No, this isn't the case. Poor care isn't because nurses are heartless and lazy. Why the hell would anyone go into nursing unless they actually wanted to care for people? You think there's anything attractive about the money (!), the 13 hour shifts followed by 2 hours unpaid overtime every night, just so you can complete the bare minimum of paperwork required to protect yourself when a complaint is made in 5 years time. Nurses are human too, and everyone wants to be good at their job. But just how quickly can you wash and toilet 8 bed-bound elderly patients? Is it really true that the nurses who fail to feed 8 people their dinner, in a compassionate and unhurried manner, before it gets cold, do so because they "can't be bothered" to be in 8 places at once? Lazy sods.
It's shit being a nurse. I want to help, I want to be a good nurse, but there isn't enough time in the day. It's hard enough to be the sole carer of half a dozen dependent adults, but these people are SICK and as well as the basic washing and toileting and feeding and talking they need observations and medications and blood taking and dressings and handover to ward round. They need taking to theatre, to X ray, ECGs and drug trials. Painkillers, morphine checking out (with 2 qualified nurses and the CD book and keys) and they need that NOW. We need to write down every ml of liquid taken in and weigh, measure and examine every ml out. Changing bedsheets, cleaning equipment, serving dinners, ordering meds, ordering stock, running to other wards to borrow stock because we've run out, sorting out staffing for the night shift, photocopying, ordering patient notes, ordering tests, making appointments for x ray, echo, endless, endless paperwork. It's all done by those nurses who "can't be bothered" to care for their patients.
Nursing students aren't taught to care anymore... well, I hope that's not true, but one thing I do teach students, especially those who are nearly qualified, is to delegate everything that can be delegated. You will drown if you don't. God I would love to wash a patient, that personal connection is why I came into nursing, but while there are HCA's to do that, I can't justify omitting medications, tests, dressings etc, through lack of time. Everybody has a tale of a family member who wasn't washed, wasn't fed by the lazy nurses obsessed by IV meds and blood pressures, but really, honestly, would you rather that "basic care" took precedence over medications and surgery? Because thats the choice - if those drug-trolley obsessed nurses see the error of their ways and decided NOT to give medications, there is no one else to do it. To be honest, any patients with illnesses that can be cured with a good bath would probably be better off at home.
Not that I don't think washing, and toileting and talking to patients are important. They are, and I hate it when I can't get these thing done properly. I hate delegating it to HCA's, when I'd much rather do it myself. I hate going home, having stayed an hour and a half past the end of my shift, and still feeling like I've done a crap job because I left a patient in pain for far too long. I hate it that my heart sinks when one of my patients vomits and my first thought is "I don't have time for this". I really really hate myself and I try my best to convince myself and my patient that I have all the time in the world to clean them up and change their sheets, because the worst thing for me would be for them to feel bad about it, to let it show how stressed out I am, how the patient in the next bed is crying out for morphine, the patient next to him has started a new medication and needs close observation, the patient in the bed opposite is due in theatre, and how everyone has been served their dinner and they all need help with it, and I can't do any of it while I am helping change sicky sheets. I know it's not their fault, I know, but then I come out of their room, they're all fresh and tidy now, but I run straight into the ward sister - the family of another of my patients has made a complaint about me, they've come to visit and there's Mrs A's dinner sat in front of her, now stone cold, because I haven't taken the time to help her eat it. Lazy, uncaring nurse. And I can't even apologise properly, because Mr B's monitors are beeping, looks like he's had a bad reaction to that medication, and I have to cut them off and deal with that.
Sorry for the rant but I am feeling so down about my job at the moment. 13 hour shifts and we never, ever finish on time. I never take a full lunch break, do hours and hours of unpaid overtime. My back and legs are a mess because I just don't sit down, except on my lunch break, which I don't usually get until about 5pm, after starting at 7am. I can't even get a drink at work, because not only is it 5 minutes wasted, there's also the chance you might need the toilet later, and there's another 5 minutes you can't afford to waste. That's the reality of being a nurse. But all I ever hear is how lazy nurses are, how we don't care about our patients. I know people who have jobs where they are sat down all day, where they go on facebook and text during work hours, who have lunch breaks and tea breaks and don't feel guilty about going home at the end of the day. Yet these are some of the people who feel justified complaining how selfish and lazy nurses are. Did you know the nurses on our ward buy the soap, shampoo and toothpaste for the patients? From the supermarket, out of our own wages, because the hospital doesn't supply it and the patients never think to bring it with them.
Sometimes I'm proud to be a nurse but sometimes I hate it.
