My trust is a mess to be honest. I work on a general medical ward that has been combined with a general surgical ward and we also take HDU and care of elderly. Bad bad combination but the managers are closing wards and restructuring and making a mess of everything.
We have no staff, no beds, no resources and there is a recruitment freeze so they will not hire. There are no jobs anywhere so we are stuck where we are. Managers have been overheard saying that the staff will just have to suck it all up because there are no jobs in the country or anywhere else to go.
They want to make thousands of redundancies but the community spoke out against this. But the managers still want rid of nursing staff so they are making our lives as hellish as possible. People are leaving in droves and they are not being replaced.
Staffing is so bad and the patients are so acute that it is very easy to work a 12-14 hour shift with no break and nothing to eat and barely scrape by. The patients and their families get very abusive because they have unreasonable expectations and expect one to one care. They really need a reality check.
One of my colleagues came on duty and was going to be on her own with 30 highly dependent and acutely ill post op surgical patients as well as confused and deteriorating general medical patients. She called the matron begging for help and was told "tough shit". Six of her patients fell that shift because they were confused and there was no one to help them. One crashed and went to ITU. One dropped her urine output to zero and it wasn't caught for about 5 hours which isn't surprising considering everything else that was happening.
Then the relatives and patients are bitching about the nurses "not doing this and not doing that". They have no idea, no idea whatsoever. It is very easy for the managers to intentionally short staff the wards because the public will blame the nurses when all hell breaks loose. It's like they think we all have magical powers and can astro project and be everywhere at once.
I come home after a 14 hour day rushed off my feet and I can't eat or sleep for days. I lie awake worrying that I made a mistake that might kill someone. I can't deal with my kids. I just kind of zone out. If everyone is still breathing at the end of the day you have worked your ass off.
The managers know very well the dangers of short staffing and that if something happens the nurse will take the fall and lose her registration, possibly get charged with manslaughter. The nurse will be the recipient of the wrath from the public. The managers get no comeback whatsoever. They staff our ward with 1 or 2 nurses when there are 20 patients who need to be fed and 10 patients who are actively trying to die on us and then people say "nurses can't be bothered to feed people".
Why aren't unison, the RCN, or the NMC saying a damn thing about it. Where the hell are they? They definitely know what goes on.
How are things in your trust?