What a depressing thread. Some of the attitudes displayed here are the exact reasons I left acute nursing; I miss it so much but I couldn’t cope with the abuse any longer.
I’ve been punched, kicked, spat on, almost set on fire (and would have been had the wonderful security guard not knocked the already-lit lighter out of the patient’s hand before it touched me), had crockery, chairs and bins thrown at me, not to mention the verbal abuse I received on a daily basis.
I had a woman scream at me that I was a piece of shit because I hadn’t been back with her Gaviscon, when she knew the reason for that was that the patient two beds along from her had a cardiac arrest as I was walking to get the Gaviscon and unfortunately that was a priority. We tried to resuscitate the patient for 45 minutes, I felt her little ribs and sternum crack under my hands and it still wasn’t enough and she died. But you have to put your brave face back on and just get on with your job, only to be abused by the next person you meet.
One of the final straws for my decision to leave was having a shouting match with a consultant who would not recognise that our patient was actively dying and that a critical decision had to be made, I went to a different consultant who listened to me and helped me act on my concerns and the original consultant found me and shook his fists in my face for ‘disobeying’ him. The patient knew he was dying, as did his wife, and he wanted to go in peace, which I fully supported and could have facilitated. Instead, the original consultant then decided to take action and put the patient on CPAP, who then had a seizure, bit through his tongue and died a horrible death suffocating on his own blood inside a CPAP machine, which will haunt me forever. His wife was the most wonderful woman, she gave me the biggest cuddle when I walked her out to meet the friend who was collecting her and thanked me for trying to give her husband some dignity.
I still keep the most beautifully written cards from patients and their families which I will always treasure, but it still isn’t enough to keep me in a job where I was suffering mentally due to the abuse and pressure I was under. I’m gutted because I know I was good at my job both clinically and because I always went the extra mile for my patients, but I know I might have lost that if I’d continued, and I am not alone because this is what is happening to nurses throughout the NHS. Most of the nurses I know who still work in acute care are in therapy and on antidepressants because of the job.
Please don’t blame us for the failings of the NHS because we really do give it our best, day in, day out.