Why don't nhs night staff want you to sleep?

[ICaughtTonsillitisFromAFriendsKid]

Sleep is a great healer.
So why is everything done to keep ward patients awake all night? (Well it feels that way)

In the day the wonderful staff are very kind, but overnight, why no whispering, at all? Not even stage whispering? I've just staggered out of bed trying not to rip out my cathetera and canula to pull the bible sheet curtain round a bit, but everyone else is left with curtains pushed back to the walls.

Everyone is so kind and happy to help, I don't even want to say anything, but I'm just exhausted, as are all of these very poorly ladies.

It seems the doctors are not too bad at whispering, I must concede.

You quite clearly know nothing about nursing . I work on a neuro/ABI ward long stay. We have no doctors on site in the evening or weekends. I'm responsible for all the OBS of all patients. I do all the meds which need covert and crushing. My patients blood sugars are very unstable so I spend a lot of shift monitoring that and administrating insulin. I do peg feeds/suction, skin checks . I then need to do all the care plans and nursing notes I'm usually the only nurse on shift at night and have been in the day as well on numerous occasions. Nursing is also unfortunately a large part paperwork which is a legal requirement.

Yeah, when you have 5 or 6 patients, 13 + its none stop, no breaks, no time even to have a drink, and after 6 years of that you get to £33k (soon, not yet, currently £31k). No nurse goes into the role for the money, we know what the pay is that before starting, however, the staffing levels are unsafe and that is what causes a decline in care standards. With so many patients with so many different needs you cannot give 100% to all of them at the same time. Maybe if they looked at the pay and the staffing levels, more nurses would stick in NHS hospitals instead of leaving to do roles that bring in more money for less stress and less hours, aesthetics is huge at the minute, so many nurses I know have gone part time, or left the NHS entirely to pursue aesthetics. Something needs to change in order to retain good nurses, or appeal to those looking for it as a career.

The public will not get behind people with whom they've had devastatingly negative experiences.

Strike about staffing levels, not pay then.

But there arent enough nurses to cover the staffing levels needed, because people are leaving the profession and recruitment is down. Mostly because the pay as a newly qualified is awful and roles to earn the higher amounts are few and far between.

😂😂😂 Congrats. Why not see if you can spend a day with an arrest team and see how you get on…?

I work in the private sector I'm often the only nurse on shift responsible for 8 patients but it's much better than the NHS.

So how do you define 'nurse' as a role? You think nurses don't ever provide life saving interventions? You have never heard of a nurse performing CPR? Do you think they stand and do nothing at a cardiac arrest and just wait on the doctors coming?

I am a midwife not a nurse, but they are equivalent roles. There are no doctors where I work, you think I just watch a woman bleed to death or a baby die because there's no doctors there to save the day?

Really?

@Dalint
seens you not only know nothing about pat grades you also appear to have some out of date notions regarding the changing roles of nursing.
yes do hca’s do lots of those things because many more registered - yes nurses who are a degree entry profession - have expanded their roles to deal with lack of clinical and often medical capacity in pathways across the nhs. Hcas have become more valuable and trained to do standard procedures because
many nurses are now undertaking enhanced advanced practice roles , extended prescribing roles as well as greater input into area where previously only medical staff worked including anaesthesia, neonatal care, neurological, cardiac, cancer care, orthopaedics, mental health and paramedic roles to name but some They are assessed against the national occupational standards just as a medical student is so are highly competent. A nurse role in these contexts has a much more complex case level management

Depending on context, care pathways and other factors some nurses may do more standard traditional aspects of what your outmoded notions seem to think is the beginning and end of their remit

I'm a paramedic, and if I had a pound for every time some one has told me thet've done a first aid course as some sort of comparison to my degree and near 2 decades of frontline experience I wouldn't be a paramedic any more as I would have f*cked off with my riches!

@PrivateHall Not sure about midwives but we nurses are just there to mop brows and give out bedpans. 🤦‍♀️

I wouldn’t waste your time arguing with @Dalint

One of the professions within my family is midwifery. She delivered some of my friends lol. Every single person who finds out who I am has mentioned how 'kind' she was to them when she was their midwife.
Nurses need to understand the term 'to nurse'.

@EgonSpengler2020 Oh you’re ok, @Dalint likes paramedics. It’s just us nurses that are overpaid first aiders!

In all seriousness, you guys are amazing. People should sing your praises from the rooftops. The stories I’ve heard… no way I could do your job. Hats off!

I am not laughing at paramedics. I'm laughing at nurses who don't know what the job entails.
I've been brought back to life by paramedics. Never by a nurse lol.

Yeh I am raging at myself for getting sucked in!!! Thanks

Give her time and I'm sure she'll slip up and call us "Ambulance Drivers".

When i was in the hospital post c section it was the worst sleep i have ever experienced haha been woken up so many times. But you cant really expect staff to whisper. They still have jobs to do whatever hour it may be.

Give me time and you'll be rocking up here.

May I interject, I trained as a teacher in 2009. With planning teaching and marking I was up at 6am and sleep at 2am for a year. I was not paid and had to pay for the training.
The 4k golden handshake did not materialise because I had to change LA after my 1st year of work. The training year added 16k to my student loan and I had to be supported by my boyfriend.
I am not a teacher any more, it's another "free not free" service that the end users are happy to complain about except that the young people are openly rude to your face.
However during exams, I would always walk round the hall in absolute silence.

@PrivateHall Oh wait, @Dalint likes midwives too! You’re off the hook. 🥳 I bet you’re delighted! 😂😂😂🤦‍♀️

I’m going to go and sit in a corner now and ponder what it means to be a nurse…

Chatty staff are a drop in the ocean compared to other patients loudly face timing their family and friends, watching TV at full volume on their devices in the middle of the night and poor old dementia patients shouting for their mums, pulling out their tubes and trying to escape their beds.

I was admitted a few weeks ago.

Went to A&E, up to the ward at 5.00am.

The auxiliary team woke me for breakfast at 7.00am.

It really is bonkers.

😂😂😂

Dalint
The staff in the NHS that I find amazing are paramedics. They deal with life and death. They do not know what they are walking into on any call.

Nobody ever mentions them. They're also not allowed to strike.
Unfortunately, due to illness, I'm familiar with some of them. I live in London and they're divided up into different areas. Throughout Covid, the crew I know the most (they're like a comedy duo), told me that they lost 24 members of crew. 24 paramedics just from their group, died.

But that figure - 24 - isn't true?
Of course 1 is too many (and my DS is a paramedic) but 24 from their crew?