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.

I used to work on a hospital ward.

I’ve seen amazing nurses, scarily incompetent nurses & just downright uncaring nurses. Happily the good ones outnumbered the bad.

PPs are absolutely right that there could be a legitimate reason the older lady wasn’t taken to the toilet. I’ve looked after incontinent patients with advanced dementia who ask for the toilet every 20 minutes. Sometimes you take them & change their pad in the bathroom. But you simply can’t on every request. Our staffing ratios were 1 trained nurse & 2 HCAs per 16 elderly care patients, many with dementia, many with a high risk of falls on an acute medical ward. Every single patient needs & deserves your time.

HCAs do most of the toileting & washing type jobs. I’ve also worked with amazing & appalling HCAs.

Also it is a guaranteed job at the end of the day I think this is part of the issue. Nurses arent successful at interviews for the jobs they want, then end up taking unpopular jobs, and because they dont want the job/arent interested in that area dont perform well.

Unfortunately there will always be areas that are unpopular. In my last trust (ive sinced moved to GP nursing) it was AMU. I dont know what the answer is here.

@TheFairyCaravan
He knew how much my grandmother had liked being well presented, colour coordinated and having her hair done. He spent hours on YouTube learning how to put rollers into hair (I can’t do that) so that he could do their hair, nicely.

This brought a tear to my eye. I hope he continues doing this throughout his career. This is what ‘person centred care’ means.

Thank you to the nurse who comforted me when I was terrified of my consultant and said she’d stand up for me to him; thank you to the nurse who let me shout and scream for an hour when my ds took an overdose, and cuddled me when I needed her to; thank you to the nurse who helped me walk my son to theatre a few weeks ago and then made sure that I knew where I was going; thank you to the nurse who bought me a sandwich and a cuppa when I was asleep sitting on the floor waiting for hours.

This thread is a disgrace.

Oh and thank you to the theatre nurse who waited beyond the end of her shift in the early hours to see my 17 year old to a ward post op, because I couldn’t be with him because of covid.

This thread is really depressing, but there is an element of truth to the fact that not all nurses and HCAs are angels, and not everyone cares.

I've been a nurse for a fair amount of time and am a band 8a matron.

I have seen both the best and the absolute worse of the care that has been provided to patients. Sometimes people do such kind things for each other that honestly it makes your heart want to melt.

On the flip side, I have investigated a healthcare assistant who did exactly what the OP referred to in the original post and suggested an elderly lady go to the toilet in her pad and that they would deal with it later, rather than taking her to the loo - and on investigation it transpired that it was part of the ward culture. Who started that culture? Who knows, but post investigation things have changed and it doesn't happen any more.

Having multiple degrees doesn't make me any less caring by the way. I still care as much now as I did on my first day as a student nurse. Probably even more as I have developed a lot of empathy along the way! However, it's hard to always provide the care you want to provide when there aren't enough of you and you physically cannot do everything in the time you have got - there is never any excuse for being rude or unkind though.

YABU. Are you one of those 'not in my day' nurses? Some of the nastiest nurses I have worked with in my career probably trained in your era, they like to eat their young and micro manage the wards, little patience with elderly etc 😴 not saying we are all angels, there is good and bad everywhere. Harold shipman was a doctor..doesn't make them all murdering psychopaths. You can't tar us all with the same brush, especially if you are solely basing your rant on an isolated incident involving one patient on one ward.

(I am a nurse, I have also witnessed poor care delivered to a relative and complained). I do not think that all nurses are lazy and I compassionate.

Why do you feel the need to denigrate an entire profession? Would you complain that all bankers, teachers,shop workers etc are rubbish because of an individual experience?

There are many reasons why this lady could have been asked to use her pad, maybe the nurse was lazy, maybe there were insufficient staff numbers available to safely transfer her onto a commode or out to the bathroom
or maybe someone had a greater need which required sorting first.

[quote AnnieGetYourPun]@stairway... No, I’m sorry, you’ve misunderstood me. It was the lady sharing the ward with my niece today who asked to go to the toilet. She did have a bowel movement in her pad and four hours later, when food was brought, my niece said that she absolutely could not eat anything with the smell in the room. At this point, my niece was moved into a side room and the lady washed and cleaned.

Some people on here seem to think I’m “jealous” of nurses with degrees. I am not. I had an excellent career in the nhs and came out as a G Grade Sister.

The death of my mum caused our family to make a complaint. That was Oct 2019. We STILL haven’t had a reply. The hospital reply went to the CCG and we, as of Feb 2021 have not been able to access it. It is ongoing. What really distressed me was the falsifying of medical notes; legal documents. Tick charts for care “All Dignity Maintained” was often used. It was not true.

However, sadly it’s not all about my mum. Other family members and friends have had dreadful experiences too. A friend who had septicaemia and lost large portion of his leg and backside. His elderly parents were called in as they though he was at end of life. He survived, just. The hospital settled for negligence compensation out of court, 3 yrs ago.

I visited my 92yr old uncle in hospital in February last year. I took one look at his hands bandaged in foam and asked why he was being restrained (he couldn’t pick up his drink and EPA’s clearly dehydrated) only to be told “he keeps trying to remove his catheter”. He had a rip roaring urine infection and must have been in agony. No wonder he was trying to remove his catheter.

A neighbours’ mum who’d fallen and broken her hip on the ward trying to get to the toilet having waited so long, she thought she’d “give it a go”.

There are more. I could go on.

People who are overly defensive of their work/profession and cannot look objectively at a situation scare me. It’s how excuses pervade.[/quote]
These issues run much much deeper than being purely the fault of a staff nurse, you do realise this right?

I've had to use the NHS a few times and my mum was in hospital for a while after her stroke.

All i can say is in my experience of the NHS isn't that of the OP's, the staff, from consultants to porters have all been brilliant.
I once met one of the trusts nursing directors, he was kind and empathetic about my mum, he didn't have to.

My DD is in her final years placement, her mid report states she is very caring, she loves her job.

There are bad people in all walks of life but one bad experience shouldn't be used to tar the whole nursing profession.

I hope that no-one here is saying all nurses and HCPs are bad; I am sure there are wonderful members of the profession.

But the bad ones stand out because their lack of caring has such a profound effect on people who at their lowest ebb, in pain and frightened. The treatment my OH received was frankly appalling - there is no other word for it. I cannot pretend otherwise. Heaven knows I wish with all my heart that this was not so.

It is the same in all professions. I was a social worker, and worked my tripe out doing my best to help some of the most disadvantaged people in our society. At the same time I had to listen to the endless negative stereotypes of social workers.

A lot of my work was in hospitals and medical settings and I have to say that I did watch a decline in care standards. It was heart-breaking to behold.

My dad passed away 18 months ago after a very long illness and a final 6 weeks in hospital with liver disease. There were times when we had to remind nurses to change his catheter or that his lips were dry and bleeding or that he was in pain. Those same nurses sat with him for hours at night when (at 60) the toxins from his liver made him have no idea where he was; when he spent day after day pulling out his feeding tube; and many cried the night he passed away with us missing arriving by ten minutes when it seemed he'd turned a corner and we were having a night away from the hospital. Could they be all things to all people? No. Did they care? Oh my god yes it felt like they did and I'll forever be grateful.

How bloody rude of you OP.
I've been an NHS therapist for 30years and I'm in awe of my nursing colleagues. How they stay on their feet for 12 hours, let alone remain able to function is beyond me.
My DS is in his second year of nurse training and has been living away in an NHS rented cottage in the middle of nowhere, working on a Covid ward since October. Unpaid of course. I haven't seen him for months, he is 19 and is unbelievably committed to his training and profession.
One bad experience does not reflect a whole profession.
You have no idea what was going in behind the scenes on the ward that you describe. Maybe someone was seriously ill in another room? Maybe that nurse or carer was having to prioritise other matters, maybe they were short staffed (it's not unusual). It's not nice to be told to wee in a pad, and I'm sure they were advised to do so as a last resort, and actually pads work really well. Many thousands of people in the community have to rely on them every day between carer visits.
If you want better standards in hospitals then you had better start lobbying the government for more NHS funding because there truly is a limit to what you can expect the current staff to provide. Or better still why don't you volunteer some of your time and come in and show us how to do it.

@Doublevodka

I'm an NHS nurse. With a degree. I've been a nurse for 27 years. I work with some wonderful, hardworking and extremely caring nurses. I also work with some lazy, uncaring nurses who don't seem to like people at all. I imagine this is the case in most jobs.

As an ex fellow HCP, this is spot on. It's interesting being on the other side, having been in hospital recently. Most of the nursing staff were really nice, interested and caring. Some weren't. When I arrived, there were no female beds so I was put in a male bay for a couple of hours. I sat there whilst the 2 nurses studiously ignored me entirely, they made no eye contact with me, never spoke, smiled or looked at me. There were only 6 beds, with 3 other patients. They could hardly miss me as a woman on a male bay. Once I was moved, I never saw then again, and the staff were much more professional, thoughtful and caring.

Yes, I agree with you OP.

I’ve encountered a few very unkind nurses and health care workers over the years. After having both my babies and when my mum was terminally ill in hospital.

At life’s most difficult times, these people made things worse for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Its sad. I am old enough to remember the days when you’d actually see a nurse on a ward and they’d be kind to you.

Experience has also taught me that unfortunately often you really do have to persist to be heard by the NHS.

I’ve met lots of very kind nurses too and some wonderful consultants.

I wish your niece a speedy recovery. I understand completely your frustration. It’s become taboo to say it, especially now but I really do know how upsetting it is.

I wanted to add also I am a Degree nurse . I witnessed some terrible episodes of care when I was a student and the nurses responsible were all " old school" ( no degree) . You were deemed to be a trouble maker if raised concerns and spoke up. I had to say many of times no we mustn't use the bed sheets, we need to use a slide sheet or we can cause injuries . Lots of them used to do a bed bath which was questionable , it involved no mouth-care whatsoever, the patients own clothes remained bagged up with them just putting hospital pjs on because it was easier , they didn't want to sit patients out in chairs , would say exactly what you said " oh just do it in your pad". Where's is the dignity in that? It was me the degree nurse who would be getting patients up , washed, teeth cleaned, hearing aids in glasses on so they could see , reminding them to stand to relieve pressure , walking them to the bathroom, helping them in the shower , feeding them not just plonking it out of their reach. Care and compassionate cannot be taught !

I can see why you are feeling so angry. That doesn’t sound ideal at all.

But, in my experience of both being cared for by, and working with, nurses, the vast majority are caring, hard working and passionate about their work.

You clearly needed to vent after something stressful and upsetting, but please don’t generalise your experience to all nurses. Many are on their knees from dealing with the effects of the pandemic.

You could go to patient liaison of you think there is learning to be had in this case.

@Letsallscreamatthesistene... but many on here are belittling what I’m saying. Like, it’s not real, it’s not happening when clearly, it is. Many people are posting about real life poor care scenarios. It’s not just me, in case you’ve not noticed.

@Kazziek... agree.

@MayYouLiveInInterestingTimes... that’s a terrible tale. Shocking but entirely believable.

@stairway yes, I agree. Nursing is a bloody hard job. We’re definitely not angels. ...

If you want better standards in hospitals then you had better start lobbying the government for more NHS funding because there truly is a limit to what you can expect the current staff to provide.

I hear this too often, and it is a lazy way to avoid acknowledging that weaknesses in care are not all related to funding or workload. Some are cultural or down to inadequate governance.

Anyone who has worked in the NHS knows that quality of care (nursing and other) varies from excellent to unacceptable. Yes, the OP is clearly upset and angry, and mention of eugenics makes it easy to dismiss what she is saying, but that would be a mistake. Vulnerable patients are routinely receiving a poor standard of care on NHS wards, which is horrifying.

I was a Nurse for 30 years and lucky enough to work most of that time in a hospice which had above normal levels of staffing so the patients got good care generally but even then there were many times when patients were agitated and at risk of falling and not enough staff to keep them safe, and times when patients were left an unacceptable length of time for pain relief. And this was in a generally very good unit.
Now I work outside of the NHS and am no longer a Nurse but still hear a lot of patients stories of how they have been treated and unacceptable care and particularly delays in diagnosis or where people were not listened to by health care professionals and it makes me so upset.

Oh yer, I am sure your right if one nurse is shit we all must be which includes all those who went before us and have now retired, I had a really horrible mentor when I was a student back in the 90's she would be your age now, I expect in her 70's retired. she told me to help the beached whale of the bed, so I am afraid all retired nurses were terrible and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.... except of course that I have some bloody intelligence and realise some people are just in the wrong profession and maybe rather than moaning about it here, complain to the hospital about the nurse.

Christ as much as that’s awful @AnnieGetYourPun please put away your tar and brush. My mother was a palliative Carr nurse and has come home sobbing that she has been unable to do more for her patients because of constraints put her by superiors. Please please don’t assume everyone is awful

*If you want better standards in hospitals then you had better start lobbying the government for more NHS funding
A general decline in care is imo part of a general decline in our entire society, but that is due to the hopelessly inadequate economic management throughout, built on 'small-state' ideology and privatisation. It's caused general resentment, multiple grievances, and huge divisions. The resulting thinking is 'why should I go over the top when we've all been abandoned - why should I care when no one else cares about me', and it's perfectly legitimate. There's a clear difference between being trained for free to do a job you can take pride in with adequate staffing and resources, and paid enough in reasonable shift patterns to buy nice houses on largely well-laid-out crime-free estates: and having to pay, pay and pay again in CPD for working in poor conditions which only just pay enough to rent damp hovels. The morale of this country is on the floor.

Although op it is particularly galling when you watch your own professions deteriorate and have to deal with the results.