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.

HCAs are nurses of the past and the nurses these days are the junior doctors. They do so much more than 'nursing'. People forget that.

This is what I was getting at. Much more responsibility than they once had, but unfortunately don't have a prestigious title to protect them when something goes wrong - always easy to blame it on a nurse whereas a doctor can do much more and not be a blip on the radar.

On another note, I do find it that women simply having a conversation is always seen as 'gossiping'. If they had nothing to do at that moment in time I see no reason why they can't have a chat. Just the same in wards, if they want to talk at the nurses station in between tasks that doesn't bother me - God knows breaks to talk on are non-existent.

I see there are a lot of nurses on this thread - I for one would like to say how much I appreciate you all not only as a patient but as a professional who has the honour to work alongside some fantastic nursing staff. You really do make all the difference to people.

Tough as old boots you miss the point - we have knowhere to change- knowhere! As I said before one ward I worked on it wasn't just a lack of changing rooms it was also a lack of a toilet . I think it's sad really after all we are all human with basic human needs yet I get the distinct impression that nobody really cares that we are 'human'. That's why it's ok to leave me 13hr without a loo- shall I wear an incontinence pad? To call it stealing if we have a cup of tea on said shift; to verbally and physically abuse me. Don't even get me started on how nursing staff treat each other- everybody allegedly has it worse than the last lot of staff yet each experience is very individual. It certainly doesn't help to come on here and see nursing staff like yourself 'tough as old boots' (apt name) make judgement on things I have to do in order to survive the conditions I work in. I just love how trendy my uniform is so I' ll wear it to tesco is not what I'm thinking.. What I'm thinking is I'm starving; the hospital canteen isn't open at the weekend; I've just worked 13hr without a break. Honestly nursing is such an unpleasant profession which is why so many leave- however they leave and then pass judgement on what it was like in their day... Well if it was that great I wonder why those people left. And yes I'm very demoralised.

I'm a student nurse. Professionalism, compassion, holistic treatment and respect for clients are things we get hammered into us constantly both in practice and in university.

I've really enjoyed the academic side (as well as placement) I don't think practically I could have learnt the same things if I was only studying on placement. This is because the nurses on placement don't have time to give you lessons on legislation, physiology, searching for and evaluating evidence for practice, philosophy, ethics etc. While I think I could pick up the bits and pieces I need to know on the ward to get all the necessary tasks done, having a good grounding in these things makes working out why we do things much easier. For the how to do things element practice is more useful.

Nursing is a changing profession and nurses are taking on more roles and responsibilities - many of which would previously have been done by Dr's (who also have both theory and practical education) and the move to a degree course reflects that and also attempts to standardise nurse education to provide a high standard of care for everyone.

Back to the OP, the nurses shouldn't have been standing round in patient areas gossiping, that's surely what we have the office for .

We aren't all perfect. We all know some people who don't care or are crap at what they do. But let's stick together and stop comparing- nobody knows what it's like to work in each other's role and I see people working damn hard. The pay for the responsibility is poor. The pension that is so called gold plated changes beyond recognition in April yet people seem totally unaware of what's coming

When my dad was close to the final stages of his cancer (he was in his 80s but very bright, intelligent, cogent and compos mentis) he was put in a geriatric ward at the then brand new hospital in Worcester - the Worcestershire Royal. Which I am happy to name and shame. Truth is not libel.

He was paralyzed.

He would never have eaten as they'd plonk food down next to him and walk off - knowing he was paralyzed.

When we visited, the nurses' station was mob-handed. But they just sat there openly gossiping. Right in front of us. And if you stood there waiting to speak to someone, they'd carry on gossiping and ignore you. It wasn;t a shift handover, the time I saw it (family members said it was like this whenever they visited). They were not talking about work. TV. Boyfriends. Handbags. Whatever. Anything but work.

My dad was an ex paratropper in WW2. A very very brave, tough man. But that place scared him. There was a patient with dementia who was left wandering round at night tipping other patients out of bed. He was terrified as he could not move so he could not hit the alarm. He could no longer speak, just mime/whisper so shouting for help was a non starter. He begged us to get him home to die in peace. The patients all knew this patient was dumping people out of their beds but I guess it interrupted the nurses' conversations to actively do anything to keep the other patients safe.

He had been quite an advocate for elderly people's rights and someone somewhere pulled strings and he got MacMillan nurses, GP and district nurses to care for him at home where they put a hospital bed in his living room. So he died in peace. One of the last things he said to me (whispered as he couldn't speak) was he begged me to never let them take him back into hospital even if he had some sort of crisis. He'd rather just die than go back to that hospital.

It put an enormous pressure on me as my stepmum would have let them re-admit him and it would have caused all hell if he had been re-admitted and I'd told them about dad begging me to never let him in hospital again.

This was a man who jumped out of planes under fire. I knew my dad was weeks off dying, and had to live with the stress of that on top, that the hospital was incapable and he would never forgive me if someone else had had him admitted.

When I was in (another but also the Midlands) hospital having my 4th baby, it was a busy time so they had a lot of agency midwives. I drew the short straw and got one. She left me to labour alone, doing paperwork at the other end of the room the whole time. When I said baby was about to be born, she got quite rude and insisted I was lying. I wasn't. When he was about to be born she panicked and ran crying into the corridor to find someone to help her. She reappeared with what looked like a cleaner. I could hear them panicking about a resuss trolley (very professional). Later I asked to read the notes and she'd written something about 'unexplained bleeding'. Baby took an age to breathe hence the resuss.

Luckily I had my 5th baby in Yorkshire, where the hospital was lovely and the midwives professional.

How does mentioning your op 'say a lot' about her nursing. I'm genuinely confused.

And just to say, of course people can and SHOULD criticise poor nursing practice. But talking at a desk, really? And slagging off degree educated nurses as a whole? People wearing uniforms in supermarkets? Are those really issues we want to concentrate on?

If people really want to 'make a fuss' and change things there are plenty of areas in which they could do so and hopefully do something productive to change things rather than bitch about and isolate people who are probably good at their jobs.

• Lets question why 1/3 of student nurses want to work abroad when they finish their training

• Lets question why thousands of experience nurses are leaving the profession in droves

• Lets question why we're employing nurses from abroad who cannot speak English properly, and who are now only having to do an online exam to prove their competency

• Lets question whistle-blowing procedures and why staff who report bad care are doubted, bullied, put on suspension..

• Lets all get behind a pay rise for staff, and stop the pension change

• Fight for reductions in paperwork, let nurses get back to having more patient contact which a vast majority are begging for

• Give our HCA's more training and education to empower them, these are a skilled set of people who are often overlooked

• Lets kill this culture of bitchiness, bullying, and media slander

• And another big thing that's currently a hot topic, lets improve patient and staff communication to better relationships between both parties, to allow patients more influence in their care, to allow them to have better experiences in hospitals

• and lets cut the dead wood that have been allowed to continue to provide bad care with help from the b&b culture and poor whistle blowing procedure.

Just to name a few off the top of my head

I have been an inpatient a lot toughas because I have complex chronic conditions.

If someone collapses, uniform or not nurses have the duty, as stated in the new and updated NMC code, to provide assistance so I'm not sure what difficult position that may be. I'm not a big lover of seeing people doing day to day tasks in their uniform, but popping to the supermarket after a long shift isn't a crime. And unless hospitals are going to provide changing rooms then it's going to carry on happening.

Couldn't agree with you more grays. We all go into this wanting to change and improve standards. There are certainly easier ways on making money. Yet gradually people leave the profession. I would never recommend this as a job or a vocation. The NHS is changing beyond recognition and the staff are bickering amongst themselves rather than supporting each other. I think the nursing profession is generally uncaring towards its own. I always think happy staff give care above and beyond. Exhausted burnt out staff who are working extra shifts to survive do not.
Tough as old boots you know nothing about me as a practitioner other than the poor working conditions and abuse that I have told you about; you know nothing about me as a person who uses their own experiences of the NHS to try to improve patient care. However you proved my point about it being a dog eat dog profession, don't you think that's sad?

Sorry joffery I missed your post, I am extremely sorry about your father :(

wherethe it's saddening. It's even more sad when you see students all bright eyed and excited to start their careers. Then you slowly start seeing that shine become duller and duller as they realise what they're up against in the profession. Then you see the women who were fantastic nurses but are now so burnt out and tired they're practically zombies.

But all this plays into the hands of those wanting to privatise the NHS.

Having spent the last 2 weeks at a West London hospital with my DM - almost without exceptions the nurses were from abroad, two worked on Mum and spent the whole time talking in their own language. They didn't explain what they were doing, I would stand at the nurses station wanting to speak to someone and they wouldn't even acknowledge I was there, a couple of times they just walked off...

They really didn't give a toss. The best two nurses were two young girls who were starting their training, chatty and cheerful. Unlike the stroppy nurses from Eastern Europe.

Let's get more places for young people to choose nursing as a career. Recruiting nurses from abroad with no real concern about their language skills is accident waiting to happen.

"Nursing is a changing profession and nurses are taking on more roles and responsibilities - many of which would previously have been done by Dr's"

I think that's what some of us are criticising. Patients need the medical expertise of doctors while they're in hospital, but they also need friendly and ongoing nursing care which they don't always get because the nurses are too busy carrying out many of the duties that were traditionally the responsibility of doctors. It might make the job more rewarding and challenging for many nurses, but the impact on patients is often quite negative. They need nurses who are focussed on keeping them comfortable, noticing if their temperature has gone up a bit, bringing them to the bathroom, or just stopping by their bed for a few minutes friendly chat. It's an important part of recovery and makes a hospital stay less frightening, intimidating or lonely.

My sister was a patient on a specialist ward (on and off for nearly a decade), and many of the nurses were extremely well qualified (I think one had a PhD). In general, the higher the qualifications the better, and more caring, the nurse was at the 'bed-pan' end of the job.

I don't think things were better in the 70s. My DS had a series of ops at a big Children's Hospital. I was friendly with another mother and she asked what time I would be there the day after they had their ops (not allowed to stay with them after the op) I said I would be there at 6 am as kids would be getting woken then. She couldn't get in till older child was at school and asked if I would keep an eye on here little one.

So following morning my DS was still asleep, her little one was screaming. I picked her up and comforted her, good job I didn't hurt her but none of the nurses seemed bothered. Two young nurses standing in the middle of the ward flirting with a young doctor. My DS woke up so I put little girl back in her cot and she started to scream. Nurses ignored her. Eventually I walked over and said, "excuse me but could one of you look after little girl." They looked at me and said, "What's wrong with her?" I said, "I think she just wants a cuddle." Look of relief from them as they say, as one, "Oh we are second years, we don't do emotional development till next year."

They were training to be Registered Childrens Nurses but at end of second year they still didn't know how to give a toddler a cuddle.

Outpatients appointments always seem to be running behind don't they ? I remember once sitting with a patient for over an hour and then a man breezed in and his name was called straight away , cue angry glares from all the others waiting , to which he cheerily said ' I always turn up an hour later than the appointment time , you never get seen on time ' . And no they hadn't called his name out in the last hour !

I do agree with you Falling that nurses are sometimes too busy to provide the care they'd wish to but that's really a result of staffing levels and patient ratios (plus to a degree litigation culture and auditing that generates so much paperwork). My experience of working with nurses - and I've worked with a lot over a number of different settings, is that they do care deeply about people and wanting people to be well. That getting chance to sit and talk to a patient and their family makes people's day. When I say nurses here I'm talking about both those who have trained under the old system and the new.

Nurses are much much cheaper than Dr's so having them take on more roles is very cost effective but there's also an important element of having the people who spend most time with patients be involved in the decisions about care.

Where I currently am, our consultant sees people once a week for ward review and maybe sends an SHO in between times if we request one to deal with an issue. Compared to the hours and hours the nurses spend with people it's nothing. The nurses advocate for people, they learn a lot more about someone over a week than the Dr's do in 30 minutes and they're generally more approachable if people want something or want something conveyed to the Dr.

It might or might not be a bad thing that this is what nursing is becoming but it is what it is and the teaching has to keep up with that.

We still do plenty of personal care, physical obs and hand holding.

Not related to the Ops observations at all, but as we have gone 'off topic' to slagging off nurses generally, I wish to state the following. The problem with modern day nursing is the expectations are too great for the amount of resources in place. The main shifts in practice and challenges are:

• The only people in hospital nowadays are very sick. As soon as they are 'less sick' patients are discharged home, there are home care teams now who deliver iv drugs and blood products. The dependency of inpatients is greater than it ever was. People do not stay in hospital for 10 days after normal childbirths, for example.

• The ratio of nurses to patients is unchanged. So you effectively have high dependency patients with less nurse hours to care for them.

• Nurses are expected to do a much wider range of tasks in their time. They make high level decisions, deliver complex therapies, support much junior medical staff (working less hours) including doing 'their' tasks, support patients who are much sicker and often socially isolated/neglected. Plus deliver personal care, feeding, answering phones and other 'traditional' nursing jobs.

• There is far higher volume of patients with mental health issues/addictions/self neglect and a larger cohort of general arseholes out there. So nurses are much more likely to be assaulted, sworn at and criticised than ever before.

• Litigation and public expectations are far greater. This has led to ridiculous amounts of paperwork, again without extra resources to deliver.

• Hospital trusts put in constant changes and monitoring processes post mid staffs and QEP pressures. Which are expected to be adopted as a priority, again with no resources.

• There is still a military culture of doing as you're told, not speaking out and if you complain nothing gets done or you are scapegoated or labelled a trouble maker.

• Staff are burnt out and leaving in droves. 4 in 5 new recruits are foreign which can lead to problems with understanding patients, different cultures and practices.

Who would want to be a nurse, eh? I've told my daughter I will be happy for her to do anything else, but not this.

Sorry OP, this is irrelevant to your initial post but there is such a lot of ignorance of what it is to be a nurse in the NHS in these times.

I have seen great care from nurses and awful care. I used to think some hospitals were better than others but I realise now that the variations in levels of care go on within a hospital. Even one ward.

My DD had surgery at a local hospital, the care was pretty dire. She needed special food and I was allowed to use the ward kitchen and would hear HCAs and nurses talking when they didn't know I was there. One ranted about an elderly man who had surgery that morning and had refused his evening meal but asked if he could have a cup of tea and a slice of toast. You would have thought she had been asked to walk to Tibet and find a rare root she needed to dig up and prepare for him. My DDs surgeon gave me a kit to keep DDs wound clean as he felt the ward staff wouldn't do it.

Three months later my DS was rushed into hospital, he ended up in the same ward. You wouldn't have believed it, he couldn't have had better care. Caring nurses, nothing was too much trouble.

I still don't really understand how it was so different.

I have been an inpatient in the same hospital, different ward. I thought some of the patients were diabolical and practically expected the nurses to be their body slaves.

Luck of the draw?