To feel sad about the figures on nursing released today

[noodleaddict]

It seems like the crisis in nursing is only going to get worse.

More UK nurses and midwives leaving than joining profession
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40476867

Sad probably doesn't really describe it actually. Patient care is going to suffer. There is no doubt about it. I see a downward spiral happening and I don't know what to do about it.

We need reintroduction of bursaries for training, we need a pay rise, we need better staffing, we need to reduce the reliance on agency.

When is the government going to wake up??

No nose piercings.
No bottles of water at the nurses station.
No drinks fullstop.
No time for breaks most days, even on a 13 hr shift of which i get paid for 12.

Earrings must be plain, metal studs.

Why not pink studs? They can't be an infection control risk!

I lapsed my mental health nursing registration last year. Since I left the NHS so many of my former colleagues have been in touch saying that they are desperately looking for a 'way out' too because they feel working conditions have become unsafe and the constant pressure to do more with less, huge caseloads and not enough staff, no work life balance etc is impacting on their mental health.
This is not just Nurses but also psychologists, OT's, Psychotherapists and AMHP's...I feel we are heading for a major crisis in our mental health services.

I am still in touch with many of the people I trained with and a lot of them are no longer nursing. Those who are still nursing are actively looking to get out of the profession or to move to places like Canada or Australia to nurse.

It is desperately sad.

I wish nurses, midwives, docs and allieds would get together and say enough is enough.

I trained in radiography years ago and the unions were trying to stop overtime pay from being withdrawn. They said they'd just sack everyone and hire new ones on the new contracts (which considered weekends and evenings as normal shifts). People had their mortgages depending on their o/t and had done it for years.

Now training to be a doctor and have watched the junior doctors' contracts saga fearfully.

They are picking off every profession, it's a race to the bottom to see how shittily they can treat people who just want to help others.

Nurses aren't treated as professionals, more as naughty 'girls' who need to be controlled and kept in their place. Not many years ago I witnessed a nurse being publicly pulled up for having a piece of hair fall below her collar. 5 minutes before she had been resuscitating a baby. Where I work the corporate nurses do 'clinical rounds' once a week which exist of pulling on uniforms, not going near patients and basically just intimidating and grilling busy nursing staff. There was a directive a few years back that nurses were not allowed to leave the wards during their unpaid breaks. You are honestly micromanaged like a child in hospital based nursing.

It's becoming increasingly like that in community nursing too Chestnuts. At one time you had a lot of autonomy as a community based nurse, it was recognised that if you were experienced enough to have secured a specialist nursing role in community services you should be allowed to use your clinical judgement and just get on with your job. But now you get more responsibility and more risk than ever before but no autonomy. There's no 'give and take' anymore, no respect. It's very demoralising.

Is the micromanagement a manifestation of sexism due to the over representation of women in the role?

I don't think so alpca because it's always been a female dominated profession but the micromanaging, certainly in community nursing, has gotten worse. I think it's because the emphasis is increasingly on "efficiency savings", "throughput", "streamlining" etc etc (they have lots of words they use to avoid using the word cuts) rather than patient care. Management are under constant pressure to deliver more for less and they end up transferring that pressure to front line staff.

I don't think it's because it's female dominated. Medicine is micromanaged too these days.

I think it is the fact it is all about customer service now and savings and efficiency as has been said. The public are (in general) not behind us when it counts and don't respect us. They don't respect doctors either and the lack of support for the doctors' strike really made me realise how bad things are. The attitude in Hospitals towards nurses is often straight out of the Daily Mail.

I did look into primary care. I can't find anywhere that actually has hours I could work even with wraparound childcare so that is not an option for me.

The reality is, whatever I think about the policies, I am happier out of it for most of the time and doing bank work for hours I can do. It does scare me for the nurses and patients left behind though.

I wish nurses, midwives, docs and allieds would get together and say enough is enough
During the doctors strike HCAs, nurses, physics.. pretty much everyone who worked at the hospital wore sticker and badges saying they supported the doctors. There was a stand near the front entrance where you could get them.
I didn't see a single member of the public take or wear them though

I think we all felt that an attack on doctors was an attack on us all as NHS staff.
But the public didn't seem to feel that an attack on doctors was an attack on their healthcare!

I wouldn't wish to go back to the non degree route - it's not fair on those who do it. You aren't recognised out if nursing in the same way as having a nursing degree so if you want to go and do something else you are stuck
Also, with a nursing degree you can move abroad or do working holidays
But I don't think the powers that be would see that as a benefit since they basically want to trap medical grads rather than try to make working here appealing so they didn't want to leave!

physics = physios

Tinsel, actually we had quite a lot of the public taking them and also supporting the doctors. Was especially impressed to see a lot of patients wearing them.

But YY to the public not feeling that an attack on doctors was an attack on their healthcare. In fact I think the public felt that the doctors themselves were attacking healthcare by striking. Again the feeling that they earn a 'good' salary and should be grateful for the opportunity to do a run of night shifts then fall asleep at the wheel.

However, I think our Trust was the exception and when it came to the crunch not enough of the public supported us. I was on a few threads on here about it and the animosity was awful. Healthcare workers should suck it up and be grateful apparently.

Yeah, there was a sentiment of "how dare anyone on more than minimum wage complain about their conditions, at least they have jobs they should be grateful"

I didn't feel that anybody outside the healthcare professionals grasped why doctors don't want to work dangerously to the point where they might do more harm than good!

Sadly I agree. I think there were some amazing exceptions. I met patients who had had really significant treatment delayed because of the strike wearing badges and giving their full support. Exceptions aren't enough though.

TBH (sorry if this derails the thread), when the doctors' strike failed that was the point I realised I would probably not go back to having a permanent job as a frontline nurse on the wards. I'd already moved sideways anyway for all the reasons detailed on this thread but the lack of support for the doctors was like a knife in the back and made me realise that changing public opinion is just too difficult. Hence it being ok to ban nurses from having drinks at the desk as (in general) the public don't like it.

The law says that employers must provide water that is accessible.
If it's in a staff room elsewhere it's not accessible.
Our senior staff are very keen we drink especially when it's hot.
Do you have coolers? Can you use one of the cups to get a drink throughout the day?

We have coolers in most areas with cups. Cups are not allowed to be reused because of infection control (despite the ridiculous cost and environmental impact). Often there are no cups left. Water bottles are sometimes not allowed out. Even if they are allowed out then they are not meant to be filled up from the water cooler due to infection control reasons even if there is no actual touching of the bottle to the cooler.

Absolutely ridiculous and one of the many, many reasons morale is so low. I am very glad to hear that you are encouraged to drink Head.

We're getting distracted by the water issue- but that and examples of nail and hair inspections show how infantilised nurses are. Where I work a really good example of how oppressed we are is the comparative reaction of other staff groups if they are asked to add to their practice. Doctors and pharmacists (for example, there are others) are great at being difficult, asserting themselves and as a result being better resourced. Nurses who speak out are minimised, belittled and bullied and soon learn to shut up.

Further to my last post this 'minimising' of nurses has an impact on those at the top of the profession- who have also learnt to survive by doing the same to their staff (i.e. they eat their young). We all cringe whenever a new chief nurse arrives on the scene, as the first thing they always do is look to cut staffing and bring in 'efficiencies'. They survive by pleasing the 'men' at the top, who use them as puppets so that they can clinically justify downbanding and undermining nursing. Nursing is always a target as it's the biggest workforce and never as cheap as they would wish it to be. I also think there is a massively historic sexist element to how nurses are treated, with some people still mourning the days of nurses being lowest on the pecking order and doing everyone's bidding. People forget how bad that 'don't ask questions' culture was for patient care.

It's so sad that hard-working professionals are being infantilised. I recently read Admissions, which is a memoir by Henry Marsh, a very senior and accomplished (and recently retired) neurosurgeon. He recalls being hauled in for a meeting by a manager and told off for wearing a tie, which is supposedly an infection risk. He writes that he always likes to dress smartly when meeting patients and their relatives as a matter of professional courtesy. But the point for him was that the manager didn't ask him in a pleasant way, he was being told off as if he was a kid. Which is crazy. No wonder people leave.

Is the micromanagement a manifestation of sexism due to the over representation of women in the role?

I think micromanagement is a time-honoured nursing tradition modern nursing descends from the nursing which was performed in religious orders, and from military nursing (courtesy Ms. Nightingale). And it hasn't been so very long since staff nurses were almost exclusively very young (because they were unmarried) women. I don't think the profession has quite adjusted to the fact that we're no longer vulnerable, railroadable adolescents with no commitments outside nursing. Certainly we're still expected to prioritise nursing over all other commitments, and not to demand filthy lucre in return for our expert labour, because nursing is a vocation, don't you know which takes us back to religious nursing.

But even despite the changing workforce, we are being very neatly railroaded at the moment. I believe that female socialisation contributes to our willingness to accept that (and I'm as guilty as anyone).

I don't have a problem with management checking up on infection-control measures (nails, handwashing technique, jewellery). Infection control is a legitimate part of nursing. Black socks are not. Submitting to chronic dehydration is definitely not.

Well said clockwork you should think about writing an article for the nursing times. It's just not talked about is it?

It's not the managers fault! They don't have much autonomy. They have to document their response to every complaint, they can never just say "I remember that person, they were a bit nuts, I think we can take this with a pinch of salt!"

They have to trawl through the nursing documentation and make sure every single interactin is accounted for, and if there are any gaps they HAVE to pull someone in, even if they know that the people on duty would never have done/said/not done what a notoriously batshit visitor is saying they did.

I don't know if this'll make much sense without the identifiable detail, but for example:

an error that didn't cause harm happened
the error was not the nurses fault, anyone who had been on duty would have made the same mistake, it was somewhat to do with wrong records sort of thing. She did the right thing with the wrong information IYKWIM.
The manager didn't have any doubts in that nurses abilities
Yet the manager had to put that nurse on supervision whenever she undertook that task for a couple of months or else the manager would be in trouble with her manager.

Every response the managers take to every complaint and incident is scrutinised.

downstairs I'm at the end if first year and plan on going straight to primary care too. Wards do not appeal to me, I like the 1-2-1 aspect of primary care.