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.

@OMG12 you need to have a hard long think about your own post for a START. Nurses save lives and police risk their lives. We work along side each other at times, let's not forget the prisoners who OFTEN attend hospitals for care. Its the NURSES and HCA to do the care, not the police.

What exactly do you do for a living yourself??

Why do I need to have a hard look at my post????

I really hope you’re not in the caring profession, or maybe you are a nurse and proving the point of the thread very well. You seem very aggressive. I have explained that workers within the NHS caused my ptsd yet you seem to think it’s appropriate to act in such an aggressive tone!!! You are only reinforcing everything I have experienced in the NHS. An inability to listen, demand for compliance, aggressively demanding information, inability to look at things from different angles. Wanting to be hero worshipped “ we save lives”. You know what? So do many others yet you don’t get them whining on. Quite frankly NHS workers made a damn good job at nearly killing me and my son so it’s hit and miss on that one too. Yet there is no apology without a fight, no responsibility. Caring more about how you feel than other people. Yep proves the point very well.

Well as nurses pay structure is by published bands something hasn’t been applied correctly in your case if you have moved between bands.

if you’re talking in relative rather than absolute terms and you’re factoring in inflation then you’re really no different to the vast majority of people in the UK (and actually the western world) so probably fair.

Just a lot of shrugging.

My recent experiences for both myself and with relatives tell me that this is far from uncommon. Far too much buck passing and disorganisation too. More nurses would do well to actually write and then read the notes for their patients. Some obviously are excellent and these nurses then end up doing EVEN more to make up for some of their colleagues short comings.

DH and I use the NHS quite a bit. He has been an inpatient quite a few times, and I'd say nurses are like many other public service professions.

Some are absolute stars, but some are so awful that you wonder why on earth they went into the profession to start with.

Some are aggressive, stroppy, uncaring and lazy.

A lot seem to forget that a few minutes of compassion can sometimes trump a ton of medicine and a nurse with a degree being able to operate machines.

At the moment, it feels like the NHS is just failing us in every way. GPs and hospitals.

I'm not blaming individual staff, but the whole thing needs root and branch reform. We throw billions at it, and nothing seems to help improve it much.

The police service where I live (London) is notoriously awful as well.

I feel sorry for those who are trying to do a good job, but are having to prop up the deadweights in their profession.🙁

If compassion is the first thing to go when you're under pressure and under stress, nursing is not for you. You shouldn't be a nurse if that's how you are! And yet so many are anyway.

I was a midwife for 6 years. Left because of the bullying culture between midwives! And the humiliation and 'laughs' I saw some have about vulnerable women. Disgusting. Yet my local hospital now has brilliant maternity care and all friends speak very well of the midwives they got

Sympathy fatigue. It must be a very draining job. I have had terrible experiences also. With myself,DD and DM. YANBU

Sorry op but I think covid has a lot to do with it combined with staffing shortages / brexit and obviously lack of funding.

People in healthcare have been massively overworked the last 3 years, suffered massive moral injury, and at the end of day find that people will clap for them but their pay has been effectively cut for years and massively so this year.

Doing a degree doesn't remove compassion but 3 years being overworked then slapped in the face probably does.

I'm sorry about your niece but you cannot generalise. I've witnessed very poor care by nurses but also amazing care.

This

This problem predates both Covid and Brexit though. I do think Covid very much played into the fantasy of nurses and doctors being some kind of untouchable heroes worshipped by the public.

You weren’t allowed to say anything about them. I had to go toA&E during the tail end of covid. My DH wasn’t allowed in even though I was unable to advocate. I saw one woman collapse and bang her head she was vulnerable and they wouldn’t allow her adult daughter to come in with her, a doctor actually walked round her whilst the cabin staff who were employed as meeters and greatest looked after her, I had to go and get a nurse who huffed and puffed.

I got such bad care I collapsed in a state of panic at one point only to be met with a nurse telling me I couldn't collapse there, standing over me demanding things. Eventually I tried running out the hospital as things were so bad (I had sat there listening to a doctor with a patient who had been mistakenly released a few days before with a broken hip calmly telling this poor chap if he refused the op they now decided he needed there was a good chance he’d die so better agree, others talking about how they hadn’t received treatment.

when I ran, I was chased by a nurse who only cared about me signing a form. I ended up collapsing in the middle of reception.

occasionally you will meet an amazing nurse, v rarely a doctor more commonly a HCP.