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 attended an endoscopy appointment at 9 am. There were four of us for the appointments that day and we were all given the same time. By 11.30 am I was starting to get stressed, along with one of the other ladies. I knew I had to be available to do the school run and for this reason had opted not to have sedation. The doctor walked through and said to me "You are next" so I felt reassured. However, by 1 pm, I had still not been taken in.

At 1.30 I was called through for form filling, blood pressure etc. Strangely my blood pressure was a little high! I was so annoyed by then the doctor asked me what was wrong. I said that I had been worried, but put this aside when I came in at 9 am but now everyone in the waiting room was anxious and stressed. I heard him say to the staff that they should not be getting everyone in so early.

Upshot was I had to have sedation because I was so bloody angry, as did everyone else and my DH had to come out of work to collect me and make the school run.

No explanations were given by the nursing staff who were chatting at reception. I know everyone is supposed to be run off their feet, but surely some human kindness and basic courtesy is not an over expectation.

Don't take this as a general slagging off of the NHS as I have had good treatment on other wards in the same hospital.

In fairness Code a lot of us are well aware of what nursing is about these days, and are actually questioning if the move away from traditional nursing is a good thing for patients.
But obviously there's lots of other things to be taken into consideration. Lack of proper 24 hour GP care and home visits mean extra patients attending A&E Depts; cost cutting measures mean less beds and patients being discharged early and a lower nurse to patient ratio; etc etc etc.

But I still think that a lot of the caring human touch has disappeared from nursing, whatever the reason, and that academic qualifications hasn't improved nursing care in general.

I disagree that a caring human touch has disappeared from nursing, which seems to be based on a limited observation from a few individuals. People don't do this job for the money do they? I see good caring practice day in, day out as a practising hospital matron. There are of course crap badly managed individuals, and rarely- teams of them. I was a patient and a nurse in the 80s and care there was also variable between individual staff. To suggest lack of care is widespread or due to a change in training is pretty insulting and a huge assumption. There has been plenty of research to back up the philosophy that formally educated nurses make better nurses. What needs to be accepted is that you can't have a workforce without additional resources doing endless extended roles alongside traditional ones and still able to deliver perfect care.

I'd just like to say that the situations described here as examples of patient care and less-than-care are all situations that occur in Australia as well, All of them. My MIL is a retired nurse, and I have been an inpatient in 2 local hospitals (we're between areas) on various wards, and as a mother on a child's ward. Remember it's not the NHS here - but it is Medicare, which is basically similar (but with extra costs to the patient). It's not just a UK/NHS "thing".

The worst "care" was on a women's medical ward. I was there during a miscarriage - they wanted to keep me in overnight because I went in on the Sunday (my first one, I learnt later not to bother) and couldn't have the ultrasound til the Monday. There was a lady who wasn't very mobile, couldn't get herself to the loo at all, and she kept ringing and ringing for help - she ended up soiling herself and the floor next to the bed because they would not come. The lady in the bed opposite me was in terrible pain, for some reason they weren't able to manage it well, but they ignored her most of the night. I ended up calling them myself - they came to me because of my situation - but when I said could they please help the lady across the way, they said she was just whinging and they couldn't do anything for her. So our whole 4 bed ward was kept awake most of the night from the poor old lady's cries of pain. :(

I know there are limits to what can be done, and the staffing problems here (NSW) are just as bad as in the UK - and I'm just as sure that attitudes are ground down by the poor work conditions, pay and staffing levels - something needs to be done, needs to change, but I don't know what. Paying for it isn't necessarily the answer - I do have private health cover, but still ended up in the public hospital because of my situation, and couldn't get a private room because they were allocated on the basis of medical need which is absolutely as it should be - but did leave me wondering what my health fund was paying for.

My view is based on two stays in hospital, one where I received excellent care and one where I received very poor care, and on many many experiences of having an elderly and seriously ill parent in hospital - it is not simply a 'huge assumption'. Of course there were some very nice nurses in all scenarios, but the general impression I received is that the changing role of nursing and the emphasis on the academic side and on taking on jobs that should be done by junior doctors, is at the expense of the more 'caring' side of the job. That doesn't mean that the nurses themselves are less caring as people, but the role they now have in hospitals definitely emphasises that side less.

I am an nhs nurse, I've been qualified for under 5 years, working on an surgical ward. We run a 30 bedded ward regularly on 2 nurses and 2hca with one nurse in charge. If we are bloody lucky the staff will be our own but frequently it's bank or agency(9 times out of ten they have never worked on our ward/area before)

Our staff turn over is ridiculous, the hospital went to Spain and hired 150 nurses, 3/4 of whom left after 6months so our trust is now going to Portugal and Thailand for more nurses. We spent the last year teaching the nurses, many of who had next to no nursing experience or English speaking skills how to work within the nhs as our system is completely different to their training. They have an extended set of skills ie able to do task a,b and c, but not a clue how to discharge a patient or perform basic care skills as they don't do that in Spain so us nhs trained nurses have to pick up after them as well as our own workload. (In Spain apparently the family do the personal care or if no family around then local church help)

We seem to spend our time writing about the care given rather than giving the care ourselves. Regularly going without breaks and rarely leaving on time. It's soul destroying, but heaven help us if you complain about staffing levels (or skill mix/competency) as then you get hauled into the office and basically told that if we were making better use of our time then we wouldn't be drowning.

As for students, I pity them. How can a nurse who had been in the nhs for less than a year be a good mentor? How can three students all get a decent level of education/support from only one mentor? There aren't enough senior nurses on the wards to effectively support the newly qualified nurses, those first six months are so essential to making the step from student to qualified nurse but I've seen so many not get the support that they need and are actually entitled to according to both the trust policies and the nmc. No wonder so many just leave or worse become weak nurses.

Basically what I'm saying is that alongside the normal nursing jobs and the endless mountain of paperwork we are often having to oversee multiple students, working with agency staff who often have no idea about the ward, supporting/aclimatising non-nhs trained nurses and then we still get complaints because an audit hasn't been done or yet another complaint has come in regarding care of a patient.

It breaks my bloody heart that there are days when only the essentials are washed, when patients soil themselves because I was dealing with one of my other 14 patients or my student leaves the shift in tears because I've barely seen her that day as I've been rushed off my feet with everything else. And then just to make my day better, the powers that be decide that I'm not allowed to keep a bottle of water at the nurses station as it "doesn't promote the correct image"

The above post doesn't smack of an 'uncaring' nurse does it? More a good one struggling to emerge from under a mountain of shite.

My nurse friend who I mentioned upthread is heartbroken when she hears all this talk of nurses not caring anymore. The problem is the system is not allowing them to demonstrate how much they care. They want more patient contact, they want to be able to sit down and have a chat with you, they want to be able to do the standard nursing tasks that help build a good nurse-patient relationship - but they're buried under everything else.

But unlike falling, people blame the nurses themselves instead of a failing system.

The bottle of water thing I've heard a few times and it makes me so angry. You're expected to care for countless people but aren't allowed to care for yourself in the most fundamental of ways; hydration.

I was in sainsburys the other week and the two assistants in the changing rooms where slagging off another employee (there manager) and Sainsburys in general with varying colourful language. I work in a service industry and it really peed me off, they might hate there job but to slag the company off in front of customers was really unproffesional. I reported it to the manager (although from what they said I doubt she did anything)!

Also experienced appalling nursing - malicious bullying, not giving a toss about the patient (young child), making things up. If you give certain people power over others, as nurses have, they will find it fun to abuse it.

I work for NHS, was once in a hospital bed next to a proper matron that ruled the roost in the 60s. It was fantastic to watch, she had our bay running like clockwork from her hospital bed. Comedy gold seeing the clash of the two cultures!

Nurse here - not wanting to get involved in the defending us from the bashing as I know I work hard in shit circumstances but I am often in sainsbury's in my uniform - usually spending my own money in my break time on items that a patient recovering chemotherapy has suddenly declared they fancy - put that in your pipe and smoke it all you that judge.