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.

Offensive much??? I'm a nurse. I sat next to an old woman and held her and chatted to her while she was alone at home. I made her tea and washed her face. FWIW I have an MSc and BSc and neither has any impact on me caring. I've done this for twenty years and still care.
I'm sorry your niece had a shit experience but this is not all of us and as an ex-nurse you should be aware of it

I think you said very few.

There are plenty of nurses who care deeply about their patients and work themselves into the ground.

In all professions you have a few incompetent/lazy/unpleasant people. But maybe the nurse who said ‘don’t worry use your pad’ actually didn’t want the lady falling out of bed trying to get to a toilet or commode. Maybe the lady needed 2 people to help her out of bed. Maybe she needed a bedpan, the nurse was rushing to get it and reassuring her it didn’t matter if she couldn’t hold it as she had a pad on! Maybe the nurse was actually a healthcare assistant or nursing assistant new to the job, under lots of pressure or dealing with very unwell patients.

Nursing assistants do most of the personal care nowadays, not the nurses with degrees.

It's true you can't teach people to care.
However you post is greatly implying that all nurses with degrees are not caring and as such it is the nurses with degrees who give poor care.

You have been away from nursing far too long, clearly.

Every nurse I have ever had the unfortunate are experience of being around has been SO miserable!! Like they are soooo pissed and bitter that they actually have to work. Sorry to generalise but I have never had a good experience with nurses. Doctors aren't any better. NHS has a huge employee morale issue. They literally hate patients so much and wish they could be left alone so they could text and troll Instagram.

I think like all jobs there will be people who are good and bad at them. I've had a shit ton of hospital admissions in the past 7/8 months and had some fantastic nurses and HCAs look after me.and some awful ones too.

I was in with a kidney infection at 19 weeks pregnant, told the nurse at about 8PM that I was bleeding and she said "so?". I said I'm pregnant and bleeding and she said "and? You're only 14 weeks?" As if it was fine. I told her I was 19 weeks and she told me to put a pad in and she never called anyone.

Also had one awful HCA who didn't know how to change my nephrostomy and rolled her eyes when I rang the bell at 3am because I had woken up lying in my wee because she had changed the bag incorrectly, acted like I was a massive inconvenience and she was really annoyed at me 😕 made me feel crap

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

Ok. You didnt say ALL nurses. You said very few nurses. You also seem to imply that a degree level education automatically means nurses dont/cant care. Thats ridiculous. Ill come back to my point though, surely you cant say the majority of nurses dont care?

Are you also saying that the NHS is involved in a eugenics programme?

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

Bullshit.

Oh you just have no idea OP. No bloody idea, P.S would love to know what ‘dodging sepsis looks like

I've seen brilliant nurses and I've seen terrible ones. I have always complained to PALS about substandard care and I've always sent a letter or card complimenting good care.
Once, a nurse cried with me when my daughter was having a really distressing experience and nobody could stop it or help her. She was so lovely. In the same hospital stay, I went for a cup of coffee after my child finally fell asleep. Just two rooms away in the parents lounge.... and another nurse woke my daughter up at 1am to try and get her to walk! She was in for a sudden neurological condition with extremely violent tremors and seizure type activity and the only relief she had was sleep. Daughter was bewildered and upset to be woken at 1am by a stranger. The nurse called my daughter an attention seeker and made her cry and then told her to pack the waterworks in as she had no sympathy when she said she could not try to walk. I heard my daughter crying, went flying back there and a doctor came in the room just after me.

Daughter explained as well as she could while shaking so violently she was almost falling off the bed. Nurse maintained her position- daughter needed to pull herself together. I went fucking batshit. Doctor asked nurse to go to the station and he'd be out in a minute. Apologised profusely to me and to my daughter. It was horrible. She took hours to settle back down. We did not see that nurse on the ward again.

@Letsallscreamatthesistene

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

Oh fuck off.

Stop tarring all nurses with the same brush.

And stop assuming they’re all angels. Some are good and some are not.

Thats not what ive said at all. I said stop tarring nurses with the same brush. I havent anywhere on this thread said all nurses are angels.

Can you expand on your eugenics comment OP?

i think a lot of the basic care is now provided by HCAs and trained nurses don’t consider toileting to be their job

Unfortunately HCAs can't give medication to patients, so if they are to receive the meds they need to keep them alive/help them recover etc, then someone has to be available to do it. It's not rocket science is it? Write to your MP about the lack of staffing and investment in the NHS instead of whingeing about nurses, please
Fwiw, I always am happy to take a patient to the toilet and do see it as part of my job, but there's usually only me who can give the medication, abd several HCAs who can take a patient the toilet, so something has to give and if it's a choice between giving insulin, or parkinsons meds or pain relief or taking someone to the toilet then that's obviously far from ideal. I am human and already do 12.5 hour shifts and can't realistically do any more tbh.

Getting sick of NHS bashing. It's not perfect and there will be bad nurses, doctors, receptionists, porters etc wherever you go, equally however there are more who do care. On top of that the public and patients don't have a clue about the pressures, they hear it's busy and they pay it lip service...why? Because no one seems to care unless it impacts them. My friend is a nurse and she broke down after another night shift where she was one of 2 nurses looking after 32 patients. 32! 32 that she needed to ensure were safe, medicated, toileted, hydrated, call bells to answer. The list is endless. Meanwhile where I work 4 nurses were dealing with one patient who was abusive and violent because there are so few resources that can help. I wish people really understood that most NHS staff give their all and it's a minority that are giving the whole a bad name.

I've had totally crap care when I had my first dc. I had to stay in hospital for a few days as he wasn't well, I wasn't in great shape myself. Had to have mrop and had catheter fitted. Came back to the ward and visiting time was over so dh had to leave. No feeling in my legs and baby was screaming in his cot and I couldn't get to him. Needed the toilet for a poo later and stood up, no idea how to move around with catheter fitted or what to do and was just a total mess everywhere as my pad wasn't fitted right due to the tube, really hard to clean myself up with the catheter in, buzzed for help and was told what do you want me to do? Was ignored, abandoned and belittled the whole duration of my stay, begged to go home. When it was meal time, the trolley came to the next ward and if you were lucky you were told about it, so that you could leave your baby unattended and walk to the next ward and queue up to get your meal. If you were not lucky, you didn't know the food had arrived and you missed it. This is only 8 years ago, I still can't believe just how bad it actually was.

I think its sheer numbers under the burden of an increasing and ageing population. Plus, although op said not to mention it, Covid is making it worse, driving up absences. Numbers have been decreasing for years.

For goodness sake OP you’re not “calling out” bad care, you’re just bitching on mumsnet. If you have genuine concerns about a specific situation then escalate it through the appropriate channels. Slagging off all nurses on mumsnet achieves nothing but starting a bunfight.

I think hospitals (not nurses!) rely on relatives for care and staff wards accordingly.
when a relative was in hospital and immobile we visited mornings and evenings to make sure relative actually received food and that it was not placed on a tray out of reach.
we also washed the relative.
getting information from nurses and dr was also very difficult.

@MonkeyNotOrgangrinder
This shows exactly the pressure that anyone outside health care does not understand.

So glad the OP does not work in nursing anymore!

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?

You don't know if the lady in the bay was required to not mobilise, hence toileting in bed. You've no idea about her medical history, her mobility, her cognition, even what was actually said verbatim. There's loads you don't know, about this person you've never met, about all sorts you've not seen for yourself. So, focus and take what you do know and keep speaking out, because we do need to do better across the board in the NHS. My best wishes to your family.

Eight years ago I was in UCH London after giving birth to my very poorly daughter, who was rushed to GOSH with my partner. I almost died of Eclapsia complications, and was very ill. My daughter was much more poorly than me though.
The nurses in the ward were nightmarishly awful, particularly the nurse in charge. This is the first time I have spoken about it it was so traumatising. My partner explained our daughter would probably die over night, and could they please check I was ok while he was gone. When he left the nurse came into my room and said ‘your husband has asked me to check on you, but you don’t need us fussing around so get some sleep’ and didn’t update me all night about my daughter or give me my meds. I had been warned by the nurse who initially brought me to the ward from the assessment ward that they were ‘different’ in maternity, but they were just shocking. She made sure I had a pillow etc before she left, because she said they wouldn’t do it for anyone. The night before my c section another woman was screaming for some ice or a wet flannel due to PE, and the nurse in charge of the ward actually said to another nurse ‘what you doing making work for yourself, she can have her meds when it’s time’ and they ignored her and shut her door. Lots more happened, the only reason my PE turned to eclampsia is because of a mix up with my notes and a refusal to do obs as often as the consultant asked. It wasn’t that they were too busy, they sat laughing and chatting all night at the really brightly lit nurses station, (they refused to draw my curtain or shut my blinds, even although I had PE, they refused to help me get to the toilet or listening when I tried to say I was getting sicker. They didn’t give me my meds. By the time the morning came I couldn’t see or sit up. I couldn’t dial my phone or find it to call my partner.
When the ward rounds happened mid morning I was rushed straight to surgery. My daughter died a week later. I have no respect for the nurses on that ward, but the nurse in charge was properly nasty. I could write a lot more but it’s really hard to talk about.
Some nurses are obviously great, but in some wards it’s known that there are real problems, and it’s not dealt with. I don’t trust the NHS anymore, and I have really good reason.

I’ve been following the parliamentary debates on DNAR guidelines for disabled/learning impaired individuals. And thinking about the blind chap who I saw over a period of time who was basically ignored at times because they’d taken his call buzzer from him and he was shouting out all the time.

People with conditions such as epilepsy who drown in the Bath, whilst in care. A young woman who choked to death following extraction of teeth. She had learning disabilities and the nurses said she was making strange gurgling noises, then left her for several hours. She died.

I wonder, on a busy ward, who will look out for those who cannot look out for themselves.

I agree to a point. I’ve only been in hospital to have babies but there were some shocking midwives the first time I was in. One was nothing less than a bully. Horrible bitch to be frank. The second time (over lockdown) was better but still had a few moments.

I wish all of the arseholes would be managed out so the reputation of those who give a shit isn’t tarnished.