Screaming baby on children's ward

[Tomblibooz]

I'm on the children's ward tonight staying with my little one (who's currently fast asleep). Across the hall is a baby, I'd estimate to be around 4mo, left by themselves and has been screaming/crying for over an hour. The sort of wailing that it's making itself choke. It's heartbreaking to hear, and so I went for a wander to see what was going on and to offer to help.

Only 2 nurses on tonight, so short staffed. Baby's mum has gone home to pick up some things. Baby is left alone screaming in a cot, and has been for the hour basically.

I offered to go in and try and calm little one, even just sitting shushing or singing lullabies, but was told they couldn't allow it.

Aibu in thinking you'd prefer your little one to be looked after by a random mum, than be left alone screaming for over an hour on it's own?

I appreciate my hormones are all over the place just now and I'm on about night 3 of no sleep, so I may bu!

Yabu - people leave their own baby's to cry it out, baby was safe so no drama

Yanbu - for baby and everyone else's sake

But you wouldn’t be getting a ‘snack’ from the vending machine, it would be your actual meal.
I find it hard to believe anyone who has spent more than a day or two in hospital would tell another mum she should just live off crisps from the vending machine and sit in dirty underwear for as long as it took for the baby to be discharged.

@Swiftswatch "I find it hard to believe anyone who has spent more than a day or two in hospital would tell another mum she should just live off crisps from the vending machine and sit in dirty underwear for as long as it took for the baby to be discharged."
What do you suggest? Are you aware that due to budgetary constraints we are now allowed to only order exactly the same number of meals as we have patients eating them, and that this is regularly being checked, that even slices of bread biscuits and milk are being counted and have to accounted for? Gone are the days when we had an extra 10 meals on the ward or a couple of packets of sandwiches lying around that we could give out to hungry parents everything is now computerised so catering depts can see how many patients are on a ward so you cant order extra. We used to give all our resident patients breakfast and feed breast feeding mums, we had parents room with a fridge microwave and provided cheap tea/coffee and milk but that is all we can do and I doubt that will go on for much longer. No one is not feeding parents for their own entertainment we don't sit in hand over laughing and getting some sort of sadistic satisfaction that the mum in bed 12 is starving hungry. We are not feeding parents because we cant.
We also had emergency nappies/formula milk etc but again supplies were dwindling not helped by the fact that people regularly stole them. With regard to medication if your child is on an unusual medication bring it in to hospital the chances of us magicking it up in the middle of the night are very small.

Oh and @Swiftswatch so you want us to provide a washing machine/soap powder and fabric conditioner and lets not forget a tumble drier for your clothes as well?

We used to have tea,milk, coffee, sugar. Some basic hygiene packs with toothpaste toothbrush and shower gel for middle of the night admissions. We only had them because the nurses funded them or fundraised for them. The hospital never provided that. We could also help out with a sandwich or piece of toast etc, but again the hospital stopped us having bread and butter on the ward because God forbid a nurse who couldn't take a break would make herself a piece of toast and eat it in the ward kitchen

Everyone knows that the NHS is in a totally shit state and patients in hospitals are receiving unsafe and inadequate care.

What people are saying is that it isn't acceptable.

Wards should be staffed so that patients are safe and well cared for.
That way, relatives are able to leave the ward to take care of their own basic needs.

The answer is definitely not that mums should be living off crisps and wearing dirty clothes for days while their child is in hospital. It's an outrageous situation.

People should be complaining, writing to their MP, voting, striking.

Not just accepting it and blaming some poor woman for having to leave her baby for a couple of hours.

We still do all that. We'll also put parents down for meals in cases of genuine need. And we will sneak a packed lunch in. The first thing I do with parents admitted during the night is offer them a hot drink and biscuits.

We have access to that as well. We no longer have a wager and dryer on the ward. But there is one upstairs. We will bend over backwards to support parry if we can.

My post was in reply to a poster who said parents staying with their young child in hospital shouldn’t even leave the ward to go to the shop and should just use the vending machine for ‘a snack’.

So do you want hospitals to provide food and washing machines etc for all for all relatives? Are you prepared to pay for it although god knows how that would be administered. I had enough do to without walking around with a card reader in my pocket to take a debit card. What about people who have no money on them or simply have no money? How do you think the catering dept would be able to organise this? They'll need to know at the very least 3-4 hours in advance if you want a portion of macaroni cheese and a yoghurt for lunch you do know that most hospitals don't cook patient on site but its brought in in ready made portions there could be a lot of wastage here. What happens if your child is sent home/transferred or suddenly a friend unexpectedly bring you in a lunch? Will you still pay for your order or will you expect a refund? Will you complain about the quality hospital food in general doesn't have a great reputation. Do you not think that all staff have enough to do without providing for relatives as well? You clearly have no idea how hospitals are run.
My colleague worked on a ward where an email was sent round stating that the cheap biscuits for the patients are counted out each week if they exceed their quota it is assumed staff have stolen them and that an investigation will take place and anyone caught will go through a disciplinary for theft doesn't matter that these staff get no breaks and works beyond their allocated hours. .
As Ive said nothing surprises I had complaint about views from windows (or lack of them) and that we could only offer white toast instead of brown and why didn't staff pop out to the near by supermarket and buy brown bread and that they had requested sweetcorn when the choice clearly stated was peas and why couldn't staff cook some sweetcorn for their child in our non existent kitchen.

@Swiftswatch i didn't say as long as it took to be discharged....i said until morning when there would be more staff around and less kids wanting to sleep (and possibly a friend to help). Also at midnight, yes live on a snack from vending machine. during they day there may be other options (e.g. shop / cafe) in the hospital.

I found catering staff would give you uneaten and still sealed sandwiches and food. There is a lot of uneaten food.

What kind of diabetic goes out with only one hour of insulin and no hypo equipment?

On the few occasions I've unexpectedly had to be in a hospital for long periods, a doctor has sorted me insulin. Like when my nan was taken in by ambulance and I ended up staying by her bedside for five days as she died. A doctor sorted me a prescription and got me insulin no problem. It's a hospital.

No lovely, if you read the thread you will see this situation is about wards being understaffed to the point that patients are not receiving adequate care.

I think the point was you could go out with 12 hours supply and then find yourself waiting for hours in an ambulance/A&E/corridor.

Sorry for only carrying 15 hours of kit. Sorry that the hospital refused to assist me.

TBH you were lucky that the Dr was prepared to do that. Most hospitals would not allow them to prescribe for a patient that is not their own and they have no medical records for because of liability. We had a local GP who we would send relatives to to be admitted as a temporary patient on their list if they needed meds (ie out of area transfers) in the middle of the night they would have to go home.
We couldn't even give our post-op c section mums paracetamol officially (though many of us would sneak them a paracetamol from our own bags) but if we had got caught we could lose our license for giving unprescribed medication.

And then after 12 hours in a&e find yourself on a paeds ward where the paediatricians are covering a couple of wards scbu and delivery and when they eventually return to the ward they can’t prescribe for adults because they don’t have an adult prescription chart they don’t keep the strength of insulin on the ward and whilst they are coming up with a solution they get called to a crash C-section and won’t return for a couple of hours. You could book yourself into a&e to get a prescription but you’d still be off the ward so it’s probably quicker and safer to go home pick up what you need and come back.

This is why I would never leave a loved one in an NHS hospital alone. The NHS is broken. This is frankly shocking and disgusting yet they don't care.

That is massively unfair, who are you referring to that "doesn't care", the nurses, they are assistants?

It's not them that doesn't care, but they are working in a broken system.

Who doesn’t care? The government? Quite probably. The nurse on the ward with 10 patients is just trying to make sure they don’t miss someone deteriorating and that everyone gets their meds. They might be burnt out but they do care

I too find this post very upsetting. When my sons were ill in hospital we were not allowed to leave them alone , except to go to the bathroom. I think that it is ridiculous that “children” up to the age of 16 are put in mixed wards with babies.
When I was with one of my sons, aged about 10, there was a 16 year old girl in the bed next to him . The poor girl was so embarrassed when the doctor and nurses spoke to her loudly well within earshot of the rest of the ward. I later found out that she had been visited by medical students too - something I doubt that she had given her consent to.

I am perfectly aware that wards are understaffed and patients are receiving inadequate care I suspect I know more about it than you ever will. But frankly providing food to parents is the least of our problems. My priority had to be the children on the ward and the demand for beds, most nurses will tell you them same thing. It is essential that we as nurses detect a deteriorating child (or adult) and provide the right intervention and escalate as necessary, then we have to care for another whole group of children who may not be deteriorating but will if they do not receive the right medication/support or who will in fact get better and be discharged thus creating a much needed bed. On top of that there are children who might abscond and try and commit suicide, violent adolescents and violent parents who think nothing of abusing staff both physically and mentally. And I used to liaise almost daily with three different SS, schools and my colleagues in the community plus lots of other stuff that nurses deal with on a regular basis including if we've time comforting crying babies supervising and training staff and I would also like to take a break and do a pee but I had to except that this is not a always possible. Feeding parents/relatives and worrying if their underwear is clean (Ive worked in many hospitals and not seen a washing machine for many years) is pretty low down on my list of prioritises to be honest if we did manage to magic up another couple of staff it would be at the bottom of their list of priorities too. Finally should the NHS ever receive some sort of decent funding I'm pretty sure that with waiting lists a mile long, a staffing crisis, a social care crisis to mention a few that it will be a very long time before feeding relatives and worrying about how clean their underwear is ever reaches the top of the lets fund this agenda.

I think you're a bit confused - we're talking about nurses caring for the patient so that relatives are able to leave to get food and clean clothes. Not hospitals have washing machines.

Im not confused you are not reading what I writing. THERE ARE NO STAFF TO CARE FOR PATIENTS SO THAT RELATIVES CAN LEAVE THE WARD TO GET FOOD AND CLEAN CLOTHES.
There are only just about enough staff to care for the children and in many cases care in inadequate and because staff are unable to provide the care that the patients need because there aren't enough of us. Children are deteriorating and becoming very unwell because there are not enough staff to look after them to observe what is happening and take appropriate action. When I was a sister I did everything I could to prevent this form happening but sometimes it wasn't possible. As the nurses poem states :"there are too many of you and not enough of us".
I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept to grasp. If your one nurse for 13-14 children sitting with a baby whilst a parent goes off to get a cup of tea is just not on your agenda.
Anyway Im bowing out this sort of thing is not gid for my blood pressure.