Hospital rant - AIBU that this is not acceptable

[Tiredandfedup12]

DC has a life threatening illness that requires 24 hour care - daily iV and iV meds as well as other meds.
we were admitted to hospital Friday night and it’s now sunday Night so on our third night.
we are STILL waiting for her medications to be prescribed - her daily usual medications.
I have chased and chased. Nurse has just come in to say that it now won’t be done again tonight.
AIBU that this is ridiculous ?

Hope you get sorted OP the last time I wasn't happy with my son's care I put him in a wheelchair take him to A&E myself. He had an obvious injured foot from when he fell the day before due to his health condition.

After 8 hours waiting on the ward waiting to find out if they were going to x Ray him again. Because when they X rayed him the night before they hadn't done the part that was bruised and swollen. Struggling to take ds to the toilet repeated requests for pain meds and ignored I had enough. I'd also had no sleep.

I'm a student nurse.

You know what, we can all make adjustments and excuses as we do, but let's face it - this is a complete shit show. It takes a few mins for a Dr to prescribe, there will be someone around with the capacity to do it, they just aren't pulling their fingers out. And I know damn well it is entirely possible, I've worked in enough hospitals to see that. Just ridiculous. I've had enough of it and not even qualified!!!!!!

A shit show indeed. I had all this with my late OH. He had Parkinsons and needed his meds on time so as not to deteriorate rapidly. It took days to get the meds - nurses trying to grab a doc to prescribe, dispensary being backlogged etc. etc. A total farce. He got worse and worse while waiting for surgery, which kept being delayed. Mind you I was less worried about the meds than I was by them allowing him to dehydrate - nil by mouth for days as the op kept being delayed. They kept saying that a drip would be put up in theatre - and in the meantime? - the days whilst we were waiting? It was all disgraceful. He went downhill and died in the end several months later.

Nothing new. My Mum was a diabetic and went in for a hip replacement. They didn't administer the insulin for several days, even though she kept reminding them. She ended up in a terrible state, shaking and delusional, and only then did they take it seriously and start administering the insulin. You really have to keep hassling them as there's simply no sense of urgency and very much a "can't be bothered" attitude from far too many staff.

Get off the wards when you qualify would be my advice (sadly).

As a nurse, that is absolutely unacceptable. Med Rec should be done on admission to ward (give or take a few hours for emergency's). The nurses should be all over this and if ward doctor not doing it should escalate it.

Whatever you do don't get ill on a bank holiday. My family member died because there was no consultant cover for 4 days. The only doctor was a very inexperienced junior who was absolutely run off his feet. It was desperate.

I'm a bit confused... I understand the nurse saying no meds that haven't been prescribed, but you can't get IV meds without a prescription?

Do the IV meds you have at home not have the little sticker on them indicating what they are and who they are for?

Just because the hospital haven't prescribed them in this instance, doesn't mean they are not prescribed meds.

The problem dd not lie with understaffing on the ward, The nurses were all at the desk chatting away about the parties they had been to etc. While I was tearing my hair out trying to keep my OH fed and hydrated and get his meds.

Sorry but this smacks of someone who hasn’t a clue what is involved in prescribing, verifying the correct dose, ensuring there are no interactions that might be dangerous, and doing all the checks necessary. The physical prescribing might take a few minutes, but ensuring it’s safe to prescribe can take much longer.

I am a doctor, I have done weekend ward cover, and I can fully 100% believe that they wouldn’t have had the time. Ward cover is horrendous, you’re constantly pulled in different directions, bleep constantly going off, everyone is sure that their issue is the most urgent. You’re balancing all these spinning plates and praying you’re making the right choices and prioritising the right things because if you’re not, people will come to harm. The shift ends and you can’t just hand stuff over, because generally the night shift will have even more to deal with. So anything you haven’t got done in the day probably just won’t get done. So you stay as late as you can, probably starving hungry because you’ve not stopped to eat anything all day, until you have to go home because you’re back again the next morning to do it all again.

The attitude from some of the ward staff can be awful, they think if you’re not there on their ward doing things they can see and understand, that you’re just sitting somewhere having a cup of tea and chilling. They genuinely don’t believe how busy the medical team are and think that any delays are you just “not pulling your finger out”. That, combined with the fact they can sometimes seriously underestimate the thing they are asking you to do (as demonstrated above) can make for very tricky working conditions.

I don’t know what medication OP’s DC needed, or why it wasn’t done, I can just fully believe the medical team were so overwhelmed they didn’t have a chance to do it. It isn’t good enough, but it won’t get better until the NHS is better staffed, or the huge drains on doctors’ time (piles of admin, slow computer systems that take ages to do anything, duplicate work, the time it takes just to find and verify information etc etc) are sorted.

but the nurses cannot do these things without a doctor prescribing them. Sometimes there are a list of things needing done that i cant do any of until a doctor sorts ut first. IDLS, Meds, fluids, reviews. Im not saying it acceptable but im sick of hearing Oh the nurses arnt busy their sitting down! There could be 50 nurses but if no doctor, stuff cannot be done! And a doctor at the weekend could be covering 4 wards and hold a page for referrals.

YANBU to be angry and it's an unbelievable situation. I, too, learnt the hard way that there's no benefit to following the rules. I don't surrender medication to hospital staff and I don't even admit I have it. I just wait until no one is around and give it my child as per his usual schedule.

Yet in a very high profile case a child died because a parent did exactly that. The hospital doctors had prescribed another drug to treat an emergency situation and had cancelled the other med on the hospital drug chart due to potential interaction. When the drug wasn't given the parents gave it from their own supply, unbeknownst to the staff. I understand the frustration and worry about a child not getting their usual meds. We need more doctors and better systems in place to keep patients safe. Better communication and explanation is needed, but nobody has time.

I'm so sorry about your husband. My husband discharged himself from the Acute Medical Unit last night over the same thing. They apologised for not giving him his usual meds, but this not the first time this has happened. In bloody oncology too! He said he'd prefer to die at home because he's had enough. X

What a mess this all is.

NotInTheMorning - I am sorry you are working under these appalling conditions. My late OH was a doctor - I remember his house job years as a nightmare.

My DDs and I stayed with my OH during his hospital stay - all day. It was the only way to make sure he was being looked after. The staff did not quibble this - I did not ask why they didn't - maybe because he was also a doctor. Who knows? Who cares? - if we had not been there all day he would not have been fed or toileted. I remember standing with him trying to balance his 6 stone frame on a bedpan while he was in pain - waiting for nurses to come and get him off it - for 40 minutes!

Yes my father had no fluids for over 48 hours because the “speech therapist “ went off shift at 5 pm Friday to return at 9 am Monday. The doctors wouldn’t make a decision in her absence. The DOCTORS!!!! Surely they can diagnose if someone is able to swallow.

Of course they do put they have to be prescribed by a hospital doctor. They lock my son's in the locker so I can't get to them. I got that fed up of him being given meds late after saying they were giving one by IV but never did.

We can give meds in A&E that's why we have they tell us to pack meds if going up from home. But once admitted we have to wait for them to be prescribed by a doctor within the hospital. It's frustrating because it's often a different brand to what they're used to. On a weekend and after 5 it's just what's available in the emergency pharmacy.

I am in the uk and I pay monthly for the nhs, via my tax and NI. NHS treatment is only “free” at the point of use in that we don’t pay directly when we need it. Everyone who pays tax and NI pays for it whether they need it or not.

The issue is that the current Govt isn’t spending enough on the NHS to keep pace with needs - treatments are more expensive and the population is ageing. Look at how much less they are spending than the last Labour government. Tories are more interested in cutting taxes for the wealthy than on spending on health and welfare.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget

They have to be re prescribed in hospital

Not quite correct (CSM here)

We do pay , we pay national insurance, also whether we use the NHS or not.

@greyhairnomore I hadn't realised that, thanks for educating me :)

You're quite right, @endofthelinefinally . It is a risk, but one I'm happy to take based on personal circumstances. I do agree I shouldn't have to take a risk - there should be sufficient staff 24/7, including Drs, nurses, specialists, pharmacists etc. Every single person that makes a hospital run. But that isn't the way it is and you'll be lucky to see a Dr on the ward on a weekend.

I know how bad it is. I was a nurse in the NHS for over 30 years. Now I am a long time patient. I have worked through 4 major reorganisations, I have written endless business cases for staffing and money saving ideas, I have fought my corner to resist takeovers by people like Virgin Health. I have been horrified by the standards of care on wards. In the end, nobody wants to pay enough tax and unfortunately even if they did, the money would be wasted, misappropriated or lost.

How can it be short staffed but also the 5th biggest employer in the world?
Make it make sense.