AIBU to wonder WTF has happened to nursing “care” in our NHS?

[AnnieGetYourPun]

And don’t tell me it’s all Covid/staff shortages/staff illness related.

My niece was eventually admitted to hospital after being sent home twice from A&E (in agony) and is now on a gynae ward. It’s just her and an elderly lady on the ward. The elderly lady was getting agitated as she needed the toilet. The nurse came and said, and I quote “it’s alright, use your pad and we’ll come and sort you out later”. This has really upset my niece who’s dodging sepsis now, on the ward, on massive IV antibiotics/anti-emetics and IV analgesia. She has narrowly avoided a ruptured uterus as there was no one to do a scan on her, after a 12 hr wait in A&E. She is 32.

Nurses now... all of ‘em have degrees. All dead clever. Very few of them have an ounce of “caring” in them.

Fry me on here. I’m past fucking caring.

Should add. I trained in the NHS. Was a student/junior staff nurse/senior staff nurse/junior sister and G grade senior sister before retirement. Never, in my f***g life have I seen such lack of basic care and maintenance of human dignity than I have witnessed in NHS hospitals, in the past two years.

Shove your clapping and rainbows.

Honestly the NHS is shambles, we met over 100 different nurses, doctors, midwifes, HV’s during my pregnancy and his first 6 weeks and out of all of them only 3 treated us with any sort of respect. In fact the midwife who was there when I gave birth didn’t speak to me the whole time, just to my partner as she thought I couldn’t speak english. I was born and raised in Scotland but have a foreign name and passport.

It's sad that the poor cases always outweigh the many many good ones.

I get your point, but in my line of work if someone is shit at their job, people don't die. When a nurse is shit at their job, people can and do die. So the bad cases should be scrutinised more severely due to that.

@AnnieGetYourPun

Did I? Did I say EVERYONE was awful?

I give up.

You did say in your initial post that nurses with degrees had no ounce of empathy. I was one of the first cohort of the Project 2000 when they did away with the old style training. I saw some shocking lack of empathy and poor nursing care when I was doing my training in the early 90's so it has little to do with degrees imo. I had to report one ward for its poor standards and made a formal complaint against a mentor in another for his inappropriateness and bullying. There are poor nurses now and there always has been, it generally comes from inadequate leadership leading to a culture of apathy and poor standards on particular wards. Obviously years of underfunding by governments has not helped either, I've worked in places where you are run ragged and the shift is full of impossible choices where you are unable to sit with distressed patients as you have antibiotics to chase up and call bells to answer. So YANBU to be angry about your neices care but YABU to imply standards were much better in the past.

@Shehasadiamondinthesky

Sorry but yes I totally agree OP. I was a nurse for 25 years in the 80s and 90s and am now an allied professional. The amount of hospital acquired pressure sores we are seeing in the community is truly appalling and has doubled our workload. How the hell is this happening?

When my father was in hospital, paralysed from waist down my mother would go in, help him roll to the side and rub cream into his back and bum. She asked the ward sister several times about turning and creaming him and was told very scathingly that the staff were all trained in tissue viability. By the time he was moved to a specialist ward he had dreadful pressure sores and a complaint was lodged by the specialists but we never heard any reply

I do think most nurses are caring, some are unable to care well due to low staffing, etc but some don't care at all. Having said that, I see the lack of respect and abuse directed at staff in primary care and wonder if hospital staff face the same and it contributes to a compassion burn-out

many people are posting about real life poor care scenarios

And others are posting good ones, yet you seem to ignore them. I think you need to be balanced. At the moment you seem to be very biased, picking arguments that confirm your thought and ignoring those that dont.

Im not saying there isnt poor care. You need to have a balanced argument if you're going to be taken seriously

Generalising much! I think your talking rubbish op. There's good and bad in every profession. Blaming degrees is just ridiculous. The only nurses that I know that do this are stuck in the past wearing their rose coloured glasses.

The treatment I received after my lumbar puncture 5 years ago was piss poor. The lumbar puncture made me really poorly to the stage of every time I moved from any except a laid totally flat position or my head lower than the rest of my body I would be sick. I became severely dehydrated because I couldn't keep anything down. I ended up laid face down in a bowl full of vomit, semi unconscious and soaked in my own piss, but they still said I was well enough to be discharged. Thankfully a different Dr came round that morning. Took one look at me and phoned my husband to come straight in because I wasn't well at all, arranged for me to go straight on a drip because I was also severely dehydrated. So dehydrated In fact all my veins had began to shut down and they were unable to get a needle into them to put a cannula in. It took them numerous attempts to get it in and even then they had to call in someone else to do it. I was constantly declined painkillers, the medication I went in with was locked away and I think I saw it once maybe twice in the 6 days I was there. Refused the commode even though I was unable to walk from the pain and get to the toilet. In the end I used to have to drag myself up, sit and wait for the pain to ease slightly then drag myself over the toilet, grab a cardboard bed pan and hold it in front of me and throw up whilst sitting on the toilet. The numbness I went in with started to spread up the other side of my body too and they told me it was because I was laid near a open window. Yeah a window that was over 10ft in the air and my bed was also no where near it. Left in my sick covered nighty when I hadn't been able to get to the toilet in time. I asked a nurse for a clean one and she just laughed and walked off. I wasn't even able to take mine off myself because of my drip and on the day I was due to be discharged a nurse came and told me to get out of bed and get ready to go. I told her I couldn't because each time I stood for more than 20 seconds I thought I'd faint. She told me to prove it to her and then buggered off. By the time she came back I'd had to get back on the bed to lay down to get relief from horrific headaches again. She went ballistic with me and went and got a male nurse. By this point my Mum and Sister had arrived for visiting hours not knowing they were discharging me. The nurse comes back with the male nurse who makes me get out of bed again. I told him I couldn't I was in too much pain and felt dizzy. He told my Mum I was making it all up and I was only doing it to feed my habit. I've never done drugs in my life. This was done in a full ward full of patients and visitors. All whilst they had me sat upright in a chair with me screaming in agony Thankfully my Mum stuck up for me and told him that unless he had ever suffered migraines to shut the fuck up and if they were that insistent I was well enough to travel the 20 miles back home then they could bring me out to the car themselves. In the end I stayed an extra night

Not bad care but a complete lack of care in my Dad’s case.

He’s medical and he worked for the NHS for over 40 years (retired.) He went into hospital for an operation. He was prescribed (heavy) pain relief to be given on the ward while he recovered and regained mobility. They sent him to do physio the day after the op with zero pain relief in his system. My mother found out and talked to the nurses on the phone, expressed her concern and was assured that it wouldn’t happen again. It happened again the next day. He also had to correct them when they tried to give him another patient’s medication. It took my mother phoning a family member (current medical, had worked at that hospital) who phoned someone on the consultant’s team that they knew personally, who passed on to the consultant that had operated that my Dad wasn’t being given the pain relief he’d ordered. The consultant intervened. After that the nurses actually bothered to administer pain relief. He came home 2-3 days earlier than normal, as soon as he possibly could, as he felt that he might as well be home as he was getting no care in the hospital. He was immobile and helpless. He said he was ‘left to fend for himself.’

When being medical yourself doesn’t help and you have to know someone who’s not only medical but who has contacts at that specific hospital to get basic patient care something has gone seriously wrong.

There are great doctors, great nurses and a disjointed system with huge holes in it. If you get a not-so-great doctor or nurse or if something falls outside the narrow parameters of the staff member’s direct responsibility, good luck.

Damn hit send too soon. And was discharged the following afternoon instead. Even going home I had to lay across the seats to ease the pain. There's more but I'm knackered, I can't see to type properly anymore plus I'm
Working soon so need to get some sleep. I will say however the treatment for my severe 21 day migraine and also my 4th miscarriage were second to non. It was just that experience that's all

Another nurse bashing thread. Wonderful.

Funny how it's always the female dominated healthcare professions that are in line for being trash talked.

My experience is that I know many very caring nurses working far beyond what they are contracted to do to do the best for their patients. There are obviously exceptions, but I don't recognise the descriptions of nurses given here.

I work in the community (previously in acute) and I hear on a regular basis about poor care in the hospitals. The elderly are terrified of being admitted if an ambulance is called.

However, to give real 'care' is very dependent on your staffing levels, and the support you receive from your superiors/peers, there is only so much you can give.

Nursing is a vocation, you don't do this job for anything other than caring for others. Yes you may move into management, but that should still have a mindset and objective of 'caring'. Ultimately, like in retail, the 'customer' is always right, meaning your patient/s care is your sole focus.

I've seen good and bad, HCAs (that are pretty much nurses these days to be honest) delivering wonderful care without a degree, then a 'qualified' nurse, pragmatic, clinical, without the human touch.

Depends so much on personal experience.

My DD is a nurse, she receives so much feedback/compliments/gifts from her patients/families, this is testament to her as a person I think, which clearly comes across in her role.

Good nurses are trying very hard to 'nurse' with such little support and resources.

Not all nurses have degrees, yes the more recently qualified have to do a degree but there is still a huge cohort of nurses who did project 2000 and things like that.
Also, you can't tar all nurses with the same brush. Yes there are some rubbish nurses out there, just like any profession, but you can't discount the damn hard work of the rest of us.
You have no idea what the older lady is having issues with. Her mobility might be non existent making the walk to the toilet dangerous, she might have been asking to use the loo every 10 mins and they were exacerbated.
I bet you wouldn't have the same opinion of the situation if it was a doctor, older generation. They have degrees, but seem to garner a lot more respect despite doing alot less hands on care typically and some have absolutely no bed side manner

Numerous studies have shown that a degree educated nursing force leads to better patient outcomes and reduced mortality rates in inpatients.

You get great nurses and you get some terrible ones, just like in any other profession. I have found some nurses quite cold but I suppose when you're dealing with death and illness all day you have to put up some kind of barrier.
I used to be a care assistant and we were horrendously understaffed. Sometimes I would be in charge of 16 frail and confused residents. Some were bedridden, others would be wandering the corridors all night screaming. I know I didn't always give the best care because I couldn't physically manage it I worked with a good team and we all cared about our residents but there is only so much you can spread yourself around.

I saw some terrible care when I was working on the wards in the late 90’s. That was in the era of non degree trained nurses. Poor care is an issue in NHS.

When my dad was dying and awaiting transfer to a local hospice, the nurses on his ward were utterly horrid. They shouted at my mum for asking a question, they ignored my dad when he wanted help, we walked in to visit and three of them were sat at the station chatting and drinking tea, one muttered ‘for fucks sake’ when she had to move and the others laughed. Some of them knew my dad as he had worked at the hospital and he asked us one day to ask them to stop waking him up for a chat. He was dying and exhausted but every time he had a nap one of them would come and poke him and say they were bored and wanted to hear one of dad’s funny stories!!!!!!We put in a complaint and got a half arsed letter of apology.

Conversely my parent’s elderly dog was at the vet recovering from an elbow operation and the staff at the vets were amazing, really thoughtful and empathetic. They even asked how my dad was. Boils my piss to this day that the dog was better cared for than my dad. He was staunch Labour and a huge supporter of the NHS but the treatment before the hospice was shit.

I didn’t get great treatment when I had ds. The midwives didn’t really give a fuck and I was left covered in blood after birth because they wouldn’t let me have a shower.

I did get good care as a teenager at a specific children’s hospital. The nurses there were incredible people.

The system is fucked. I’m sure some nurses are great but the tide works against them. I’m sure some are shit but there are shit teachers, lawyers, bricklayers. It’s just more important with healthcare.

I do think it's as PPs have said you get good & bad same as any profession.

In the last 6 years I have lost 3 grandparents, all required an extended stay in hospital so have encountered many nursing staff. I can count on one hand the number that I thought were any good, these ladies and 1 gentlemen were amazing and a true credit to their profession. The rest that outnumbered them 10 to 1 were utterly dreadful.

What annoys me is my friends daughter wanted to be a nurse, she has been a carer for years and would be amazing but has given up after 2 attempts at getting the GCSEs grades she needed.

Totally agree OP, the “care” displayed on an elderly ward while my DF was dying was shocking. As long as the staff had enough biscuits eh! Many times, I’d go to visit finding him in his own shit and piss. I didn’t clap or fucking draw rainbows either.

Ds is “medically complex” and as a result we have had way more than our fair share of experiences of the nhs in the last 11 years.

In all that time I can think of one case where we had poor care from a nurse. I can think of many many more where we have had fantastic care and plenty where they have gone completely above and beyond.

Last week DS pulled out his feeding tube fully inflated. I wasn’t sure it was sited properly so we had to go to A and E and the nurses there where outstanding and we were in and out in half an hour

I have never felt neglected in hospital, but I have felt I have been treated with a complete lack of compassion, and at times, rudely. I have also been treated by other nurses with the greatest of care. Others have nothing but the highest praise for nurses, and my best friend is one, I know how hard she works, so I kind of thought the ill treatment must be my fault (I must be over-demanding/too sensitive/not good at communicating etc.). This thread has made me realise that maybe it wasn't.
I agree with pp that not all nurses are the same, and as with every job, there will be good and bad, but at the end of the day, it is a caring profession.

It’s like any workplace, some have good and band. I’ve worked with some truly amazing nursing staff but equally some I do wonder why they’ve chosen a caring profession when I’ve more empathy in my toe nail than they have.

I’m sorry to hear people bad experiences. But please complain: pals and senior management. Nothing can change if people don’t speak up. But to be honest wards are so badly staffed that I’m not surprised bad care occurs.

Equally please contact for good experiences too.

Like most have said - there's good and bad. The problem is, unlike many other jobs, the bad can have a severe impact on the health of the patient.

And I once spoke to a nurse who said that she would have to be dragged to hospital on her deathbed - as she sees ever day how poorly people are treated.

I agree with pp that not all nurses are the same, and as with every job, there will be good and bad, but at the end of the day, it is a caring profession.

Exactly. It's not the same as other jobs, you have to be at your best or very close to it all the time. Otherwise people suffer or die.

If someone who worked in a shop spoke the way the bad nurses do to their customers as well, they'd be fired. It's often just swept under the rug here. I think a lot of it is to do with the region too and how badly managed the hospitals are there. Some areas are better than others so perhaps don't take the nonsense from the bad nurses. Other areas seem to allow them to multiply.

@LyndzB

Like most have said - there's good and bad. The problem is, unlike many other jobs, the bad can have a severe impact on the health of the patient.

And I once spoke to a nurse who said that she would have to be dragged to hospital on her deathbed - as she sees ever day how poorly people are treated.

I wonder how many people moaning about lack of care have voted for parties that have cut NHS funding, supported pay freezes, applaud charging HCP to train?

My DD is on (unpaid) placement, manages her own case load, she has to pay £30 per month to park and use her own car to visit patients.... no wage, £1800 to live on for the year, 45k of debt (when she qualifies) and wait months to get back her expenses from the NHS.

Band 5 qualifying pay isn't much more than a supermarket worker would get and they at least have free parking and discounted shopping (20k vs 25k p.a) don't do unpaid o/t and don't make life saving decisions.

Three points, some of this problem (and there is a major one) has nothing to do with funding and all to do with as someone said a culture that has been allowed to develop on that unit. Those who don't care will take advantage, those that do will continue to be brilliant. Secondly, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that nurses no longer are stationed near their patients but behind a desk in a corridor supervising up to maybe 6 wards plus single rooms; they only enter a ward to do something specific and are not monitoring/assessing/interacting with patients. Thirdly, when did paperwork become more important than people, it has become a monster that takes staff away from the very people they are there to help. Patients are not being fed, toileted, washed, kept hydrated and properly medicated and yes I weep and rage for these poor souls who suffer in the very place created to help them.