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.

Yes I received and also witnessed really poor care 2 years ago when I had my 2nd child. I feel a lot of nursing has been reduced to box ticking exercises and 'covering yourself' at the expense of real genuine empathy.

@BMHM you’ve hit the nail on the head by saying lots of what is being described is down to someone else ie CSW/ HCA and that’s the point people are making that many nurses who have worked hard for their degree etc see washing bums and handing out bedpans as someone else’s role . When my mum was in hospital there was a nurse and HCA for roughly 7/8 patients on an early shift and half the time the nurse didn’t help with any of the washing / toileting . Some of them spent from 8 am until 10:30 / 11 doing the drugs for their 8 patients , I’ve done plenty of early shifts and drug rounds it shouldn’t take that long and if it is taking that long you would expect fewer drug errors and in my mums case there were lots of those ! As a trained nurse I have a great deal of sympathy for HCAs / CSWs as they generally are doing their very best , with little or no support and taking all the flack off the patients . This was an acute admission medical ward not geriatrics .

Another sweeping generalisation there @CrayonInThreeBits

I am a second year mental health student, following years of working as a Health Care Assistant, I do my upmost whether I am on a ward or in the community to ensure I give the highest standard of care possible, if I witness anything I feel is negligence or patients not being treated as they should (in situations whereby it is not a matter of lack of time for nurses or HCA's) I call that out and try to put it right. I have seen some things I was appalled at when I was a HCA and made sure to Datix it accordingly.

I went into the mental health profession due to witnessing mental health issues in my own family and wanting to help and encourage and treat every patient I ever have as I would my own family.

Are you still going to tell me as an individual that's me 'Not Giving A Shit'?

Not trying to start an arguement I'm just interested in how you can justify a generalisation of a profession, and what that justification would be?

bun oh dear, if you're that reactive to your own misinterpretation of a fairly mild comment, I think you may be in the wrong field.

@Floralnomad I suppose I was being a bit defensive because I would absolutely hate anyone to think that I was a bad nurse, it means a lot to me that I do my best for people. But...I think it is true that my 'best my not be what I want at all times given the environment.

One of the other student nurses had been upset on first placement because she had been primarily with CSWs instead of other nurses and doing a lot of personal care, which speaks to what you are saying.

I do think the environment in which nurses operate (from the very limited knowledge and exposure I've had) must wear down compassion and genuine care. Management in ivory towers, horizontal violence and I don't think patient incidents can be ignored...First placement nursing students have been filmed, threatened, sexually harassed, verbally abused...when the lecturer was told about consistent sexual remarks, the student was told that patients have sexual needs and as part of person centred practice we need accept that as part of them. In any other profession this would be sexual harassment.

But, I don't doubt that some nurses perhaps just shouldn't be nurses.

I've been in hospital twice in my life, once when I gave birth and once when I was 14 (am 59) having a very painful dental procedure. I had terrible care & everyone else in the ward was over 70, it was traumatic. But there have always been good and bad nurses, teachers, police etc.

@CrayonInThreeBits

I didn't ask for your opinion regarding whether you feel I am in the correct field, however I would like you to answer my question regarding the sweeping generalisation you have made and the reason behind it

bun, if I say to you, "the French have raised winemaking to a fine art" do you assume I'm claiming every French person owns a vineyard?

Chill out and stop taking everything so personally. It'll do you no good as a mental health nurse.

@BMHM I’m in no way going to say I was the worlds greatest nurse but I suppose primarily working nights in an era when it was 2 trained and one CSW to a ward of 24 patients I was accustomed to and considered it my role to be hands on with care . Perhaps they should change the name as nurse implies nursing which implies care giving .

I’m sorry that your niece (and the lady) are getting such bad treatment.

Some of us really do care though! I went into nursing after experiencing amazing care from NHS nurses and thought that I wanted to be that person one day. I did have to complete a degree to achieve my goal but I start every single shift remembering why I trained. My degree is a tiny part of what has made me the nurse that I am today.

Could you support your niece to make a complaint when she is able to.

Poor care has always existed, it's nothing new. My grandmother told me about the poor care she received after having her first son 65 years ago - put her off hospital for life. And after having mine in 2018 I know why. I have a permanent health issue due to the poor care I received and will be free birthing next time.

@CrayonInThreeBits

I have skin thicker than an elephants hyde so don't worry.
It is a reactive comment to make, you must have had something happen to you or a loved one to feel so strongly to make that comment, just like I feel strongly about conducting the degree I have chosen.
I hope you haven't had a bad experience surrounding the mental health profession.
And if you have then hopefully more mental health nurses like me will be available in the future to improve it.

@Reinventinganna... I will of course help her, if she asks.

Our feeling is that little will change. As I said earlier, the complaint filed about my mum in 2019 has still not produced a response. The hospital trust have replied but it’s gone to CQC and we, the family, have not been able to view it.

My niece has just sent her mum (my sister) a text. She is the only inpatient on the ward now. She’s in a side room and hasn’t seen anyone all afternoon. She rang to ask for pain relief and she said the nurse made her feel she was being a nuisance. She has not had her analgesia yet, some 40 mins later.

Babyroobs thank you for your personal response to my post. It's incredibly sad that you were left feeling like that, I spent 28 years as a teacher, always in challenging areas, and worked with staff ranging from excellent to totally incompetent. However, I'm sure that the stresses (which were considerable) were not as bad as the life and death situations you experienced. The image GOSH consistently tries to project makes me absolutely sick, our much maligned local hospital in Stevenage looked after my son lovingly and thoroughly, and very well on a clinical basis, and when I eventually cracked with GOSH and its self-serving, hypocritical staff and had my son transferred to Addenbrookes, it was like night and day, so I know that the vast majority of nurses and other medical staff are caring, competent, and do their best within the constraints of their working environment.

AnnieGetYourPun I am SO GLAD that you started this thread. What motivated you to do it was the inexcusably bad practice you observed which is awful, but it is past time that people in the UK woke up and stopped falling for the 'all nurses are angels' schtick. I think that some of the obnoxious responses you have received from so-called nurses on this thread, and their apologists, speak volumes about the type of person who gravitates towards this job because of the power it gives them. It is frightening, but a light MUST be shone on it.

To all those who simplistically attribute unacceptably poor practice to limited resources, I would say that your naivety is stunning. Caring costs nothing. I had an adult ESOL learner who was an experienced hospital matron from Hong Kong. After working for 6 months in a London teaching hospital she quit in disgust at what she saw as the absolute waste of resources which could and should have been recycled/sterilised/treated with more respect, low standards of cleanliness and professionalism and generally low level of care given to seriously-ill patients. She opened a takeaway restaurant which she showed me around proudly, and was keen to tell me that her prime. motivations were to pay for private healthcare for her husband and children and private education. It made me sad, but I understood how she felt 100%.

All of this was 30 years ago and what is, in my opinion, inexcusable, is that things appear to have deteriorated since then. Where do we go from here?

If by bad experience you mean things like countless uncalled-for hour-long prone restraints incorporating compliance techniques and forced medication, then yes, bun — but when I say that RMNs have really refined the art of not giving a shit, I'm talking about things like the fact that with some of them, it's entirely within the bounds of normality for them to show their faces on the ward only when travelling from the door to the nurses' office at the beginning of their shift, and the same when they go home. Some wards I've been on have, on occasion, appeared entirely unstaffed, until you notice the lone HCSW chilling in the corner of the dayroom doing the crossword.

@AnnieGetYourPun

My niece has just sent her mum (my sister) a text. She is the only inpatient on the ward now. She’s in a side room and hasn’t seen anyone all afternoon. She rang to ask for pain relief and she said the nurse made her feel she was being a nuisance. She has not had her analgesia yet, some 40 mins later.

I hope you or your niece have contacted PALS?

I'm currently at home having spent 5 days in my local hospital with a dislocated and broken ankle
I can't fault the care I received but I didn't see many nurses, they were all HCA. These people never stopped, constantly on the go and treated myself and the other patients (most of which had dementia) with nothing but care, love and respect
There is good and bad everywhere

YANBU to be angry with what happened to your niece, and I've certainly come across my fair share of pit bull NHS staff side eyes my GP receptionists and the first contact physio but I think as with any job there will be excellent staff, really passionate about providing a good service and there will be crap staff who just want minimal work and a pay cheque at the end.

It should be noted that NHS is very short staffed though in its nursing capacity.

YANBU. My dad died in hospital 5 years ago, 3 days after being admitted with back pain & 2 days after a blasé doctor told us cheerfully that he had stage 4 lung cancer & would die within a few weeks. Those last three days of his life he spent in a crowded, noisy, cluttered A&E triage ward, because it wasn’t apparently worth trying to find him a quiet bed in a ward where he could pass with a little dignity. The only two good things were that his family were with him every minute of visiting hours, and we didn’t tell him what was happening, so he thought it was an infection & he’d be home soon.

In those three days, every delusion I’d ever had about the ‘caring, professional’ NHS went to hell. Nurses were plentiful on the ward, they just CBA with him - a polite old man who didn’t complain, argue or ring for attention constantly, like half the people in the beds around him. We were there, so there was no need for the nursing staff to take any care of him beyond the absolute minimum of medication top-up, or getting annoyed because the oxygen mask confused him & he kept taking it off. His last day was the worst I’ve lived through. I won’t detail it because it would put me to anyone who knows us, but he died slowly & wretchedly and all the nurses wanted to do was get us to agree to more morphine to smother his breathing & hasten him on.

I haven’t set foot in that hospital - my local- since that day. My mum has instructed all of us that if she falls ill, she’d rather die than be taken to ANY hospital for treatment, because like me she went through what all those ‘angels’ did on that last day, the way we were all just an inconvenience in their little kingdom.

Maybe some of you out there actually are great nurses, in lovely compassionate professional hospitals. Sadly you weren’t what we experienced. Years on I’m still raging at your colleagues and their version of ‘care’. I don’t trust or believe any of you now.

PopperPet I am so sorry you experienced this. My son survived despite (not because of) the 'care' he received in 'wonderful' GOSH, but I still, 33 years later, have PTSD at what we experienced there, I can remember it all as if it were yesterday. Despite many positive experiences in various hospitals since, I have never got over it or had my faith restored. I believe that the trauma caused to relatives in these situations should be taken much more seriously, and the policy of denial should be stopped immediately.
to you and your family

@PopperPet. You and your family will never recover from that horrendous experience. I am so sorry for your loss. Loss of your parent, loss of control to make his last days more comfortable.

I too fear hospital care.

My niece is a 32yr old mother of two. She’s not backward at coming forward which makes me think things must be dire for her to be so upset. It’s for her to decide on a complaint or not. Having been sent home from A&E twice in agony and disbelief they’re now considering emergency hysterectomy and Fallopian tube removal if she does not respond to the antibiotic treatment.

Disgrace.

@CrayonInThreeBits

I'm genuinely sorry that has been your experience. As I say, there are many RMN's out there who wouldn't plonk their arses in the office all day long, but that doesnt take away from what happened to you. An inpatient stay is awful enough without not having the support you need.

@albertcamus We are not supposed to have expectations of decent care. We are not meant to complain. We are most certainly not meant to criticise.

I think some people in the NHS don’t care, it’s a huge organisation and it’s bound to happen.
My catheter came loose after DC 2, midfwife saw my bed covered in piss but said it would be ok, so I slept in my own piss afraid to ask her to change my sheets.
She was sat having a coffee and chatting whenever I went to the loo. There were only 2 of us on the ward, with 2 midwives