Do nursing staff not wash patients anymore or change sheets?

[keepswimming38]

My daughter has been admitted to hospital with meningitis. She’s on an infectious diseases ward. I’ve been by her side most of the day for 3 days and despite her not being able to move as she is so weak, not one nurse has asked her if she wants to freshen up, have a wash, change her sheets. I’ve done it for her. Is this usual? The nurses are sat next to their little computer trolleys, or chatting at nurses station, so not all run off their feet I would say.

Ask to speak to the nurse in charge and tell her your concerns.

I don’t have any experience with young adults in hospital but I do remember when dd was little and often in hospital.

I was surprised that the nurses didn’t do what I would think of as nursing at all. That was all the parents. That caring, looking after side of things.

Nurses were all about bringing round the medicines, doing obs and that sort of thing.

When I was in after a difficult birth with DD, my sheets were soaked through with blood and goodness knows what. Despite asking multiple times, the nurses were more interested in chatting about their holidays and divvying up a cake one of them had baked. In the end, I stripped the bed myself and asked for clean sheets to do it myself, despite being in no fit state to do so. I had been lying on those dirty sheets for 3 days at that point. I honestly believe those 10 days in hospital contributed massively to my PND - I had to fight at every turn for even the most basic care.

Hope your daughter is soon better @keepswimming38

I hate these threads - why not (after the event) say ward X in Hospitam Y the nursing staff left patients lying in blood - or even name the bad staff - the upshot of all the complaining is that it gets generalised to -the nhs is crap when in fact it’s only some parts of it

When I spent 4 days in hospital a while back it was expected ( if you were able ) to wash yourself and dress in clothes and sit in the chair beside your bed during the day
They bought a bowl of water to the bed and assisted those less mobile.
The sheets were changed daily .

I've unfortunately in the past had several week + long stays in hospital, all but one of the times I was fully mobile beds were made daily, I think sheets changed every other day. After surgery I was assisted with washing, bed baths until I was able to walk to the bathroom.
The last time I was an inpatient was 9 years ago so I'm not sure if things have changed now.

I hope your daughter makes a quick & full recovery 💐

Morale aside- it is your job and you’re being paid for it. You do 12 hour shifts but you are not doing them 5 days a week.

I hear you.
28 years ago i hemorrhaged after giving birth. I bled for 2 days, was covered in dried blood from waist to knee, not washed until the third day. And the nurses were really huffy about being asked to lift my baby so i could breastfeed - i had a cannula, and bled every time i moved....

I’m a nurse and I am going to very strongly disagree with you on this, it’s actually quite offensive, and such a misguided assumption that because nurses now have a degree they won’t ‘nurse’. Nurses now have degrees because they are now asked to take on so much more than they ever did in the past, tasks that doctors would have performed years ago are now being asked of nurses, trust me when I say you want someone who could handle a degree to be your nurse. Anyway OP - they should be changing the sheets? I’ve not worked in a hospital setting for sometime but yes that was usually done daily. Often with younger patients they are a little less precious, often leaving them their independence and dignity of not having someone wash them (especially teenagers/very young adults) but they would usually ask. Can your daughter wash herself at the moment? I was in hospital last year (I’m 39) and they changed the sheets daily but could see I could wash and shower independently.

I see you did not take note of anything I said about pt/ staff numbers. Nor of what we are paid for this level of work. It is Victorian.

Oh and the other day I was banking elsewhere and discovered half an hour past breakfast time that we were doing housekeeping that day too. I had to spend an hour dishing out breakfast. That was an hour I could have done 2- 4 washes in. It was only because I was asking that they got it at all. None of us knew the routines.

Unfortunately 3/4 healthcare per ward is becoming normal. I did have a more sedate shift one day last month with 6 of us on, it was bliss.

In recent admissions of a LO I have observed patients consistently asking for water with noone on the ward having any at all, a lady soiling herself because she had been asking for help and noone returned, an older gent laying in a soiled pad for hours, and falls when noone has been around to respond to calls for help.
It is actually terrifying.
Even if a visitor is there, they are not necessarily able to physically help with some things.
This is an absolute crisis.
I also noticed on my last hospital experience that the patients didn't have buzzers to press when they needed help. I don't know if this is a general thing now?

Wow, the nurse bashing on here is unoleasant.

Fingers crossed for a speedy recovery for your daughter.
My experience with acute hospital care is that nurses do observations, sort out medication, answer relatives questions, update paperwork on the computer. Because they have to do this for so many patients, plus if a patient worsens, they wouldn’t have time to wash patients. This is what the HCAs do, but there aren’t many of them compared to the number of the patients on the ward. Plus they have to answer relatives’ questions.
The cleaners spent most of their time cleaning the floors. Not saying that isn’t important, but it always looks strange with a sparkling floor but dirty toilets (I know it only takes one person to mess up a just cleaned toilet but I always though you need to shift the priority from floors to bathrooms).
There does seem to be a lack of basic care. I don’t see how relatives could be expected to give care - even if they were willing and able, they wouldn’t necessarily know what needs to be done next and when food will come etc. I wonder if there are differences in expectations of relatives e.g on a women only ward I’m assuming that there wouldn’t be an expectation of personal care by husbands.

We are on day 9 of being in hospital with my child and I agree, they seemed put out yesterday when I asked for new sheets for her bed. As she's a teenager I am staying with her and able to support her self care but when my parents have been in hospital recently too there seemed a real lack of this. I presume it's cost cutting and less staff available.

It’s always like this on mumsnet@Holdonforsummer

We’ve recently lost a nurse and HCA per shift but been given an extra 9 patients. We’re at breaking point.

They will very very short staffed over the school holidays.

Oh yes ... good ol .. end pj paralysis

My mum was on a ward for a couple of weeks last month. By the time I arrived for visiting every morning she had been washed and her bed sheets changed. This is a hospital in Essex if relevant.
I hope your daughter makes a speedy recovery x

This
The trust I work at have stopped all agency staff
The problem is a lot of agency staff in speciality areas have worked there previously and are very experienced
Have had to resigned their permanent post and do agency because of child care etc
I know of wards even cutting back staff.
And newly qualified nurses not being given preceptorship ...
To quote the 8c over emergency care where I work "because they are on the register ".

I’ve read the thread and it seems the consensus (from people who know the issue first hand) is HCA shortages. Is this due to lack of funding / poor resourcing decisions or a lack of people willing to fill those posts (for example due to tighter immigration restrictions)?

I was in an NHS hospital in 1991 for a few nights and when I asked whether I could have a bath and a hair wash, the nurses had to remove junk and pot plants from the bath that no-one ever seemed to use. This was a large mixed ward. So I don't think that patient hygiene has necessarily become less of a priority over the years!

Cost cutting. Lots of north western health trusts - actually all the ones I know of - are in dire financial measures.

Still being told to save money. Have you not heard that all recruitment has stopped due to cost? There’s been a few threads about it.

our hospital has been told it needs to reduce its wage bill by 50%. Also a complete ban on bank staff. So if someone calls in sick they no longer replace that person with a bank nurse/HCA

Very frightening. Thank goodness she has someone to advocate for her!