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

@tiredwardsister *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.’

You’re lashing out unnecessarily here and inferring a lot of things that actually haven’t been said.
No one has suggested the ward should be cooking for parents or should be worrying about them having clean clothes, we are discussing that actually the ward should have a duty of care to the patient, particularly a baby and it should extend to allowing a parent to go and have a shower or eat something, considering it’s likely they’ve sat by a hospital bed for possibly 48 hours at a time.
There are posters saying ‘no too bad a parent can’t leave their baby to eat or brush their teeth because the hospital shouldn’t have to care for them or change a nappy’.

This kind of infighting is what the Conservative party wants.

Complaints from parents feel like moral injury to those working within the NHS because deep down we know the care is shit and it hurts us to go to work, propping up this tragic normal.

Therefore people get defensive and conversation veers over to the NHS being too expensive.

Then it's a small leap to privatising the lot.

Let's not get distracted. Parents and nurses aren't on opposing teams. Criticise the government.

As a Paeds nurse I can tell you that going home from a shift knowing you couldn’t provide the care you wanted to because of being so short staffed is awful. We wake up at night worrying about things we think we’ve missed. We ring the ward to check. We worry about patients on our day off. We go home thinking well at least everyone is alive because that’s all I’ve managed. That’s how bad it is.

@Tomblibooz people (including babies) they can be put in their own room due to infection risk e.g. RSV, so you might not be allowed in for that reason too.

I know it's distressing to listen to.

It's odd that the baby was left unattended by the parent. Hospitals have spare nappies etc
Is a complaint to PALS etc really necessary if the mum left the baby? I'm not sure what would come of it.

Is a massive safeguarding risk sorry.

@tiredwardsister the ratio In paediatrics is 1:4 or occasionally 1:6 at night. Huge amounts of resources are put into recognising and rescuing before children get very sick. It is absolutely not true to say that children get sicker because they are not getting the right care. They absolutely are. Though I am surprised by the lay out of DGH children's wards, and that you rarely can see any patients from the nurses station. I now never take for granted being able to see or hear all
My patients.

Unmumsnetty hugs to all
The paediatric nurses on here. Remember we really do have the best job in the world!

A shame it's distressed, but YABU for expecting them to be a ok with a stranger comforting it.

The nurses will be hauled up and it’ll be a massive faff which will distract from actual patient care so I think counterproductive. The nurses will be more aware of the crying than you. There might have been a long management plan discussed and ins & ours you’re not aware of. Paediatrics is very thorough vs adult medicine.
Like others have said it might be short term pain for long term gain and maybe the mum isnt there because what will console the baby isn’t possible & that would be more difficult if the mum is there. Or mum has other children who age can’t bring to stay in hospital or mum is unwell herself.
It’s sad but not dangerous or life threatening.

The answer to this for everyone is please don’t vote Tory.
Tho tbh with current Labour leadership it’s not much different so might be up the creek without a paddle already.
Them & their austerity as robbed us and our kids and vulnerable of so much. While the rich have gotten so much richer.
Just horrendous.
Anyone who voted for this Tory government (rich people’s enrichment project at the expense of us all) has this on their hands.

If the nurses can’t do it and you have to be with another child and the ward won’t allow non next-of-kin then I imagine it’s an impossible and traumatic situation.

I think everyone knows this already. People that want to still vote Tory are going to anyway.

That's why there should be someone to comfort it. If I was sent home and reassured by nurses they would be looking after my little one I would be absolutely livid if they had left the baby like this. It could cause long term psychological damage, especially at 4 months old! Short staffed maybe but someone should be looking after this child!

What a smug world of privilege you inhabit.

Be grateful instead of bashing a parent who should not be needed to be a surrogate HCA to prop up an understaffed ward.

Point your ire to your MP because its bloody shocking that within a generation parents being permitted onto children's wards for the comfort of the children (a good thing) have been turned into mandatory 24*7 free staff augmentation units to cut costs at the threat of "be there or your child will suffer".

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?

Yes you are unreasonable. That baby is sick or injured enough to be in hospital. You have no idea why; so you might ignorantly injure it ( because you don't know its physical condition) or you might cross-infect it from or to your own child.

Awful. I understand they can’t just let complete randoms pick up babies for various reasons, but surely there’s a hca/nursing assistant somewhere in the hospital who could have come to hold the baby? I’d have been really upset from both your point of view and the mother of the baby.

Have a day a off.

If 1% of parents are single parents in an isolated position, then about 1 in every 3-5 peads wards will have a child on it that will have to be left for longer than is ideal. Likely to be more, because being isolated isn’t independent of having children with complex needs. So not all that rare for a way to be disrupted by a child left alone.

ideally no one would have to leave their children, and for those who have divided priorities, hcas could look after them, but over a decade of austerity has got us here.

Yes good point - that's another issue for many parents with a child in hospital - the rise in deregulated labour and the gig economy means that parents also lose significant pay and risk their jobs to be in hospital.

Hope you will be happy to pay the relevant benefits to keep a roof over their families' heads and food in their stomachs.

Or you know, we could just staff the wards properly and allow parents to be parents.

@Namechangethisonetime theres very limited surplus of staff anywhere in the hospital who aren’t busy with their own patients.

@Toddlerteaplease it was a shock coming from a paeds hospital with its nice ratios to a general paeds dgh where you might have 1 trained to 10 patients!

There’s a staffing shortage! How many times do NHS staff have to keep saying it.

Paediatrics often have their own staff trained for children including HCAS. HCAs that are ‘spare’ are hard enough to come by in adults they very very rarely have anyone spare of free to help in Paeds.

That one HCA that may be on the ward is probably elsewhere on the ward helping another nurse, running bloods to path lab, helping during a procedure, with another crying child without a parent.

A crying child on a ward isn’t being purposely ignored, staff know full well what’s happening and will feel awful but they are human and can’t do everything at once which has been explained already.

This makes me so sad. When I was 12 I had to go into hospital for a minor operation. There was a small child (maybe 18 months) in the cot next to me. In the whole time I was there no one visited him at all. On the second night I was so sad for him and he cried endless and so desperate to sleep I got up, and took him into bed with me at about 3am - instant silence - BUT no one noticed until about 3 hours later when they came to do his obs - apparently there was pandemonium and security were called but me and Wayne (that was his name) slept through it. I got told off by the ward sister - but she she seemed more understanding than anything

Sorry I know it's not relevant OP but your post made me remember this. It
s so hard to hear a baby crying and unattended especially a sick one. I still sometimes wonder what happened to Wayne.

It's not always possible for the mum to stay. My daughter got induced on her due date due to a life threatening birth defect being detected the day before. I was sent an hour away to a high level nicu hospital to deliver. 3 weeks later after surgery, nearly losing her, total life support we came back to local hospital. I also had a 5 year old that was starting school that week, she has stayed with my parents whilst we were in the ither hoapital. I had NO choice whatsoever to leave her overnight. Other daughter could not stay with me at the hospital because for 1 it's just not practical, and 2 it was in ghe height of covid. I went home guilty every afternoon knowing that I had to leave her in a little plastic box without her mum until after id taken the other one to school at 9am.
I hope to god you are never in that situation where you feel so much guilt no matter which way you turn.

@Wishiwasatailor that's not been my experience when I've done agency in DGH's the ratios have been the same. Though we have the luxury of saying that we are full. The patient can go elsewhere. You could not pay me enough money to work full time in a DGH. The lack of PICU back up terrifies me! Especially in one of the rural ones. Where the nearest retrieval team is 90 minutes away.

Oh it’s awful. It’s heartbreaking. When my son was in NICU of course I couldn’t hold him so I just sat with him but felt like I was intruding on the nurses because there was a very complicated set of beeping going on with the nurses doing something each time it happened. In my mind, I should have sat with my son and that was the right and proper thing to do, but I remember turning my head to the left and the nurse saying ‘don’t look at that baby’
And I couldn’t understand why.
It was because the baby wasn’t going to make it and they knew it. And they didn’t want me in the room when it happened.
They didn’t tell me to leave my son, but I rethought my camping by his incubator idea. The nurses where keyed up, they were anticipating things. My son got the least attention cause he didn’t need the attention. That’s how I see it now. Not having a team of people around a patient means nothing has gone wrong. I’d just keep saying that to myself.