To ask why people think it’s okay to abuse NHS staff?

[notafanofthisanymore]

I’m NHS admin. I just got a call through to me and I was the wrong person to help, but as it was a simple query (think where to go as opposed to anything medical), I tried to help the patient.

I understand that having health issues is stressful. But I’ve just been called a useless thick bitch and told that my job is the reason the NHS is sinking, because I told this patient something they didn’t like. I was then told that if this patient died on the way to their appointment it would be blood on my hands, and I should hope they don’t.

I’m just baffled. I was polite, answered this person’s question and got abused because they didn’t like the answer (having to go somewhere else for something they needed). In what world is this acceptable?

Ive worked in the NHS for 46 years dual qualified senior. A couple of years ago I was very sick and throughout my year of sickness was treated like absolute trash. I considered suicide at one point. Obstructive poor treatment and judgy couldnt care less attitude.
If they are doing this to me knowing Im a senior how the hell are they treating other people.

I can't even imagine how galling this must have felt I am so sorry.

We Don’t have an issue with people who are disappointed by a missed/cancelled appointment. It’s okay to be disappointed. But taking it out on the messenger isn’t.

It's not disappointing when a hospital appointment is cancelled. It's DEVASTATING! I waited for over a year in daily agony with endometriosis to see a consultant Gynae, it was expedited twice by my GP, I was so sick I nearly lost my job. I held on to that appointment like a glimmer of hope in the misery that was my life at that point and the week before they cancelled it. No explanation. No sorry. Just cancelled it and said I'd go back on the waiting list. Not even offered the next available appointment because I've already waited so long in agony. Just back to the back of the queue. Disappointed doesn't come close! I had a complete breakdown and started scream crying I can't live like this anymore I'm in so much pain I just want to die! Obviously not my finest moment but fuck me if you think disappointing covers what patients are facing when the help they think is coming is cut off you're really out of touch. Yes I scream cried at the messenger but the messenger is the only person available for me to talk to. I can't talk to the doctor or the person who decides if I get an appointment or not they hide behind the messenger unreachable so who else are we supposed to be impressing the gravity of our illness upon whilst begging for help? There is no one else!

Obviously everyone should understand the pharmacist can't do anything about their GP but until you've been stuck in the GP/pharmacy/GP/pharmacy doom cycle desperate for your pain medication that you can't get because the prescription is repeatedly sent to the wrong place or just incorrect and you can't access the people who can actually fix it to explain to them and get it sorted because the are hiding behind the messenger you don't understand the desperation people are feeling and the fact you describe it as disappointment just demonstrates that.

Obviously it is never ok to abuse a staff member and I never have but I have been treated with utter disdain when having an emotional breakdown begging for help and telling people that just refusing care for years on end is not good enough. Respect needs to be a two way street and patients are shown no dignity or respect which is why they're arsey back a lot of the time like posters are highlighting in this thread.

Ditto. DH has had cancer for 8 years. Some of his "care" has been abysmal, and he's had to go through PALS a few times as he's literally got nowhere trying to get resolution to life threatening treatment problems. Likewise, MIL spent 48 hours languishing in A&E with double pneumonia and it was only contacting PALS that got her any attention and eventually moved to a ward - prior to that, none of the A&E staff showed any interest at all and we had to go on a 24 hour rota to give her food and drink and take her to the toilet! Back in 2008, we had to complain about FIL who had cancer and was languishing being passed around different wards and different hospitals for a year before finally getting the operation he needed that should have been under the (?) 16 week target - again we made a formal complaint about that too.

Far too many people are willing to put up with the NHS crap service and it's why they get away with it. They need to be challenged, it's the only way to get any improvement. Thankfully, more and more people are suffering the poor treatment and we've lost the ridiculous hero-worshipping of the NHS, so more people are willing to stand up and complain, both patients and staff!

Wow, it’s clear who has worked in the NHS and who hasn’t.
Clearly all NHS workers are horrible people and general members of the public are all angels.
The reality is there’s good and bad people in every aspect of life (public Vs private sector, old and young, all genders etc). But whatever is going on in anyones lives does not give them an excuse to be rude to someone else. What if the NHS worker has a sick relative on palliative care - does that give them a reason to be rude to patients or their families? Absolutely not. The same applies to patients and relatives.
Everyone is human and makes mistakes sometimes, but I can’t believe the amount of people trying to justify the regular abuse of NHS staff and somehow suggesting they’re all bringing it on themselves.

Don't forget now that there is also Martha's rule - https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/marthas-rule/

We found this very helpful when staff stopped doing the tests the doctors asked to be done every 4 hours and stopped administering the meds the doctors had asked to be administered.

I had tried asking the nurses on multiple occasions first and got nowhere.

Us getting this intervention will have saved the NHS a fortune in care I would otherwise have needed.

People are EXPLAINING the behaviour, not excusing it.

And also a polite complaint which nevertheless expresses frustration or dismay, but which contains no swearing or personal attacks is not “abuse”

I think OP’s caller was verbally abusive, but might have had a valid complaint which needed urgently addressing and which he felt had been ignored.

You can EXPLAIN all you want. If the behaviour is persistent, which it often is, then it is an excuse.
Lots of people in the thread have detailed rude/inappropriate behaviour from NHS staff and they don’t think it’s ok (which I agree with). Can the staff explain it away with things going on in their personal lives like if their relatives are sick/dying? No they can’t and shouldn’t. As you should always be at a minimum civil. So if staff shouldn’t be able to have poor behaviour (which I don’t think they should) then neither should patients or relatives.
The exception being when patients are confused outside of their control (eg dementia, delirium). Which, in my experience, staff are very accepting of and try to work with it, providing they can stay physically safe.

I think staff frustration comes from the point of view, like this OP, of: she helped a patient on the phone (even though it wasn’t her job and she could have just passed him along). Then at the last minute he asked about another issue - getting a wheelchair. This is something that OP cannot help with.
Not that she doesn’t want to help, she cannot do what the patient was asking.
Then she gets rewarded for helping with abuse.

Patients/relatives often think NHS staff can do various jobs/help in various ways that they simply cannot. It’s often not an unwillingness to help, it’s an inability to. That’s the key difference the public don’t often understand.

The NHS is an irrelevance here, really. The point is that some members of the general public can be rude and offensive-to nurses, admin, sales callers, shop workers, police, traffic wardens, bouncers.

I am a teacher/SENCo and have been sworn at, told I am fucking useless, told to piss off, I don’t know what I’m talking about etc etc

There’s sadly no special protective cloak around the NHS that stop people being rude or unpleasant.

Being ‘told on a weekly basis how shocking the system is, how no one answers the phones, how they’ve waited for “ages” for their medication etc.’ is not abuse. That is frustrated service users.

People on a daily basis expecting you ‘to chase their medication queries,’ is not abuse. That is people who need your help.

People not wanting to ‘sort their own medications,’ and it being down to you, is not abuse. That is people who maybe don’t understand the system or could have been misinformed, thinking the pharmacy is where their medications are sorted. We cannot prescribe or dispense them ourselves.

An official complaint because you weren’t answering the phone is not abuse. That’s someone who has become exasperated.

I don’t even think shouting, “Answer the phones!!!” is abuse, but others may not agree.

People being ‘disappointed’ (😬) about long awaited appointments being cancelled is not abuse. It’s despair.

Thank you for trying your best and caring. I am sorry that you too are on a long GP waiting list and that you are taking medication.

It’s a shame that your role does not pay more. I lost my minimum wage job due to my serious illness. Financial stress is a massive worry for people who are too ill to work. We are in the midst of losing everything, not just our health. Maybe our ‘stuff to do’ is to try and prevent repossession of our home or to negotiate a payment plan for unpaid utilities, so we can continue to heat our home whilst recovering from treatment or surgery. Or maybe our ‘stuff to do’ is to lie down, before we collapse. Or close our eyes, since our head hurts so much. Or we need to end the call as we need the bathroom and cannot control it. Or we are going to vomit. We are not always at our best.

People do expect you to be able to help sort out their medication queries. It is possibly not their fault and they rely on the people who work in the system to help them solve the problem. Who do you get into trouble with if you try to help everyone?

You should not be subjected to personal insults or other aggression, but this is not what you are describing. You are describing a system that is malfunctioning really badly but almost hoping the patients don’t notice.

We notice. We suffer. We know most of you try and it’s not personal. Thank you for your hard work.

My GP and local pharmacy have generally been excellent. The lady at the pharmacy counter became more friendly towards me once she realised I had a serious illness 😂 My oncology teams also try their best. On emergency admission to hospital my care has, on occasion, been woefully inadequate. Some staff have been shocking. Over the last 18months I have witnessed lots of patients complain. Much of the time their complaints were warranted. Ì have complained myself. I have not witnessed anyone be abusive, but staff have told me about being verbally abused and assaulted, which is not okay.

I'm sorry op, unfortunately working with the public means you have to deal with the scumbags amongst us.

I agree the public don’t understand, which leads to the frustration. There are no doubt some complicated systems, which doesn’t help.

From OP:
”…despite it not being my job and patient transport saying they needed to speak to the patient. The patient wasn’t taking no for an answer and said if I didn’t sort it, they wouldn’t be coming in. Eventually I got patient transport to agree to speak to the patient but they’re not meant to.” So it seems this patient was told no, but when they insisted (no doubt ‘rudely’) as they couldn’t attend otherwise, it was sorted. So it could be sorted then, but the patient had to fight for it? Well done to the OP for persevering for an hour! It turns out that because the patient wouldn’t take no for an answer, the answer was, in fact, yes! You can understand how this could be interpreted as an initial unwillingness to help and not an inability to.

Also from OP, where she doesn’t seem to understand how her own actions escalated the situation:
“I explained where to go and the caller then told me “well you have to book a wheelchair for me”. When I explained that wasn’t possible they got abusive, I explained how to get one and they then started to swear down the phone because I’d “told them two different things” So it was possible then? ÒP went on to explain how it was possible, but only after the patient became abusive. Has the OP misunderstood ‘you’ as meaning her personally and not the hospital/clinic? That does seem a basic error, although does not justify the caller saying she was ‘thick.’ She did tell him two different things. Firstly that it wasn’t possible, then how it was? Nothing to do with the wheelchair request being secondary. The wheelchair was something that the OP could help with and she eventually did, after the caller initially became abusive. Again, an initial stated unwillingness, which resolved into an ability to give the patient the information they needed.

in a previous post I was a little unkind about the OP, but I do recognise it’s not her fault and it’s probably down to lack of training, rather than her intention to be obstructive. She is very clear about what is not part of her job and is disappointed she doesn’t get more recognition for helping when it’s not her job to do so. This is a management issue to address staff feeling like this. It is also clear to see on these posts that there is animosity towards NHS workers, born out of direct personal experiences. This is going to be hard to overcome because unfortunately these poor experiences are not isolated incidents and are sometimes described by NHS staff themselves.

I don’t know what the answer is, but it is certainly not insulting or being aggressive to one another.

but the OP spending time sorting something for the patient (despite explaining to them how they could do it themselves ) meant that she wasn’t doing her actual job that other people were needing her to get in with. It’s inefficient and a waste of time .

Talking of inefficiency, I spent 24hrs on an AAU ward last week whilst the newly installed air conditioning unit was working so hard day and night, it sounded like it was going to take off!

All the doors and windows were wide open.

No doubt on review, the cost of running said air conditioning unit will be deemed too high and it will be unplugged and abandoned. We’ll go back to incredibly uncomfortable temperatures on ward for staff and patients alike.

I told the staff they needed to shut the doors - they were trying to air condition the universe! They shrugged their shoulders and the doors remained open.

Why has nobody noticed this applauding waste of resources?

Ah yeah I was in a day surgery ward with a child recently and they had a portable AC which was a great solution... Except that they hadn't sealed the window they were venting it out of 🙄

Forgot to add - and while I was an inpatient they put me on an AC ward as my condition is very heat sensitive. And everyone in my bay has been moved there because there were medical concerns about us coping on the warmer wards....but one staff member kept coming in and saying it was too cold and opening all the windows 🙄. What a waste of electricity

Sadly, it's a cultural issue and NHS customer service is not good or geared to the needs of the patient. It sounds as though it came across as "computah sez". And, by the OP's own admission it was won't do rather than can do.

The OP could actually help the patient, there were the means to do so, so it boils down to a lack of customer service and this prevails throughout the NHS.

It causes acute frustration and dissatisfaction although by being abusove it put the patient on the moral low ground and makes complaints harder to take forward.

Financial stress is a massive worry for people who are too ill to work. We are in the midst of losing everything, not just our health. Maybe our ‘stuff to do’ is to try and prevent repossession of our home or to negotiate a payment plan for unpaid utilities, so we can continue to heat our home whilst recovering from treatment or surgery. Or maybe our ‘stuff to do’ is to lie down, before we collapse. Or close our eyes, since our head hurts so much. Or we need to end the call as we need the bathroom and cannot control it. Or we are going to vomit. We are not always at our best.

Yes, all of this. I have good sick pay (public sector) but for a lot of people I know every additional day off sick is a day of further increased financial stress

For me, talking on the phone hugely exacerbates my symptoms so being bounced from person to person isn't just annoying it's actually dangerous

Likewise, when I am stuck in a stupid spiral being bounced between GP surgery and 111 when I am worrying about my child I get frustrated because all the hours being bounced around are hours I can't fully focus on caring for my child

Big hugs to you and your mum. As a frequent NHS flyer I have experienced this too.

Well the OP definitely isn't coming back after all these stories for patients being treated like shit is she.

I just think it's incredible one of them actually admitted patients are just numbers on a list and they don't give a shit! We all knew it was true but to admit it!? Incredible.

Exactly. Patients need agency and the use of abuse to prevent patients self advocating is horrific.

Agree.

I experienced a subtle version of this while in hospital this week. I luckily had medically trained family nearby so felt well supported

I realised I was not getting the medication or ongoing tests I was meant to get. And also noone had told me the results of the tests I get had in the preceding days (which could have identified a need for further urgent medication).

I asked the nurse assigned to our bay and she said she didn't know anything about my tests or medication or condition. I spoke to family member on the phone and they said to ask to speak to the charge nurse or a doctor. I asked my nurse nicely. She said that was "not an option". I updated my family and my husband used the new helpline implemented to meet the Martha's rule requirements. Within 30 minutes everything was sorted. A doctor came to see me and made sure the tests were being carried out and the medication given. But the nurse was then clearly very angry with me for escalating things and gave me the silent treatment until I was moved to a new ward later they day.

I think in the NHS and in teaching there is even less of a cloak. With a private company if a customer is abusive then they company can decide they don’t want them as a customer. Schools and NHS can’t do that - there are few consequences for those who abuse staff.

As a district nurse I have been spat at, had faeces thrown at me, been urinated on, hot out at, screamed at, insulted, threaten - yet I can’t turn around and refuse to visit as if my team don’t then there’s no one else that will and they need treatment/care

@BlushingmBut I would imagine that many of your housebound patients have mental health problems to react in that way. Whilst a person in full possession of their faculties might swear/use abusive language, VERY few would throw faeces at anyone as a form of complaint

I therefore don’t think you should see that as a personal attack although I do get that it must be HORRENDOUS for you They are clearly in need of proper support which the NHS is currently treating by a couple of visits per day “at home”