Nursing Care

katex · 12-02-2006, 21:35

My daughter, ex nurse, rang me tonight. She was quite distraught. Visited her friend, another nurse, who is suffering from Lupus.
The lovely Caroline asked her to bring her some cigarettes because she had run out ... OK ... moralists on smoking, back off. She had to go outside to have a cigarette on a zimmer and pumped up with morphine.
Not only that but, seems now patients have to pay to watch the normal channels on TV ....25p per minute (sure my daughter got this fact wrong ! £7.50 to watch Corrie !!). You buy a card and charged later.
Not only that, she was distressed by an elderly patient in the next bed who had been given jelly for her tea. She had slipped down into an uncromposing position whereby was impossible to get this delicacy into her mouth. She asked for a cellophane bag to put it in so that she could eat it later; daughter recognized the fact that what she really meant was waiting for a moment when she was in a physical position to actually get it in her gob!! No nurses appeared to be aware of this fact.
My daughter has seen it all on the wards and am finding it difficult to listen to her heartache in this way. This is why she exited from nursing and now works for a company selling surgical products; no nursing care anymore .. not the nurses fault, just not enough anymore to cover .. or is it, is there now a change in attitude.? Summat's gotta' be done.

jimmi5bellies · 12-02-2006, 21:44

You would have thought the nurses would have put the jelly in a cup, at least this way she wouldnt have slopped it all down her front. I bet the nurses were more distressed at having to change her bedding after her tea !

Too many elderly and frail patients in hospital are just left to get along with it, regardless !
The wards ive been in i couldnt wait to get out. Last year when i was in hospital, one patient had mislaid her false teeth. They turned up a few hours later in the gob of a 90 odd year old woman who hadnt worn dentures for years and you could tell. You could see the elderly were just waiting to die and be relieved from their miserable existance. The only excercise or attention they seemed to get was if they needed the toilet or their back side wiping. Their teas was plonked on the side tables and left to go cold.

Im not calling the nurses, what with the cutbacks etc nobody seems to care.

West Ender · 12-02-2006, 22:10

My youngest daughter's friend qualified as a psychiatric nurse last year. To qualify she had to gain a degree at John Moors university. In my opinion, that's the problem. Nurses are no longer employed to "nurse", their required knowledge goes far beyond the skills of tending to the every day needs of sick people.

I don't blame anyone for wanting to pursue a career in this way but the educational requirements and skills of nursing have completely bypassed the "caring" side of the job. Time was when a young woman or a young man who didn't have an academic nature, but who cared about people, could find nursing a rewarding career. Now, such a person would never get a job in the NHS.

lettie · 13-02-2006, 05:20

People with no qualifications often get jobs on NHS wards via the NVQ system these days. The nurses rarely have time to teach these people. Most NHS hospitals are running on bare minimal nursing staff at present and a huge percentage of them are reporting job freezes in order to save money. Many qualified nurses are leaving because there is no job satisfaction, they are overworked and short staffed. When you have only 2 qualified staff looking after 20-30 dependent patients on a ward, is it any wonder that basic needs are not being met?

entwisi · 13-02-2006, 08:09

Katex, with regards to charging for TV, When Julie was in having Siobhan it was (IIRC) £3 a day for TV, teh 25p/min is teh charge to call the telephone directly.

SPUGGIE J · 13-02-2006, 08:41

Its just not hospitals with nurse to patient ratio's nursing homes are the same and again patients/residents suffer. Before I get slated on nursing homes 2 in Hynburn I have visited were well not what I expected and as a result I am very wary of them.

pendy · 13-02-2006, 10:11

Having worked in several major hospitals, I do think standards of nursing care have slipped. At St George's, major teaching hospital, I was visiting a pre-op patient (one I had admitted on behalf of my boss) and the lady in the next bed was desperate for a bedpan. There were three nurses at the nursing station, preparing "care plans". I told one of them the lady needed a bedpan. Response? - "She's not one of my named patients". In the end, I got one for her, thus flouting every health and safety reg in the book. Does it matter whose patient someone is if they need help?

By the way, a sample "care plan" I came across in a set ot notes - "Problem: patient may be in pain. Solution: Offer analgesia". Who needs this writing down for them????

lettie · 13-02-2006, 13:47

Hehehe, you've got to chuckle at the good old Nursing Process (the process of planning care for every patient on an individualised basis). I remember care plans well, but they never came first over providing the care. They were planned and updated if time allowed. Universities these days make the care plan a primary focus. I have had many a student ask about the care plan, in order to be told that if they feel that they have the time to do it, then get on with it.....

I haven't actually done a care plan in years (although I probably shouldn't admit it). The ladies in my care get hands on care and not care on paper..

SPUGGIE J · 13-02-2006, 14:58

Lettie its hads on that matters. Patients feel as though tey are being looked after then and not just a number on a sheet of A4.

katex · 13-02-2006, 17:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by entwisi

Katex, with regards to charging for TV, When Julie was in having Siobhan it was (IIRC) £3 a day for TV, teh 25p/min is teh charge to call the telephone directly.

Yes possibly, but paying for the TV in hospital ! when you have nowt else to do ... a good little earner I reckon.
Daughter said .35p per min. now for phone... hotel charges no doubt.

Reason she left the wards was the problem that there did not seem to be any caring for the patients anymore, irrespective of low staff levels and didn't come into nursing for lots of form filling etc.

At the time of this lady's predicament with the jelly, the nurses were chatting at their station, not rushing around like blue-assed flies. Maybe an isolated instance, but a colleague of mine experienced the same recently with her ageing mum not being encouraged to eat .. she was a little disoriented at the time mind you, but when she visited had to do this job for them. On a lighter note, a little like that advert few years ago now and patient in bed in plaster (?) desperately attempting to physically get the food into mouth .. strawberries and cream? Visitor comes and says "Oh, you don't want these do you ?.. shame to go to waste" and commences to eat them herself.

lettie · 13-02-2006, 19:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by katex

Yes possibly, but paying for the TV in hospital ! when you have nowt else to do ... a good little earner I reckon.
Daughter said .35p per min. now for phone... hotel charges no doubt.

The TVs, phones and internet systems are provided to patients by Patientline. This venture has nothing to do with the hospital, it stemmed from Tony Blairs promise that all hospital patients should have their own phones and TVs. These companies are private and from what I believe they are heading down the pan (check the stock market). Most hospital staff believe that they are a rip off. The company providing patientline removed all of our aerials when they installed the new system so that we are unable to play our own TV sets. The companies paid hospitals in order to have their equipment installed in them, so the hospitals did get some benefit but they receive none of the profit.

Margaret Pilkington · 13-02-2006, 19:31

My mum had similar problems at Christies.......I didn't realise how much they charged for incoming calls.....until another patients relatives informed me.
I have to say that I didn't phone Mum after that. We bought Mum a £20 card for each of the 4 weeks she was there.....just so that she could watch the TV.

The nursing care over there was abysmal too. One lady who was very poorly was asking for a bedpan. I went to the nurses office at least three times in the course of about 20 minutes......the lady didn't get a bed pan, but she did get a telling off for soiling the bed. And these are ladies who are terminally ill.

When Mum went for her treatment, if it was mealtime, her meal was left on her bed table. If she didn't get back in time it was whisked away and she got only toast or a cold pot of ambrosia rice.

No, some of the students who are coming into the profession do not want to be doing the basic nursing care......bed baths, toileting, feeding. They just want to do what they see as the more 'glamorous' aspects of care. They do not realise that during the basic nursing care delivery you can often identify fears and anxieties and help to alleviate these.

katex · 13-02-2006, 19:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by lettie

The TVs, phones and internet systems are provided to patients by Patientline. This venture has nothing to do with the hospital, it stemmed from Tony Blairs promise that all hospital patients should have their own phones and TVs. fit but they receive none of the profit.

Oh ok Lettie, thanks for that, suppose though their profit is in the saving they have made by not providing this service free of charge.

I don't know what the answer is going to be at the end of the day .. not a politician or an economist ... can see what we all see; that people are living longer, not enough funding and the only answer to this it to take more money from Nat. Insurance from the people that are still working, and this causes uproar. More surgery and treatments are now available for diseases, bone fractures, etc., where we would have died years ago, and we all demand it. Like both Marge and you have said already, don't feel nurses are being trained any more in the basics. Sure someone will correct ,me on this one.
I am not as cynical about politicians as some people and sure they all go into the job wanting to put things right ... just no magic wand job though is it?