Undercover Nurse - anyone watching?

[assumedname]

Glad I'm not on that ward.

A great deal of this programme was terribly shocking but I think it set out to shock too much. Watching the trailer for it last week it showed the woman wanting to die, stating that being on the ward had driven her to this. In todays programme it is revealed that she had only in fact just arrived. Also, I think as nurses we have all had the patient who says 'Oh, thank goodness you're here, no-one has been near me all day' which really isn't true but it just their way of saying they are glad to see you. They will say it to the next shift on too!

Overall though most of the things here were terrible, truely terrible. Never, ever would that patient dying be left on her own on my ward. It was obvious from her breathing pattern that this was what was happening - the nurse should have known that. Nothing can come a higher priority than caring for a dying patient.

I think that the problem is not limited to the hospitals, sometimes I think that some people see the elderly relatives as a surplus, and don't feel much responsability towards them. I have always found it a bit strange to see old people spending every christmas on their own even when they have lots of children. I understand that there's not much fun in taking care of an aging person but at least something can be done to make the younger genertations see that we owe much to the old people, that we will be there going through the same in some years time, in a way to neglect a child or an elderly person is exactly the same.

Very upsetting programme. Am interested in Caligula's comment about nurses being so busy being professionals...

I only saw the last 10 minutes or so but that poor, poor man who was almost in tears explaining that he couldn't eat his cornflakes while sitting in a pile of poo almost broke my heart. He was obviously 'all there' and to put someone through such an undignifying experience is barbaric imho.

Terrible and upsetting. Would echo that I would have liked to see a ward getting it right too. Also would have liked it made clear whether there should have been more nurses (i.e. unfilled vacancies) or whether this was 'supposed' to be enough staff to care for this many dependent patients.

Very shocked by gentleman left in his own dirt, but have to say, I have to leave my job on time too to pick up ds.

Manager of the outsourced catering service telling off the hostess for daring to suggest an alternative meal to the patient - i hope he has to eat the same meal for 3 weeks on the go one day. Thought he was particularly unpleasant.

Bet he hasn't been disciplined

Was it a balanced programme, did it show what was occuring on the ward?

My experience of this kind of thing happening is that there is so much else happening on the ward. (please dont say that the nurses were all sat round in the office PLEASE..)

Regarding the comment that nurses are too busy bieng professional to wipe up shit, this is a very harsh comment i feel.
Personally i have had to educate myself further in order to maintain my registration, this has brought me academic achievement yes but it has it enhanced my "professionalism".
I think not, I have had to do it because i have no choice.
Our argument as shop floor workers is that it does not improve our ability to wipe up shit, this is a job we do day in day out..standard basic care is how it is described.
The failings of the ward staff in this situation are unforgivable but are they understandable?

I ask again, was it a balanced programme?

(didnt see it, couldnt watch it)

The thought of that old lady "jessie", dying alone and nobody noticing has haunted me all day.
cant believe that old people are treated like this, it was utterly depressing.
The little old blind lady who couldnt eat as she couldnt see her food got me aswell.

Message withdrawn

Donbean, it wasn't particularly balanced, in the sense that it didn't show you fully what else was going on in the ward. The programme set out to make a polemic and it did.

The comment about professionalism isn't meant to be harsh, just to make the point that there's a gulf between some of the very basic, day to day caring tasks of nursing and the quite high tech stuff that some nursing involves, and bridging that gulf must be quite difficult.

My aunt was a nurse in the fifties and went back to nursing in the seventies. She left in the late eighties/ early nineties (can't remember exactly) as she couldn't cope with all the extra techy demands that were being made of her - she wanted to do the basic care work, but felt that that was not what "management" were allowing her to do any more (and she was coming up for retirement anyway), so left early.

What came across was the indifference of the nurses to the patients. One old lady who had been a nurse in the war (I think) made the point that a nurse can't be indifferent - that's the word she used and she'd obviously picked up on it. And the undercover nurse made the point that as everything was so understaffed and the nurses couldn't do the job properly, they had developed coping strategies - alienation from the patients being one of them, presumably.

I did wonder what very old people were doing there, tbh, and why they weren't in hospices. They had terrible deaths.

Caguila, welcome to the world of elderly care!! There is no where to move them too, or there is but there are waiting lists, paperwork and obstructions everywhere. They probably were on their way elsewhere, but just didn't make it. This is just one example of how it is a wider problem. The pain relief is another. Whether a patient gets their pain relief is often dependant on how it is prescribed. If the doctor only prescribes it as a 'as necessary' drug, it may not routinely be checked. If the doctor does as they should and prescribe regular analgesia frequently and adequately this I doubt would have happened. Drugs given late is very much frowned upon, drugs of any kind. Of course, the nurses could request that this is done - although there are lots of doctors who don't like to be told what to do .

Also I would like to point out they show the nurse frequently hunched over her medicine trolley, apparently looking as though she wasn't doing a lot. Most wards have strict rules regarding this, that you should not be interrupted during your drug round. Mistakes are more likely to occur - it does require a large amount of concentration. A drug error may obviously greatly harm a patient and efforts must be made to minimise this risk.

The patients requiring toileting is shocking, and there should be adequate staffing to ensure this does not happen. But nurses can not move patients alone. We are not allowed to 'lift' if we do and injure ourselves, we face the prospect of never being able to work in our chosen proffesion again with no form of compensation. Even if a patient is falling next to us, we are taught not to break their fall No -one I know could do this, of course but it lets you know the sort of rules we are told to adhere to. And not everyone does. My back for one is almost constantly sore, and indeed was agony for most of my pregnancy, because I do try and stuggle on with patients to make them comfortable or toilet/wash them etc.

Regarding the 'uncomfortable' patient who wanted to be sat up, that can be hard too. If you have moved a patient say 3/4 times in 2 hours, as can easily happen, you may end up not being able to tend to your other patients. Some patients are squirmy and do need high levels of care in this area. But should it be at the costs of other patients care? No. In an ideal world there would be enough staff to do this but the world is not ideal. As it is, our backs again take the strain and it can be very frustrating when you have worked so hard to try and make sure your patient is comfortable to see all your hard work (and it is hard work let me tell you!) undone in moments as they shuffle that bottom straight back down the bed again.

Can also relate to the end of the shift when a patient tells you they need cleaning up - it can't always be prevented. By the end of my shifts I often find it hard to walk, after nights I feel physically sick where I am so tired. As Donbean said there is the childcare issues too. She should have found someone else to come and help and take over. But the ward looked like that would be much easier said than done!

I am not trying to 'defend' as such all that went on here, I have already posted that I was shocked by it and things were very wrong there, particularly as far as I could tell, with the original sister and also the foriegn male nurse who did not care for Jesse at all. he was also IIRC the one who shouted at the fidget bum. He should be sacked IMO - he blatently does not give two hoots.

I love being a nurse, but it is very hard work, and on wards like this there is no respite. The work is continual. We get minimal breaks (no lovely lunch hour here!) in my current job I have a total of 1.5 hrs in a twelve hour shift, in my previous job I had a total of 45 minutes for 8 hrs, 1 hr for 12 hrs. That is provided you get them at all. And not all the breaks are paid. Even if you don't take them.

I work on intensive care atm, and although the patients are more critically ill, it is one nurse per patient, and it is unusual that we are too short staffed. I am lucky, but I am passionate about the wards. I loved my job before, it was more stressful, busier, much larger workload, but infinantly more rewarding. I think I am a good nurse, and I hope that nothing I have written here makes anyone think otherwise. I have pondered this programme today and just want to try and show people a bit how it is from the other side. I hope no-one is offended.

Im trying to be careful how i approach this as i didnt watch the programme and think it would be unfair to make comments about it.
However i still think that there may have been reasons for the slow response to bed pans/cleaning people up etc. This is not right, utterly utterly awful and inexcusable but if it didnt show what else was happening on the ward then to my mind it isnt balanced.
It does appear that the is a gulf between the high tech and the basic care elements of nursing.
I have to say that i am some what spoiled in that in the ICU where i work, we have the most up to date high tech equipment that money can buy. However not one of my colleagues will turn thier nose up at some one with copious bowel motions and feel that to clean it would be beneath them, not one.
We are as high tech and as highly qualified as you can get in my dept and yet i can clean up some one and do a full bed change up to 14 times a night on one patient without a problem.
I take your point Caligula about your aunt, as i said in an earlier post, i couldnt work on a ward ever again because i just couldnt sleep knowing why things go on.

Hi Flossam,
Great post, better than my ramblings.
Nice to see some one else who loves nursing too.

Flossam you don't sound at all like you're making excuses for that ward. But one of the problems is that everything you posted, I think everyone knows anyway, don't they? Everyone knows that nurses are disgustingly underpaid and disgracefully overworked, and because of that, people feel uncomfortable about criticising them when they see standards of care which are simply appalling. I think most members of the public would probably bend over backwards to make excuses for bad nursing - in fact, most lay people would probably be more forgiving of low standards than nurses themselves would.

I can see why in a ward that's run on targets, with not enough staff, lousy care is simply inevitable. I think it's outrageous to put nurses in a position where they can't do their jobs (another nurse I know (family friend and neighbour) moved to the private sector because she wanted to be able to do proper nursing) and I suspect that it's on elderly wards that standards get stretched most, because these are the very people who will be most reluctant to complain. And when they do complain, no-body believes them anyway, because they're considered too old to have their marbles.

In my experience we as a nursing profession do not put up with poor attitudes toward patient care.
I am in a position where a proportion of my job is teaching (newly qualified nurses, student nurses AND Dr's), i make every effort to insill into them the need for standards and respect.
We have well publicised proceedures for reporting people who do not carry out thier work as they should.
I accept that possibly i may be looking through rose coloured glasses at the whole thing and i am simplifying this important issue. This is not my intent, my postings are "in my experience".
There is no getting away from the pressures that we are all under, regardless, the people who surround me at my work are caring and commited individuals who i would allow to care for any one of my family members. (well except maybe one consultant who has horrific BO )

Hi Donbean Nice to see you too.

Caguila, I just sat nodding to your post! I don't know how aware people are about nursing, I know I always get a very positive response when I am asked what career I do. Elderly care is probably one of the worst sectors of care. It is often viewed as demoralising and is very hard work. Elderly patients often become institutionalised and can become very demanding. It is, to an extent, up to the nurses to try and prevent this in the first place by encouraging, aiding, and not simply taking the quick and easy route to do it all for them. I should know, I am a bully!

In so much this area lacks decent funding, recruitment is a big problem, I find it amazing that a nurse on that ward can't monitor a patient's vital signs and yet still has a job on that ward. It speaks volumes. It is hard physical graft and if not treated in the correct way with the right attitude monotomous etc etc. If as the elderly lady said you do not become involved with your patients you are not able to care for them propely. If you care you enjoy seeing them up, dressed, having had their hair done. That is a nice reward in itself.

lol at the BO! Is the BO the main reason you wouldn't recommend him, or are there other professional reasons?

Just giggling at your post on the "falling over" thread....the sun newspaper and the insurance companies and the weather.
Again, reading through that thread it comes across in parts as "nurse bashing" dont you agree?
I feel that i always have to fight my corner for the job i love and do well.

I do pride myself on my patient care. People have commented on it in this job, and I actually had one agency nurse stopped from returning to my unit when I first started by complaining about her. She encouraged me to go for break leaving my patient dirtied, and the following morning told me to leave the vomit from my patient for the next shift to clear up . I never saw her since.

When you talk about long term elderly patients, should these patients be in hospital? Should they be in a hospice? (Because hospices aren't just there to go and die in, I think one of their main aims is also to cope with the long term care that some very elderly people need, and some hospice patients may be there for three or four long term visits in the last 2 or 3 years of their lives.)

No, its the BO...truly truly horrific!
He is a nice guy and wonderful with relatives, spending up to an hour with them at a time explaining and answering questions.
Just stinks!

Yes DB, I do but I have come to the conclusion a little bit that I must be oversenstive and usually don't get overly involved on here!

Caguila, yes they should. Refer to the first paragraph of my long post!!

Oh God! And how do you tell a respected, frightfully good consultant that he needs to use deodorant?!

Why, oh God, why, are some people just oblivious of this problem?

Ah - the waiting lists.

I didn't notice the nurse bashing, Donbean, but then, I'm not a nurse!