To be actually really worried about you? NHS related

[Itsonthestairs]

As a highly skilled NHS nurse of 15 years I had to leave my job due to the stress and not being able to provide the care I wanted to, I was burnt out following covid (my mum died), I have definaly save a fair few lifes in my clinical time, I loved my job and I was good at it (emergency department background). Reading the posts on MN has really upset me recently, the disrespect, dislike and darn right hatred for healthcare professionals really worries me. My friends are on their knees and this abuse doesn't help, people are getting crap care because there is no staff and this awful attitude is just adding fuel to the fire. I'm really worried about you, me and our families future healthcare.

@rockhopperpingu What you're describing is my old job (healthcare assistant). You almost certainly met HCAs in hospital but you may have thought they were nurses as the uniform is often very similar. Unfortunately there aren't enough HCAs either. I worked some terrifying shifts where there were only two of us in the department and there should have been six. It was like trying to play whack-a-mole with all the call lights going off.

Now that the new PM that we respect to get, is going to reverse the NI increase that was supposed to help fund the NHS, we and NHS staff are basically stuffed.

I do feel for nurses such as my daughter (the other daughter is a teacher, so they both end up being publicly criticised for things out of their control, or the failings of others in their profession) but as I've just had a call to say that my 90 year olds stroke victim mother has been found in the floor of her ward, having fallen from her bed (yesterday they called my brother who confirmed to them that she cannot sit or stand, and whenever she's been in hospital before she's had full 'cot' sides to her bed) I have to question the care she's been given.

I'm now waiting to hear what injuries she has sustained

Expect. Not respect. Far from it

The NHS is sadly a very poor service in far too many cases. But the way it's managed is a lot too blame.

People should remember the staff are human. They are also frustrated with the system, there is no excuse for abusing someone.

I have a serious illness requiring long stays and when I need A&E am always triaged to majors. I can see what COVID and lack of funding has done to the NHS. Even before it was bad enough and I was often astounded at the way some treated staff in A&E and on the wards. Racism was rife too.
Unless there's a reason for the awful behaviour (like a head injury or mental health) I think there should be a zero tolerance. I would never ever take it out on the staff in front of me or on the phone. It is never their fault. I go out of my way to be polite and patient.

The NHS provides wonderful care a lot of the time and woefully poor care far too often. My experience as a patient has been that it often veers between these two extremes. Maternity care is a case in point. When I gave birth to my first DC, I experienced some fantastic, compassionate care from dedicated staff. I was also left on my own and unattended for hours without being monitored and without access to any pain relief because the staff didn't think I was in 'established' labour and were too overwhelmed to give me proper care. Then suddenly there was complete panic and multiple staff in the room when it appeared that something was going wrong. I'm already apprehensive about the quality of care I will receive when giving birth to DC2 later on this year. I have no confidence in the system being suitably resourced to provide safe, compassionate maternity care. 'Ignore until there is a crisis' seems to be the model a lot of the time. That said, I have come across many fantastic individuals working in the NHS and I would never be dream of being rude and entitled towards the staff because, within the system they work in, most staff do their absolute best for patients. It's just that the system is under-resourced and doesn't always work very well, and I can see how that would lead to overwhelmed staff suffering compassion fatigue at times.

What an absolutely ridiculous comment! You need to learn some facts.
firstly, it's mainly the doctors or ANP prescribe the pain relief in a&e. The nurses cannot just dish it out like sweets, it has to be prescribed. Including paracetamol.

secondly if the NHS was privatised (which by the way some of it is owned by private companies). Do you honestly think the nurses will lose their jobs??
No they won't, it's just you will be paying for your 'crap' treatment.

Ive genuinely got no idea if ill still be working for the nhs by the time i draw my nhs pension, i suspect it wont exist
When i joined my team 7 years ago we had 10 nurses in a role, we now have 4. Of our qualified staff, aproximately 30% are eligible for retirement in the next 7 years.

We can not recruit, job adverts go unaswered. There are not enough qualified mental health nurses, OTs, drs etc to replace the them at the rate we are losing them to retirement, burnout etc or other more attractive roles. We cant make our role more attractive while we are so shortstaffed. we also cant afford to be fussy in recruiting. Someone said upthread about a world in which poor nurses would be fired.
There is a real weigh up currently of a slow worker, is better than no worker. Unless they are actively harmful when obviously they need to go then you have to weigh up if you think you could replace them with someone else suitably qualified

I heard something on the news about the UK being maybe the 6th richest country in the world (or something to that effect) and I was stunned.

How can our public services be so poor and basically run down? There has to be a better way.

I suspect it's about paying more tax - which actually I would happily do if it meant everyone was paying according to their means - but that will never go down well with the electorate.

So we're facing a Truss fantasy world with tax cuts and things will only get worse.

I despair sometimes.

Nursing as a profession is highly varied which is arguably part of the problem and why public perception is so tainted.

I work within a surgical intensive care unit - our nurses are highly skilled and recover patients from open heart surgery with a high level of autonomy.

Titrating drug infusions, critically analysing blood results and acting on those results by changing ventilator settings or administering medications. Yes there are consultant anaesthetists and registrars to oversee, but they have a high level of respect for our clinical judgement.

Yes, we are a ‘caring’ profession but we are not ‘carers’ by title.

@rockhopperpingu we do have 'carers' however the job role has changed so much theyre the ones doing the direct care. Taking obs? Hca. Giving meals? Hca feeding patients? Hca.

As nurses we're so busy with clinical things like preparing iv medications, arranging porters for transfers, speaking to social care to try and get patients home, admissions, discharges, making drs aware of deteriorating patients and chasing them to come to the ward.

For example; (hypothetical)

I have a patient who has had surgery and is back on our ward, I need to do 15 mins obs,

I have a patient who needs IV chemo over a certain amount of time, I'll need to stay and watch them closely to make sure they don't have an allergic reaction, they also need 15 mins obs. I need to also administer the drug myself. They spike a temp and I need a dr to review them. I will chase that up.

I have a patient who is waiting for an occupational therapy adaption to their home so I will chase that up because they can't go home until that is done (takes months )

I'll have 4 admissions so I need to take a hand over from the nurses giving me them, get the ward drs to prescribe medication if they're not in a&e or surgery, if they are in a&e reviewing a patient then my admissions will need to wait for their medication.

I have a patient going home so I need to chase up their medication from pharmacy which can take hours and I'm also trying to placate the family who want to go home but can't because they don't have medication to go home with. Pharmacy are doing this for every patient who are going home that day from every ward in try hospital so they don't answer the phone. I'll send s hca down to check.

I have a patient who is in pain but hasn't been weighed for a couple of days, if their weight is the same I can give the pain relief prescribed,
If it's not I have to get a dr to re prescribe medication as childrens med dosages are done on weight. I need to re weigh (with the help of a hca) and if it's changed I can't do anything until the dr is back on the ward.

If I've got a patient who has a safeguarding referral, I need to do that and ensure that the family members are supported/ not allowed to be alone with the patient (depending on the issue) chasing social workers to come to the ward.

1 end of life patient for the ward so I'm supporting the parents and making sure the patient is pain free, that staff don't panic and pull the emergency buzzer, explain to the parents the dying process and what to expect, provide unlimited amount of tea, coffee and food for the parents. Make sure they don't have to leave their child to do this so I make sure it's offered and provided very regularly.

Add in, I need to know what my patients have eaten, fill out the fluid balances (critical when they're on chemo) when I haven't weighed their nappies or measured the sick in the sick bowl because I'm doing all of the above. So I'm relying on our amazing hcas to tell me, they get paid 18k a year and lots are leaving to do better jobs for better pay.

If I'm the nurse in charge I also have to oversee all the admissions and discharges, liaise with the bed manager who is always trying to give me more patients to take the pressure off a&e, however earlier in the shift we had lots of staff and another ward had a lot of staff sickness so they've moved 2 of our nurses and 1 hca to another ward so I can't take the patients and they will stay in a&e.

Factor in trying to ensure all the staff who are all doing the above get the chance to have a break (not possible every day) and have chance to update the charts for every patient and if they're very unwell it will be hourly updates to ensure it's all documented, because god forbid the worst happened and we had an unexpected death, if it's not written down it didn't happen.

Day in day out. 3 12 hour shifts a week.

So sorry you've had a crap time. For what it's worth, I do believe the majority of people are very grateful for the NHS and its staff. Within the past decade I've had eye surgery and a broken elbow. All were treated in my local NHS hospital, and I couldn't fault the care I received at any point.
The local hospital where my parents lived also did a wonderful job at caring for my dad in the last year of his life.

@ugifletzet I was probably in one of those terrifying shifts then as I only saw the nurses and the HCA with the food trolley. I didn't buzz much as I didn't want to be a bother but no one's buzzers were being answered.

Definitely need more HCAs. So many things can be prevented with a bit of care and attention.

Add in the fact that staff are upset and worried about their patients, it's horrible.

I had a patient die a couple of months ago and the bed manager rang repeatedly and tried to give us a patient because the patient didn't need the room anymore. I refused, no compassion for the family at all.

I think its a combination of things. To much emphasis on degrees instead of employing people who are caring, nurturing people. To many managers and office politics as well as a massive culture of bullying. However i also believe that patients need to take responsibility for themselves. People today are so entitled and think they are the only patient that exists. Stop turning up at A&E with pointless, pathetic ailments that could have been dealt with by a chemist, if your GP doesn't want to see you face to face it's because they don't think it's necessary not because they can't be bothered. If you are waiting 10 hours for treatment in A&E it's because its not really that urgent and there are people who are urgent being seen before you! Its not rocket science.

We are struggling to recruit too, especially heath care assistants, who would want want to do a physically and mentally challenging role, working nights weekends xmas etc for less money than you can get working at Lidl! It’s embarrassing the pay offered to these critical roles.

The abuse we get is an whole other thread, but my most memorable ones were being screamed at and squared up to by a man who was asked to leave the bay as a lady had collapsed and we were trying to resuscitate her on the floor. Only last week I was called a ‘fucking slag’ by a patient who refused to put a mask on on a covid outbreak ward. You just wouldn’t get this anywhere else, nurses are the publics punchbags for all NHS frustration.

Those with positive experiences to impart, which is the majority of people I suspect, do not generate clicks for readers or newspapers. Bad news is good news for certain media.

Everything is moan a minute nowadays, or it appears to be because we rarely if ever see a headline saying how wonderful the NHS can be. There can be a lot of egging on also when one person has a bad experience, then everyone has had one also.

Maybe it is a subtle way to make people angry and inevitably accept a privatised or Continental style health service?

"People should remember the staff are human. They are also frustrated with the system, there is no excuse for abusing someone".

This is absolutely true, but part of being human involves having emotions, and in stressful situations, involving absolute fatigue and professional burnout (staff) or pain, frustration and fear (patients), there may be occasions when our best behaviour falls short of what we would expect.

Another couple of points, as a pp suggested the absolutely shit wages are another reason for staff leaving. Also the general public needs to stop treating ambulances like ubers! It is not a free ride to hospital

I've only ever had good experiences with our wonderful NHS and the staff that work there. Our nurses are overworked and underpaid. Departments are understaffed which has the knock on for overworked staff. I feel for you.

People that abuse our amazing NHS staff are just gutter slime.

people need to watch 'This is going to hurt' to see the absolute strain that these people are under, it's an eye opener.

@fannyfan 18k is ridiculous considering the abuse some patients give out and everything else you've described. No wonder they're leaving.

Also must be nerve racking as the nurse "overseeing" their work, if they're ridiculously overstretched. I imagine any mistakes they may make, it's your neck in the line being the qualified one. Plus everything you have to do too.

I was just trying to ponder whether there was a way of out sourcing non skilled jobs to someone other than the HCAs and Nurses. However I suppose like you say it's all interconnected and needs fully documenting as it affects treatment etc, so hard to separate. I agree with previous posters about needless changes to computer systems etc though. I work in a private sector which provides some nhs work. They spent a fortune redesigning a computer system we use...... other than a new design on the screen it only does what the old system does. Nothing new or more practical. Just a replica with a fancy logo.... complete waste of money.

It is very sad. I also worked in the NHS for many years and the mis-management observed was shocking so I am not surprised at the state it is in.
Despite being a labour voter all my life I have decided to go private as it will speed up any treatments I need and at the same time feeling up a place for somebody else...well that what I keep telling myself to justify it.

like everyone else I've experienced good and bad care on the NHS but generally I think it is broken and the systems and bureaucracy in place stop the radical change that is needed.

Well, there are a small number of fantastic nurses out there. There are a lot of good nurses out there. There are a lot of nurses working under pressure and I think they are great.

However, there are lot of uncaring nurses out there to. I work in mental health, and I'd say about 80% of nurses I have met in this field can be down right prejudice and unkind about people with various MH probs. Quite a few are lazy. A lot make rubbish notes and slack off in the day (when community, pick up their own kids instead of visit a client or come to the office to work, for example).

In terms of physical health, when my mum was in hospital with serious heart and lung problems, many nurses just complained if she reported feeling anxious (about the fact she was dying/couldn't breathe/couldn't eat). They'd moan or roll eyes at each other when she said she couldn't sleep. Tell her she was making it up when she said she couldn't get out of bed. The day before she died she was told she needed to get out of bed to use the toilet, stop exaggerating how weak she is. Basic food and drink were neglected.

When my brother was in mental health hospital they let him get so dehydrated he was malnourished. (I gave him 12 cups of water when I came to visit one day because he had been given no fluid in 2 days. Shocking). They didn't realise he was asthmatic, despite having inhalers with him which noone helped him use, so when he was looking in the air gasping they just thought it was a symptom of his psychosis.

A lot of my colleagues use horrible language about clients ('mad as a box of frogs', 'pd that'll never get better', 'attention seeking')

I don't know why some people go into caring professions. It's not hard to be nice and give basic food and water. Keep the noise down at night. Respect someone's dignity. Use respectful language.

What the hell are nurses learning in their 3 year degrees if many can't do the basics?

Don't get me wrong, there are a LOT of excellent nurses, but "burnout" is often used as an excuse for just being horrible and neglectful