Our poor NHS nurses

[onehorserace]

Having just spent a week on a ward I am horrified by the things I have seen nurses having to put up with. I have always had respect for nurses but with today's attitudes their job is so much more difficult.

Why do so many patients act as if they are in a private health system? Demanding to see THEIR doctor right now.. shouting and butting into other patients' time with the nurse? Talking to nurses like shit .

Why do so many patients question absolutely everything they take apart from the lithium and the oramorph?

Why are relatives gathering in their hoardes invading wards from 8am when visiting times start at 10? Also talking to nurses like they are shit.

Why are so many patients in denial about the damage THEY have caused their body by their own behaviour with alcohol and drugs and blame it on everything else? Eg the antibiotics

Why do some patients go walk about for hours on end then to come back and complain they haven't had their meds and then have a major meltdown at 10.30pm when others are in bed - seriously ill people. They treat hospital like it is a hotel.

The amount of money I have seen burnt this week by ungrateful sods is beyond belief. Sadly this " entitled" lot don't seem to appreciate what we have here.

Our poor nurses!

I think it’s the same for all frontline public services.

How many patients were on lithium on your ward 😂 unless you were on MH ward it's not exactly a super common drug - I'd expect 1 maybe 2 at the most amf chances are if they were in hospital they probably weren't the most mentally stable which is going to come with it's own set of challenges

They do it because they can, they know health and front line staff can't retaliate, they know their "rights" and years of cutbacks, poor management, understaffing have led to some people just taking the piss, it happens in private health care, police, prisons, schools too. Some people are just thick ungracious entitled twats.

True but doesn't excuse visitors behaviour, stable patients used to sign behaviour contracts when I was nursing, no one ever got chucked out for anything illness related but did for theft, abuse to other patients.

It's not a mental health ward but it's in an area where there is a high proportion of people with mental health issues. I too was surprised to hear the use of lithium.

Because hospitals are shit and quite often filled with staff who are apathetic at best, so the only way to get humane treatment is to be the squeaky wheel.

I've actually witnessed both sides this week. Dementia patients on an Orthopedic ward, screaming at nurses, racially abusing them and attacking them.
Nursing staff who don't know how to change dressings properly, who disappear half way through a job, leave immobile patients on commodes for 30 minutes and are generally apathetic.
Also, lovely nursing staff who have to put up with moaning patients, rude patients, too many visitors per patient and general untidiness of everyone.
It is quite scary as a patient ( not me) to be told several conflicting things by different members of staff, and not know which is right.
The food, whilst edible, has been decidedly unappetising.

This is why they are leaving the profession!

The nhs won’t last much longer and good! Coming from someone who worked on a ward for 18 months it is disgusting what is expected from nurses and nursing staff, how short they always are and how patients feel entitled, the long hours and shit pay, Once the NHS is no longer watch everyone’s attitude change.

How about the direct racial slurs to their faces? I'm thinking of a friend who was almost in tears last night. Apparently there's nothing anyone can do as the dickhead lacks capacity. Still has the capacity to specifically reserve that word for Black staff though.

Yeah, that word.

Lithium is a lot safer than some modern drugs, though it can cause damage to the heart, ex nurse here. People can also be more arsey when in pain or distress. The gore never bothered me but the aggression did so I stuck it for just 5 years.

It is also just generally though isn’t it, good manners cost nothing was drilled in to me as a child. No one seems to have any sense of respectability anymore. I do not fancy a return to the 1930’s where very rigid manners were expected and certain rigid behaviours, mores and manners were expected without question. Too much freedom these days to be what you want and think you are special though with a move too far away.

So we have moved too far in to what the individual wants, no more collectivism. I went to a social gathering a few weeks ago the demograph was the generation above me. My goodness the manners and the way people behaved, I may just hang out with octogenarians in future.

Entitlement is one of the major afflictions in our society. There are a couple of generations who expect everything but with no respect or input into society as a whole.

Low quality people are in the majority now. They're generally low in intelligence and unable to regulate their emotions. They're socially illiterate and never mix with more regulated people so believe theirs is the right way to behave. Add to this illness, frustration, boredom and possibly pain and it's going to result in a toxic outcome. Some people are mentally ill or have dementia.

Nurses only have so much to give and become burned out when exposed to this amount of poor behaviour. It's a risky job, both physically and mentally. They're human like everybody else. There used to be an unwritten, unspoken contract between patient and nurse, but that no longer exists so chaos ensues. The contract was, you behave and do as you're told and you'll receive decent care. Of course that doesn't work now and interferes with patient autonomy, consent and choice. More capable patients can navigate this balancing act by being polite but assertive, but others can't or won't.

I've experienced both sides and it's horrible. We can't turn the clock back so it'll just continue until the health service collapses. Nurses lasting only five years post graduation is not a good outcome.

Initally I thought I was going to have to stay in the A and E bed and that was a terrifying thought with it being mixed down there. Even being on the women's ward it has been mentally challenging.

It may sound harsh, but you have to learn to take it with a pinch of salt! We have a DD with complex learning disabilities, who can’t remember anything for more than about 30 seconds maximum. (Anterograde amnesia)

She swears a lot. I would be a millionaire if I had a pound for every time, she has called me or DH “a fucking idiot”! Not just us, anybody else too. We ask her not to swear and she just says, she likes it!

She only has a vague idea of what words mean and little understanding of what we say, we suspect these become generic phrases, used to express “I am not happy with you!”.

YANBU. Apart from questioning the medication - that’s fine isn’t it? The last time I was admitted to hospital (pregnancy complications), there were a couple of times I was just handed pills. I’m not going to not take something that they advise, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask what it is, and I think it was weird the way they just handed it to me with a “take these” and no explanation of what it was.

My son was in hospital for 10 months and during that time he was also on PICU plus 3 different wards. It was certainly an experience of all of the good but all of the bad too.

The good outweighed the bad by far and the bad was almost always other parents of children and their entitlement.

Who’d want to deal with the great British public? It’s why people who can’t really afford them pay for private schools and hospitals. Very expensive method of socioeconomic filtering.

Brief comment re lithium. It has a host of side effects, one of which is making you feel appalling if you miss a dose. Not everyone can take it long term due to potential for impact on renal function etc.

My experience this week is that meds are highly regulated and controlled , always entered onto the screens. Each patient has a profile which comes up on time schedules - give this at such and such a time etc. same with vitals etc. The doctor of your case orders the meds. If you need anything else out of hours they have to approach one of the doctors to ok. It's a very impressive system.

No.

1. Someone with a learning difficulty or disability is not in the same category of an individual deliberately using racist language against another person.

2. Swearing at someone is not in the same category as calling someone the n-word. It would be ridiculous to suggest equivalence.

Also, if a patient were using the term indiscriminately, for anyone, I might be more persuaded by the argument that they were just lashing out with no understanding of the meaning. But he isn't, so...

Quite. How offensive to suggest that staff should just have more resilience to being racially abused.

I spend a lot of time in hospital and never witnessed anything like you describe what I have witnessed is what a toxic work environment it is as all you get all day is nurses slagging off their co workers to other staff and to patients. It reminds me of high school.