, self absorbed cut with no perspective.

I hope her toenail polish is dried by the feathers of unicorns as she is fed dry toast juicy fruits with your sympathies as she wails about how cruel life is.

Reality is she was a rude, entitled bitch. Breathtakingly rude. Would she have wailed her starvation at another patient eating I wonder?

Sounds like she has the sad view many seem to have (I don't mean this thread which even though there are posts I disagree with, they are in terms of quality of care, not the self entitled crap OP mentioned) that nurses are 'The Help' and daren't offend them.

It makes me sad when I hear these stories, makes people either sound like people who occupy carers jobs are to be comfortably ordered around or they are bad people and bad bad at their job, and it makes some nurses sound like they should be in a Jack Nicolsen movie.

Neither way is okay. But I have much more understanding for the exhausted nurse who just wants food than the screeching patient about her 'disrespect' for her own emotional/mental stability on a small fast.