To expect fat nurses to have some insight?.

[Vikingess]

Just had a routine health check today at my GP surgery. Two nurses - both considerably overweight - dispensing advice on diet. I
am not overweight -AIBU to expect health professionals to demonstrate the the standards they recommended or at least admit to falling short.

Well this thread has certainly brought out the people I wouldn't want to receive advice from and it's the judgmental ones. I can't see their body shape from here.

I have no problem with taking advice from people with a variety of visual appearance, or indeed online where we can't tell. It is the narrow minded people who absolutely won't hear or learn anything different who love to tell others where they're going wrong that help nobody.

Excuses excuses. Bring a banana in and put where the chocolates are. Bring in healthy food and eat on the break everyone gets.

I am fat because Maureen in ward 6 needed a bedpan so I had to fill my face with chocolates on the way for energy. Give me a break. If that was the case every single nurse would be fat. It’s down to choices.

What would you do if the chocolates were not there and there was a bowl of fruit instead? Do hospitals get chocolates specifically delivered every day to the nurses station?
Absolutely ridiculous argument.

They are treated with dignity. The issue is skirted around if anything, for example 'fat' is never used however some people are incredibly defensive as we've seen from this thread. Telling someone they need to lose weight would be seen as offensive by some.

If you think fat people are treated with dignity, it shows even more just how ill informed and blinkered you are.

The problem is that is written by patients and there are a small subset of CFS who believe they are incurable.

I learnt from various CFS consultants that their patients convinced the condition is untreatable, who fear activity and exercise are much less likely to recover.

That fear of activity and exercise is based on very real experience - exhaustion and post exertional malaise can be very disabling and cause setbacks. It’s also hard to exercise when you don’t even have enough energy to get through work. However it doesn’t follow that no exercise at all is the way to go - that will simply weaken further.

I spoke to many people with LC and CFS. I also had the experience of managing a progressive AI illness where you have to exercise + physio just to keep going.

One woman I encountered had CFS so bad she had considered Dignitas. She started a programme of increasing activity in small increments - first she turned over in bed. Then walked 2 mins outside, then 3 mins. 5 mins might put her in bed for a week. She had to stick to her plan, and do no more or less the activity level for that day, even if she was feeling ok.

With exceptional discipline and determination she pulled herself out in 5 years.

In short: it’s a horrible illness, it’s like being buried alive: but it’s not terminal, degenerative or progressive. It can become incurable if you believe it is.

The problem is that is written by patients and there are a small subset of CFS who believe they are incurable.

I think it’s those that recover that are the small subset. You sound like one of those “if only you think positively, you’ll get better folks”. Are you an ME specialist by the way?

Also, what you’ve described is GET. Which is not recommended.

I can well sympathise with being knackered and stressed. But ime sugar produces short term highs and crashes where you feel worse than you started, so it’s an unstable way of trying to produce energy and focus.

From experience of managing fatigue, exhaustion + stress a much better options is nourishing, sustained release food - protein and complex carbs - to get through it.

What is clear from this thread though is that the NHS is enabling overweight patterns in its own staff by poor food availability. I accept what is available in big London hospital vending machines may not be elsewhere. Let alone the dire stuff they serve the patients!

Recovery is up to 80%.

It’s not GET - that was a very specific and restrictive programme that was not tailored to individual capacity or fluctations and caused a lot of damage. As I said it was discredited.

Pacing is standard though.

“Graded exercise therapy is a term used in varying ways by different services supporting people with ME/CFS. In this guideline, graded exercise therapy is defined as first establishing an individual's baseline of achievable exercise or physical activity, then making fixed incremental increases in the time spent being physically active.”

Which is exactly what the person you described did. Pacing is completely different. That’s done as a way to manage the condition and to stop relapses, but without the specific aim of recovery.

It probably doesn’t help that grateful hospital patients and families are always leaving boxes of chocolates when they leave!

Dh spent a few weeks on a trauma ward recently and there was always a tub of Roses or Quality Street on the desk for the nurses. I’d be picking at them all day if they were under my nose 😂

I must admit I bought the staff chocolates too as I was so grateful for the care they gave dh 😳

If there was fruit you would eat it of course! You could eat a banana or some grapes or cherries in the exact same way. No one is buying fruit for the ward staff, not the staff or the patients or the hospital. Imagine spending £5 a day on fruit for your colleagues! It’s a lot of money each week.
i wonder if there is an infection control risk though, like with fresh flowers?

The chocolates usually come from patients and visitors and are very much appreciated. Also because they are individually wrapped for everyone to rummage through.

Very well put 👌🏿

Or alternatively they could say “ since I’m fat I’ve decided you can be too.” Would that have made you feel better?

Poor nurses are probably time poor when it comes to self care .

That was the principle. But in practice the GET trial protocol meant that baselines and activity levels were determined by the practitioners not the patient in a “one size fits all” regimented and inflexible way. As such it produced deterioration in too many patients (27%) compared to the numbers who benefited.

However, that is not to say that individualised adaptive pacing and activity management cannot be beneficial. It is very difficult to systemise that into any kind of standard treatment protocol though due to very different levels of capacity and fluctuations. So patients are left to their own devices.

If you’re not a nurse then you won’t understand how it works. You just won’t “ get it”!

The hours, night shifts, stress, continual multitasking on your feet for 12 hrs takes its toll, exhaustion and burn out. Cortisol is a huge player here.

Very judgey people on this thread with elements of misogyny.

Many doctors smoke , drink to excess, take drugs.
Medicine is seen as mostly male dominated but as long as what they get up to in private is invisible, let’s all pretend they’re super healthy role models and fat bash the nurses.

It doesn’t matter what they do, fat people can’t win.

I mean, as I’ve said, I’m fat. From dieting. Which led to an ED. I now have a healthy relationship with food. And because of the threads of the last few days (and others), I downloaded MFP just out of interest. (Not recommended to people with EDs and I probably shouldn’t have but I was approaching it with curiosity to see if I really did eat loads and loads without realising).

Obviously I’ve only got a snapshot but my eating doesn’t change much - apart from the odd time where I might be hormonal and have some chocolate or similar. My calories for the last 3 days averaged 1930. I got 10 portions of veg on 2 of the days, and 6 on another. Obviously not low enough for weight loss (but that’s not my aim), but certainly not in the realms of what people assume I must be eating. I also don’t drink any alcohol, don’t smoke, can’t exercise but do ensure I do as much as I can within my limitations. I do relaxation (meditation/mindfulness) sessions to lower my anxiety and stress, I try to get out in the fresh air. I do as much as I possibly can for my health and wellbeing yet still I’d be judged on my outward appearance.

And before the “not everyone has an ED or chronic illness” people without those things could do exactly as I do, apart from maybe being active (like HCPs), not lose weight and STILL be judged for being lazy, greedy and bringing down the NHS.

Edited - I’ve just worked out at my weight, I need to eat 2100 cals to maintain it. Hardly massive amounts.

No one is judging just pointing out the hours, the stress, the multi tasking does not mean you cannot take in healthy food for meal breaks and snacks. Don't say you don't get a break, you do. It isn't fat bashing to point out people have choices about what they eat and to blame it on hours, stress etc is a bit of a cop out.

Nothing to do with misogyny I've seen plenty of overweight male HCPs too.

When do I get a break?

'When do I get a break?'

Everyone gets a break. I worked in the NHS many years ago and even those with the worst time management skills were made to go on a break as obviously exhausted staff do not perform well.

This '12hr shifts with no break and only a tin of quality street for nutrition' tale is not true.

Once the denial and enabling is addressed only then will people be able to make changes. You've just got to want to do it.

@Janiie you really know it all don't you? Telling people their experience isn't true because you did it years ago, things change and your experiences are not identical to others. You are very narrow minded and can't see that anyone else has different experiences to you, it's really sad!

Also Janiie just because you've worked in a hospital or two doesn't mean that you know what all hospitals are like. Stating that every ward has a staff room with a fridge and microwave for nurses to take their breaks just shows how little experience of hospitals you actually have.

Mine doesn't have a staff room. It does have a fridge full of fruit, orange juice, yogurts, sandwiches and salads for patients. We are not permitted to use it.
There is no microwave.
There is no staff room. We have handovers in the "quiet room". That's where relatives are taken to receive bad news, so obviously there is no eating in there nor can we leave our belongings there.
Our belongings hang on pegs in the ladies' bathroom. Now maybe you wouldn't mind eating food which has been hanging in front of toilets for 6-11 hours, but most normal people would have an issue with that.
Our options are either go down 9 floors to the canteen to eat there, go all the way to the ground floor to buy shite from the shop or café, or not eat lunch and just snack on the ward.

You’re doing well beret . That’s all very reasonable.

Just shut out the noise.

I sometimes wonder if all these fat bashers on here are in fact stuck on the sofa with prohibitive obesity and full of self hatred. Because I really can’t work out why people who are feeling ok want to bash others .

If you worked in the NHS “ many years ago “, try going back now as a nurse !
It’s a totally different ball game, even compared to pre Covid.

You’re just showing that you really don’t get it lol !
Nothing to do with time management either.

Incorrect.

Protected breaks are not protected for all healthcare professionals.

If it's not true, then I must have hallucinated over a decade of clinical practice. Because there are many, many times I work full shifts with no break even to use the bathroom, where I get to drink only because members of my team pass cups of coffee to me as I go past.

I have many family and friends still at the nhs. I visit relatives and see the same set up on wards

Staff get breaks. What they choose to eat is up to them but sadly, if they choose high fat unhealthy crap it will cause them to be overweight. It isn't rocket science.

As I say people have got to want to change but first step is to stop with the excuses.

Staff are meant to get breaks. Some staff have a right to a break written in to contracts. Not all staff do. And clinical circumstances can mean even people who have breaks in their contract don't get them.