To be really pissed off at these gossiping Nurses!

[Rhymerocket]

I am a nurse! I'm on maternity leave.

I'm at a hospital appointment with my father. His appointment was for 09:10 and he hasn't been seen yet. The two nurses in the clinic are standing in the reception gossiping and joking with the receptionist. Now I know the clinic can only move as fast as the doctor but FFS. They look soooo unprofessional. I'm embareased for them. It doesn't inspire confidence in the system.

I've been in nursing for over 20 years. I currently work as an RN on Trauma Orthopaedics. Yesterday I was responsible for 13 sick patients alone. 36 bedded ward, 3 RN, 2 HCA. 20 years ago I never saw nurse:patient ratios that high. I think that has some influence on care.

I would never excuse shoddy care, and am fully aware there are shit nurses around. I just get so tired of hearing the same old lines trotted out. I

That's fair enough ringo. I know how irritating it is when you have to read the same old same old complaints about your profession, all based on the behaviour of a small minority of wasters and incompetents.

I do think, though, that the balance between the academic and practical side of nursing has tipped a bit too much in favour of the academic side, and that consequently the nursing profession seems to be attracting some people who aren't really suited to the care side of the job.

Pretty sure the OP didn't mention anything about shoddy care. Just professionalism.

I didn't say she did. Other posters have discussed poor care though, which is always unacceptable.

Happy to be honest I was a ward sister on an orthopaedic ward in 1985. We frequentky had 10 post op with just me, an SEN, 2 students and an auxiliary.

You stated with the trolly and did the backs just went bed to bed and by the end you just started again.

Our care was bloody good. Sometimes I have found the more people on duty the poorer the care.

We managed to clean the lockers and do the flowers too. God knows how! Beds were washed between patients and patients fed by student nurses.

When you are up against it you are a tighter better unit. It was bloody hard but loved it.

We learned on the job like apprentices and lived rent/Bill free in a beautiful nurses home that was a mansion.

No uni fees and a better foundation in the job that can't possibly be learned in a university.

Sorry but I think nursing wS far more professional when nurses weren't at uni.

However as I said I was impressed with my mothers last stay.

My fD however missed his lunch due to X-ray. The nurse was apologetic but nothing to help. In my day we would have just made him cheese toasties in the ward and a cuppa. That's nursing.

I was pretty annoyed at the local hospital recently when I went in for a blood test. There was only one other person in the waiting room when I got there, she was seen to pretty quickly. Then I had a wait, another person turned up while I was waiting, the two of us sat for 20 minutes listening to the blood takers chatting to the delivery driver about Christmas preparations before we were called in, at the same time. The blood sample took maybe 2 minutes to get done. Yes they are entitled to breaks etc. but how about close the door while they are chatting so that we didn't have to hear that we were waiting for a break to finish.

The hermit crab - they people by the signs ore usually volunteers/league of friends.

Theboody you just described 5 staff for 10 patients though, which is precisely my point, yesterday we had 5 staff for 36. And I would love to be able to go to the kitchen and get my post ops some food - but since our hospital became a PFI, the kitchens are only accessed by Carillion staff, nursing staff are not allowed to have the combination for the door. In fact last week a HCA was "caught" in the kitchen looking for food for someone, and they changed the combination on the door again just in case it had been given to nursing staff. So if a patient misses their dinner, all we can offer is what we can find on the ward.

But I'll leave this thread now, obviously all modern nurses don't care and lack professionalism in many people's eyes, and I don't think this forum discussion will change that.

I did voluntary work for the WRVS in the N&N hospital near Norwich for several years after retirement. I served in their shop and also pushed a trolley round (selling papers and sweets etc) covering about 15 wards. The hospital layout is interesting. It's a very new building and ultra-modern. Each ward is a kind of circle. You come to the main desk (what we used to call the nurses' station in my day) and then go on round to various bays of 4 beds or 6 beds, and some single rooms. Every blooming ward I entered, all the nurses were clustered at the main desk, nattering. Or they were congregated (together with the doctors) around the computer screens at the doctors' desks, having a right laugh. Where they weren't was anywhere near the poor patients. I was asked countless times to fetch a nurse as someone needed the toilet (especially in the single rooms) and was about to wet the bed. We weren't allowed to approach the staff for this, so just had to refuse. It used to break my heart, especially as I had done some nursing as a student and we were never ever allowed to stand about chatting. We were told to scrub out the sluice or tidy the linen cupboards if we had nothing better to do. My best friend was a nurse for 37 years and she did this same voluntary work as me, and said the same things.

If this is 'nurse bashing' I can only relate what we both saw.

OP clinics are an odd place to nurse and most employees are actually HCAs in nurse-style uniforms. They are normally poorly run places. I trained in the 1980s and my training was bloody awful. We were taught a load of tripe and this hideous watch one- do one- teach one type of 'care' with unapproachable military-type figures in control, then I was let loose caring (unsupported) for sick and dying children and their families, being not much more than a child myself. Training and supervision is far superior today. The problem is leadership is missing as the NHS is unable to retain the staff it trains, partly due to pay and conditions and partly due to it being such a horrible job.

As a nurse you should know that waiting times are nothing to do with the nurses so why have you picked up on that?

If their clinic is a quiet one and they have free time what else would you like them to do?

Happy no sorry meant 10 post op with the rest so 32 bedded but of these 10 post op.

Totally take your point over the access to the kitchen. That's bloody ridiculous.

^No uni fees and a better foundation in the job that can't possibly be learned in a university.
Sorry but I think nursing wS far more professional when nurses weren't at uni^

There are many reasons as to why nursing is now a degree course, and I'm fully behind it being a degree course.

I'm quite tired of hearing the same old rhetoric trotted out that nurses should spend all their time being educated in hospitals.

People are blaming the degree course, when in fact problems were happening before the introduction of degrees. Diplomas were around for years and had the same training.

A nurse friend of mine recently posted this, which I will quote:
Sick of people saying nursing shouldn't be a university programme. Surely people should want nurses to be as educated as possible? Surely it's better than we learn to know the body and how it works inside out down to the very cells that make us function, surely it's better we learn how drugs work at their most principle level, how to use evidence based practice to keep improving on healthcare instead of being stuck with archaic methods. But no it would seem people think nursing is still just bed baths, bandages and handing out medications - yeah they're key roles and still very important, but the role and scope of nursing has changed an awful lot since the days of Florence Nightingale so we need to be equipped with the knowledge to deal with that. Which is why it's 50% placement, 50% university. Best of both worlds!

Gosh code our training was fantastic in the 80s.

Your hospital sounds shite.

Mmm see why assume that uni = better trained or better educated.

It clearly does not.

And yes things have changed as clearly it's far more important to learn to take bloods while patients die of thirst or malnutrition or of complications of pressure sore infection.

Nursing was always a profession.

It didn't need a uni trip to justify it.

Grays sorry must add we did actually learn physiology and how drugs worked you know!

We did have nursing schools that actually taught those things too!

theboody You're missing the point.

The scope has changed, the roles are changing, they are expected to be more than people who give basic care.

I speak to students who are excellent at care-giving and nursing tasks, but who also have an extremely in-depth knowledge in anatomy and physiology (for example). Something that their senior colleagues haven't got, except those who either have an avid interest and are self taught or have done learning following them becoming qualified. Isn't it good that they know more, have a broader knowledge base?

Nurses being degree educated isn't the problem here. Staffing is a problem, inside politics is a problem, people becoming nurses who shouldn't be is a problem, management is a problem...

theboody I know, just not to the level degree nurses are unfortunately.

It isn't a competition, I don't understand why people are slating nurses becoming educated to degree level.

I'm not a nurse but I work in outpatients - it can be hard work and grim and the nurses and admin staff are often bare the brunt of rude and aggressive behaviour (and that's just the consultants!) If there wasn't the odd slower clinic and occasional time for a bit of a laugh many more of the staff would be depressed and off work with stress. Nurses rotate clinical duties and for all you know the next week might be hell. Give them a break its nearly Christmas !

And I think people seem to forget that the average student nurse spends 50% time in university and 50% time in practice, on average, with many of those also doing bank shifts in hospitals at the same time to help to get by.

It shouldn't even bother me, but the sheer vitriol I see newly trained nurses get from nurses who bang on about the 'good old days' (forgetting that sometimes they were bloody awful too) irritates me. Support your fellow nurses in how they have to be trained and respect the fact they're on an extremely demanding course and that a high majority will be excellent at their jobs. There'll be some who are rubbish, but there always has been.

Times change, education changes, job roles change, move with it or get left behind. All the excuses people make against the degree are sheer speculation 'too posh to wash' 'they dont care' 'its all academic' usually come from people who have very little idea of what the degree actually entails.

I don't have a problem with nursing being a degree subject. What I do have a problem with is nurses graduating who seem to know very little about actual nursing care and treat patients as just 'cases', not people who are in an uncomfortable, painful or frightening situation. There is a clinical efficiency combined with coldness about a lot of younger nurses, and I definitely recognise Spider's scenario of the nurses all gathered around the nurses station looking at a computer and ignoring the patients.

I'm a nurse and I'd be lucky to get my backside on a seat most shifts it's so busy in the special care baby unit. We do chat and work at the same time, and eat chocolates on the hoof, but mainly because we probably won't get a proper break from when we arrive at 7pm until about 3 am in the morning. Not sure what goes on in outpatients but I'd imagine the Dr sets the pace of who is seen when. If it's not teachers being hated...let's start in the nurses!

I qualified back in the 80's with no uni and Matrons and it was bloody awful. It's much nicer now. Much friendlier less stressful on me. I work bloody hard 13 hour shifts and would kill for an outpatients job.

What I do have a problem with is nurses graduating who seem to know very little about actual nursing care and treat patients as just 'cases', not people who are in an uncomfortable, painful or frightening situation

How many have you come across, is this in a professional capacity or personal?

If that's the case then that should have been picked up on by their mentors and they should never have been allowed to be 'signed off' on their clinical skills .

I see student nurses, med students, student ODP's nearly every day and whilst there's a couple who I think 'mmm' the majority are bright, caring and kind individuals who I think will be a credit to the healthcare team.

I've also seen a lot of pre-degree nurses who also don't project nursing care and treat people as their conditions instead of holistically. There will always be folk like that unfortunately no matter which method of education they've completed.

That said, I do think that the mentorship scheme needs a lot of developing and funding going into it. It isn't standardised, students aren't seeing their mentors enough, mentors don't fully understand how to complete the assessments they're being told to do, mentors not having time to engage properly.. along with a raft of other problems I've been told about and have experience myself.