Legalised nurse/midwife to patient ratio

[agedknees]

Isn't it about time that the number of registered nurses/midwives to patients on a ward was legalised?

I have just retired from nursing after 36 years. Part of the reason for retiring early was due to not being capable of doing the impossible. We used to think it was our birthdays if we got a lunch break. Management would just mumble about time management skills, but how is it possible to leave a ward/department if you are the only qualified?

Planes cannot take off if the required number of staff are not present due to safety issues. Well how safe is a nhs patient if their nurse has another 15 dependent patients also to look after.

I had to comfort a newly qualified last week as she came in to discover it was just her and two agency members of staff
If staffing levels were that bad, you wouldn't have had time to comfort someone

Isn't it up to each trust to set safe staffing levels? We have a set number of staff/qual staff ratio.
If this is not met it is escalated to management, no more patients are admitted to any empty beds, senior management are expected to get on ward and cover. So there is a level and a contingency. But this was the result of a serious incident - usually it takes one to happen first

bollarddodger did you see that this was nhs staff posting and think "goodie! Can go and goad and wind up"? You clearly have no idea what it's like! Our hosp is about to start open visiting hours in an attempt to
Calm down parking and how busy the wards are at current times, friends in other hospitals say when they've done this is just made them have even less time for patient contact due to having to try and keep people at the 2 visitors to per bed and fielding requests from visitors for cups of tea!

Our hosp is about to start open visiting hours in an attempt to
That's how it should be. Its a hospital, not a prison. You cannot prevent loved ones from seeing their sick relatives. Rules should be for the convenience of the patients, not the convenience of the staff. When I was in hospital recently, the staff still had time to have a laugh and a joke and have their breaks.
I'm not saying that nurses don't work hard or they're not understaffed, but the bigger picture needs to be looked at. And don't accuse people of being goady just because you don't agree with a perfectly valid point they're trying to make toca discussion.

My hospital did a big trial of open visiting on quite a few wards a few years ago. It got stopped and now there is strict afternoon visiting only (obviously exceptions are made if people are extremely unwell, need an advocate with them, etc. and it doesn't apply in paediatrics).

The feedback from visitors was predominantly (I think overwhelmingly but am not 100% sure) positive. It was stopped because the feedback from patients was that they felt the care was worse as staff had less time with them and also there were confidentiality and privacy concerns (again from patients).

Wow Bollard you are talking rubbish! Hospitals are also not hotels, they are places where the work of caring for patients takes place. This involves things like nurses' drugs rounds, doctors' ward rounds, procedures, scans, tests, and multi disciplinary involvement. It's a whole lot harder to make all these things happen when tripping over relatives at the bedside, and so much easier for everyone if there are set times of day when friends and relatives are around - you can give them proper attention.

Totally agree with you OP. I recently returned to the wards after mat leave and it was very much 'we're short staffed, on you go' without any real appreciation that I'd been out of the job for a year and needed a bit of hand holding!

so much easier for everyone if there are set times of day when friends and relatives are around
Relatives may not be able to make it at the prescribed times. Work, childcare, public transport issues. As long as there is flexibility. A patient may also want a relative there when discussing things with a doctor. Visiting times fine, as long as there is flexibility, without nurses getting off on their power trips.

And wards will always make exceptions if there are issues like this, as a pp stated. As for discussing things with a doctor, it's actually easier if the doctor has an idea when the relative is likely to be around so they can plan their day accordingly. They are busy people too.

I work 12 3/4 hours usually with no break and I often don't get to the loo or get a drink in that time either I have a step counter I average 15000 every shift. I'm early fifties I have loads of energy but can't keep working with no food or drink it's starting to effect my health so I'm leaving nursing in 1 month. I've been nursing for over 30 years, am considered by my colleagues to be exceptionally knowledgable and have reams of very valuable experience, they talk about the tragedy that all of this will be lost.
Bollard I frequently comfort staff who are in tears, in our drug room linen cupboard, sluice, it may only be a very quick arm around their shoulder and a kind word, a completely different thing to going to break. I once found staff member who was a type 1 diabetic hiding in our linen cupboard taking 2 mins to eat sandwich whilst she loaded up the linen trolley she was so desperate. We have 7 full time vacancies out of 35 staff, all our wards are the same. All our management do is place more and more restrictions on our working patterns or insist we can manage. There are Im reliably told there are over 25000 nursing vacancies across the NHS, someone at work said the other day apparently if every trained nurse in the U.K. register with NMC and was working full time there would still be 5000 vacancies. The furture for nurse retention is very poor. The future for patients is even more bleak.

Newtothis . I am younger but left the wards for the same reasons - it is so unhealthy and such a loss of experienced staff. I have no idea what the answer is in the NHS (although less paperwork would be a great start) and nobody except the staff really seems to care about staff conditions .

The RCN has made some weak murmurings about staff staffing levels but frankly if the BMA couldn't improve junior doctor conditions despite safety concerns with rota gaps then I don't think the RCN has a chance - they are a big union but do not even try to rock the boat politically.

The RCN are totally hopeless. Your right if the BMA who did stand up to this government lost what hope is there for the rest of us? I was appalled at the way they were treated by the media.
Im no conspiracy theorist by any stretch of the imagination but I personally think this government welcomes all this negative press the NHS receives, hoping that more will start paying for private insurance, I think long term like pensions you and your employer will have to contribute into some sort of private health care scheme for all planned care, this will still be done in NHS hospital but private insurance will pay for it.

Yes, media coverage is appalling. I think (massive generalisation) staff are meant to be robots and having a break or minimum staffing levels is the height of selfishness. We should do this for love, who needs food, drink or sleep? . I don't see how the public sector can ever improve while the public does not actually want it to.

I totally agree with you OP. Thank you for all that you have contributed and all of your hard work. I hope you enjoy your rertirement

I think most people have no idea how we work. I'm changing professions when I tell those in ,y new job who I work the first thing they say is "it's illegal to work like that" . Illegal it might be but what are we meant to do? You cannot walk off and leave a patient or their relative if they need help/support/a medicine/feeding/resuscitation or whatever knowing if you don't do it no one else will. I do paediatrics we have to be on of 1:6 God knows what's going on in the adults.

I think it has to be said we probably don't help ourselves. A break has always been seen as optional even when I started all those years ago, if your too busy it's the first thing to go. Most nurses/doctors have a self sacrificing ethos alwaysthe patients welfare before our own the NHS manage to exploit this to the maximum.

Bollard, nurses on their power trips? I think you have a hatred for the nursing profession. Bizzare! It must stem through somewhere, I'd be curious to know what your job is?

Stem from somewhere*

Bollard, nurses on their power trips? I think you have a hatred for the nursing profession
No. But there are some nurses with bad attitudes who delight in winding patients up then telling them not to be rude when they respond. It is a minority, but they are out there.

"But there are some nurses with bad attitudes who delight in winding patients up then telling them not to be rude when they respond. It is a minority, but they are out there."
I can only speaker myself and my colleagues I do not wind up patients, in fact I'm struggling to understand what you mean by this. But I do out up with endless rudeness from parents, many seem to be labouring under the impression they're staying in a five star hotel where their every whim should be met instantly and that we as are the hotel maids who's sole job is to meet their very trivial demands.

But I do out up with endless rudeness from parents, many seem to be labouring under the impression they're staying in a five star hotel where their every whim should be met instantly
I'm sure you get some patients like this, however most aren't. But you need to remember that being in hospital is stressful, disorientating, distressing, undignified for patients and their relatives.

I have just this week retired from my job as a childrens nurse after 38 yrs , I totally agree with you op, it is really awful the ratio of nurse to patients is horrendously inadequate. I think we got out at the right time before the shit really hits the fan.There are many more nurses like us on the cusp of retiring, There are so many vacancies it's unbelievable.

I think there are 40,000 vacant nursing posts?

I keep running into ex nurses and midwives in my current job. It's a very large office. Better pay, no abuse, we have flexitime and can freely drink, eat and go to the loo! Far less stress. Although what we does matters in some way, it's very, very unlikely that we will indirectly kill someone!

It is a ticking time bomb. So many vacancies and no will to change things. I think that ward nursing these days is a young person's game and ideally a person with no need for flexible hours. Experienced staff just leave :(

BollardDodger - patients and relatives are getting worse. Not all of course. But abuse, aggression and entitlement is getting much worse.

Being sworn at, spat at, threatened, called names, bitten, scratched and hit? All have happened to me. I've had chairs thrown at me. No thanks, I'll work in an office away from the public - far safer!

Hospitals near me (and elsewhere of course) are doing these open days where you get recruited on the day. But then you ask about any degree of flexibility or set shifts and the answer is no. I couldn't continue in a ward nursing role once I had kids. The reality though is I had left before that anyway as the conditions were so unsafe.