To think NHS do gooders need to realise that the patient is not always right

[oggieogggie]

I've had a right few weeks of it. I'm an auxilliary nurse and my morning normally starts by taking breakfasts around the ward. Picture the scene if you will - a trolley full of cereal, bowls and milk and a pot of hot porridge.

I walk into room one = "would you like breakfast this morning?" patient (full mental capacity) says "well before all that I'd like you to fix my TV. I cant get the channel to turn over." I say "well I'll see to that after breakfast, would you like some cereal?" he says "not until my TV is fixed ... can't you just do it, it will only take a minute (so everyone else should wait until YOUR TV is functioning before they get their breakfast and you don't see that as selfish at all?) I don't say this - I remain professional.

Imagine a few more patients who decide that their TV/Slippers/Laptop chargers etc are more important and then the unfortunate patients who receive cold porridge as a result -

Next I take a tray of hot toast around = One patient demands "I want it buttering and cutting into thin strips." I explain that she will either have to press the buzzer for someone else to come and do it or wait until I have finished delivering toast before it gets cold. "But I want it NOW!" she demands. Ok, so it's fine that everyone else will receive cold toast? that's ok with you is it?

Imagine more of the same throughout the day

"I can't get my phone working!" = well I'm taking care of a rather ill patient at the moment, it will have to wait." "that's it!! I'm making a complaint!!"

"I want you to wash me." = "I will help you but you have to wash what you can yourself." = "why?? its what you get paid for!!!" no actually - I get paid to help people back to independence and to care for those who genuinely can't do it themselves ... " - "Ive had no sleep!! I want you to wash me! I can barely move I'm in so much pain!!" (well walking down the stairs for a fag 10 minutes ago must have been agony then eh?)

I'm sorry, but could it not be said that sometimes, just sometimes certain patients are not always right and that as staff members we should not live in fear of one of these people complaining that we're not jumping through hoops to keep them happy? And no I've never had a complaint against me - I do that nursey thing of taking the abuse and maintaining a smile. Just lately I can't quite shake the notion that the NHS (and Britain in general) is so bothered about political correctness and ultimate customer satisfaction that it's actually counter productive. Why are we all so polite??!

And viva they can't teach you everything about being a nurse on a 3 year midwifery course. Most is learnt in placement and in fact so we are being told now (with less than 6 months until qualification) after qualification. I presume you are not nurse trained so you can't really say if you thought it would help or not.

It is personal preference really. I feel it will benefit me and is actually better for me career wise. I wanted to be a nurse as well as a midwife. I'm not that young (am 36 now, 37 when I qualify as a nurse) so am doing it the long way round and am actually taking as risk as the 18 month topup may not be around in the next couple of years.

Galaxymum what's terrifying about your experience is that there is this 'blame game' going on, where whistleblowers / people with complaints are not treated with full on attention in an attempt to improve the service, they are silenced and 'gaslighted'.

As I mentioned earlier, nurses and carers should run hospitals and employ who THEY need to make their service better. My guess is they would rather employ three more nursing staff than one more consultant.

Hopefully the new shakeup will improve things, it really can't get much worse than this.

Nursing and Midwifery are completely different job roles with completely different mindset. People tend to group them together when they're not the same at all.

Nursing, most of the time we're there for medical intervention when a patient is ill.
Midwifery is to guide a woman during a natural process and to try and prevent any needless medical intervention. The thought processes between the two are completely different, and you can often tell a midwife that has first been a nurse

I have loads of midwifery friends and actually thought of becoming a midwife but chose nursing as I wanted to concentrate on ICU. Because the midwifery course is so competitive loads of people chose to do the nursing degree first then use the 18 month conversion, not realising the conversion is even more competitive. And the 18 month conversion comes and goes, there's always rumours that it's going to be stopped - but it's a case of supply and demand. When the NHS is in quick need of midwives it'll open up the conversion course again.

And if you want to be a nurse and a midwife it'll be difficult as you have to put a certain amount of practice hours in each

"I have worked with many people who act as if they personally finance the ward/unit/service"

Yes! This! It really narks me when people claim that because they pay NI contributions/tax then they should receive anything they damn well want! The reality is that most people's NI contributions and tax come nowhere even close to paying for their care - we actually rely on big business and higher-rate taxpayers for most of what people think that they, personally, have paid for.

And for those who say that resources should be available - great, wonderful, but from where? Are people willing to pay higher taxes? Even if they were it wouldn't necessarily make economic sense on a macro scale. And we already have a massive budget deficit.

The NHS is doing its best in a climate of austerity - people have to learn to accept that there just isn't the money to pay for the service they feel they're entitled to.

The mindset might be different but a MW needs to be competent in nursing sick patients before, during and after delivery. People with complicated health needs have babies too.

And the mental health components of MW training are appalling (if you can call them that). You should see how scantily the main student MW textbooks cover it and using the excuse that the textbooks are 'a jumping off point' for further study is not relevant. They are a jumping off point for all study yet manage to cover other pertinent subjects pretty well.

I am actually involved in developing a year three module in conjunction with a large MW school nearby. We are looking at how we can improve MWs awareness of MH issues through modular content and practice.

Oh, and for those bashing consultants - they've worked for decades, putting in 90-hour weeks and hours of unpaid overtime every day to get to where they are. They are certainly not lazy, and they do not owe the NHS/you anything.

Sybil - There is the money actually to pay for basic nursing care. And people should expect rightly to get basic decent care.

Not actually insulting patients is free. it costs nothing more than a rigorous system of recruitment and a robust and fair system of investigating such breaches of common decency.

my 83 yo DM was released (as she puts it, rather than discharged) from our local hospital a week ago. she spent a week in there, after a week of toing and froing via GP, A&E twice, scheduled CT scan and then finally emergency admission by ambulance.

she is still in extreme pain, her pain control is not adequate, but she lied to the doctors rather than stay on the ward one second longer. she told me things she saw - like an elderly lady with both legs in bandages being slapped at night because she wasnt ready to get off the commode. comments about dementia freely thrown around - eg, "you're not allowed to use the bed control because you're on the way to dementia like the rest of them in here". also some male nightnurses standing round in the ward, laughing at the old ladies and saying scary things (she is still having nightmares). the last incident could be a drug induced fantasy, but I believe her about the slapping, and I clearly remember when we arrived on the ward at about 6pm a nurse saying to a colleague "we just get rid of one and another one arrives" - I did point out that this was my mother she was referring to, but no apology or acknowledgement.

DM says she would rather die than go back there, and I think she would actually do that. SOME of the nurses were lovely, but SOME of them should not have been in the job.

I agree with the PP who transposed the setting to small children in nursery - but staff: child ratios at nursery are more strictly imposed I beleive.

Boschy PM.

Friggin hell boschy that's horrific. Please report it. These horrible people giving nurses a bad name infuriate me. How dare they treat someone like that. Why are they in the job in the first place

boschy - The last incident may be a drug induced hallucination. But not feeling safe, and with good reason from the sounds of it, would surely help to create such hallucinations?

I am a nurse and have been for 15 years

It is the pits right now. The general public hate us - they have been encouraged by the media/ francis inquiry report to scrutinise every ounce of contact they have with us.
Nurses are lazy, selfish people who enjoy nothing more than gossiping whilst neglecting the patients that are supposed to be in their care. They love nothing more than to watch a helpless person waste away and sustain pressure sores.

Hello
Nurses do not just have to administer medications and blood products, ensure patients are in a stable and pain free condition by performing temperature taking blood pressure, pulse, o2 saturations, counting resp rate, neurological obs and maintaining fluid/food charts, change dressings and wash and meet the needs of patients that are unable to carry out the activities of daily living themselves

They have to
Report broken tvs, phone, equipment
Take and collect broken equipment to medical physics to be repaired or organise a porter
Organise a porter to collect patients and take them to some procedure/scans (sometimes the patient may need accompanying for up to 2 hrs)
Source equipment that is not available on the ward ie infusion pumps
Source and order medications and food supplements if they are not available on the ward
Check the controlled drugs cupboard
Cannualtion and blood taking
Order blood products
Ensure patients are on the correct medication
Chase doctors to amend prescriptions, prescribe things they haven't but should have.
Check blood results are within range
Handover and refer patients to dieticans, OTs, physios, specialist nurses, palliative care
Organise transport out of hours
Admit and discharge patients on the computer system out of hours
Restock the treatment room/ sluice
Deal with enquires about patients condition from relative, other member of MDT
Attend ward rounds and MDT meetings
Arrange patients' discharge, referring and liasing with social services,
Tidy the notes up endlessly
Endless form filling

Much more

It is a thankless job right now and everybody is looking to complain or accuse. There is not much time to care.

If i was younger and didn't have kids so had more time and money to retrain I would get out it pronto.

notnow I appreciate it is a thankless job in many areas. but none of that is the patients' fault is it?

most people will be quite calm if they are given information, if things are explained to them, and, let's face it, if their drugs turn up on time or are not withheld (as my DM also says happened).

the lack of any sense of control over your environment, the fact that it's always"someone else's" job to do something/answer your question is a very dis-abling situation for many people, and they become afraid.

got it kudzu and replied, thanks. thinking about my complaint now - and other stuff that's emerged since, like the fact that one thing that showed up on her CT scan has never been mentioned since - could be something, could be nothing, but they seem to just be able to focus on one issue at a time with elderly people.

I understand how it must feel to be a patient (i have been one too) and I am calm and polite, detailing what i am currently doing and a timeframe for the request

But it is how another poster described it - like being at mummy at home with a toddler trying to get on top of things - you're in the kitchen, head in oven getting out a hot casserole dish - your toddler comes up behind you with a broken toy and demands you fix it - you say not now i am holding a burning dish - cue tantrum. It is very frustrating and EVERYTHING that does not have a designated person to sort out in a hospital become the nurses remit.

I really think it's imperative that geriatric hospitals are reintroduced. Most elderly patients do not cope well on a hospital ward. They have needs in addition to "broken hip" or whatever they are in for.

On fil's orthopedic ward every single patient except one was over 80. They were mostly confused. They were shouting "Nurse!" every five minutes for very non-urgent matters. Fil was blathering on about his toenails to anyone who would listen, including the consultant.

Also, this was a brand-new hospital, but it already seemed to be in tatters. Most of the nursing staff could not speak very good English. If you rung up they often couldn't understand at all and would put the phone down. This created even more chaos with elderly and confused patients.

I sympathise with many of the nurses. There are a few bad apples but I can see that the system is buckling.

Having been through all the thread, it really sounds as though there is a huge staffing problem at the bottom of all this, and the post c-section 'care' and dementia stories are terrifying...

I'm afraid I behaved very badly when I was in hospital recently. Short backstory. I had surgery in January and was sent home far too soon, with no instructions on how to care for one of my wounds. A week later the wound was so infected it exploded' and I was rushed in, in a very very scared state, put onto a strong drip and admitted. By day three, I was vaguely told I could possibly go home by a harassed doctor but that it 'may get infected again'. She then rushed off, leaving me absolutely terrified...I kept trying to get more information, but no-one wanted to speak to me. eventually I caught a nurse and just screamed my head off at her to get someone.

An extremely junior doctor appeared about an hour later, after I had lay there doing the sobbing hiccupping thing and had No Idea what I was on about. I screamed once more and eventually the same doctor who had rushed off returned. It took her 15 minutes to explain things to me. that was all I wanted.

I'm not a young scared person - I've had over 30 operations in my life and never ever been left like this :( I know it was the lack of staff and the pressure (the excuse for me being rushed home an hour after major surgery, which caused the problem in the first place) but it was horrible.

I apologised to every member of staff I had yelled at and felt terrible about my behaviour, but I was just desperate.

I don't think that falls into the category of patient whinging, that sounds pretty scary. And I think NHS staff have to accept that very scared and ill people will not always behave rationally.

I have also heard a lot of stories about people coming home from hospital early and then be put in a position where they have become more ill than they were before.

Or sometimes catching an infection IN hospital. A lot of these problems are completely preventable.

There is a point at which they should simply refuse to take people in if they know the haven't got the resources to do the full wrap around care package. If it means longer waiting lists then longer waiting it will have to be.

But it's self-defeating to clog up hospital beds with people with septicemia from poorly healed surgery.

I've been an adult inpatient a few times now, for a variety of operations. Overall I have had good care by the nurses when they were available, which quite often they aren't as they are so understaffed.

It is obviously not the ward staff's fault that there are not enough of them, but that isn't my first thought when I am physically incapable of doing something for myself (which I would usually take for granted).

I have also been a private patient on one occasion and the most noticeable difference is that there are enough staff to look after you.

I think patients should be encouraged to complain, because if the nurses keep on just getting on with it and nobody complains, nothing will ever change.

*Notnow The general public hate us - they have been encouraged by the media/ francis inquiry report to scrutinise every ounce of contact they have with us. Nurses are lazy, selfish people who enjoy nothing more than gossiping whilst neglecting the patients that are supposed to be in their care.

I don't think anyone on this thread has said or heard anyone say, or even implied anything remotely like this. Your defensive attitude is not helping anyone, and nurses would do better to fight the system and insist on changes than assume the public are the enemy. Look at the problems within the system and deal with them - like the targets, like unequal pay, like unqualified imported staff, like lack of preventive services, like fraud and theft.

I agree that understaffing is a huge problem. The unit I was in had mostly fab permanent nursing staff but had to also rely on agency staff. Some of them were truly awful. One was so awful that the ward matron refused to have her on the ward again (after she had administered a drug to me completely incorrectly despite saying her permanent job was in another unit similar to the one I was in).