Well another two months has rushed past. I'm sure the days and weeks get shorter as I get older but maybe it's more because I am always trying to pack more into a day than there is day to pack it into!
The title of this post is "Time for a change" and I'm guessing if anybody is actually reading this they may well be wondering why. I've had a stay in hospital since my last post, and although I thought I was dying at the time(well, certainly felt like I was anyway!), trust me I wasn't. Now I'm a nurse by trade and have worked in the NHS for most of my working life, so feel I have the knowledge and understanding to comment on some of the things I saw and heard while I was residing in one of our NHS "centres of excellence". To be honest I'm not sure that it would deserve that title. Now when I hear on the news about yet another incident where there has been a lack of care in a hospital somewhere I get very cross and frustrated as it is always the nursing staff who are perceived to be the responsible party for this lack of care, and as a nurse of 30+ years standing I had hoped, nay believed, that the nursing staff were being used as the scapegoats for whatever had happened. Rarely do you hear that the doctors have failed, and even more rarely do you hear that the managers were responsible for that little lady in the corner who was dehydrated and starving because she was not being helped with her meals. Now at this point I need to admit to not having worked on a hospital ward for a very long time, having specialised in other areas of the nursing profession over the years so it is fair to say that my judgements on this subject were primarily coloured by how it used to be. Well believe me it is no longer "how it used to be", but despite that I saw nurses who cared, worked damn hard, were professional at all times and desperately wanted to do not just a good job, but the best job, and went over and above their duty to ensure that patients were well cared for. However I also saw nurses who were overworked, over stretched, and stressed. These were the same nurses described above. The Hospital's answer to short staffing (due primarily in my opinion, to good nurses leaving as they were no longer being able to cope with what was being asked of them) was to use Agency nurses. It would be easy to use the agency nurses as a scapegoat and blame them for some of the things I saw and heard, and again this was not true of all the agency nurses, however what it would be fair and reasonable to say was that the lack of continuity due to it being a different agency nurse every day, did indeed impact on the care provided. The attitude of a fair proportion of the agency nurses also impacted on the care provided, as a lot of them did not appear to want to work very hard, did not appear to know what they were doing a lot of the time, and even when they were hard working and knowledgeable, were unable to fulfil parts of their role as they were not hospital staff and therefore were not allowed to undertake certain tasks. Again I need to say that I have been an agency nurse myself in the past, usually when we moved with hubby's job for short time, so again I do understand how being an agency nurse can feel, and how that can affect their work.
Now I am not using this post to expand on the things I saw and heard for a variety of reasons. Firstly I have written to the Chief Executive at the hospital asking for an appointment to see them to discuss the issues that concerned me. Secondly taken out of context of the big hospital picture this again could be seen as another dig at the nursing profession which it is not, and thirdly because I don't want to put any details in here that might allow someone to identify the hospital concerned, certainly not at this point anyway.
But don't think I'm going to sit back and do nothing, because I'm not! I might have done in the past in case it affected my job in some untoward way or other, or in case I'm seen as a trouble maker. In the past nurses who have said things have found themselves out of a job and unable to get employment in their local area, but I have decided that unless something is said nothing improves. Nothing I saw immediately put anyone's life at risk, but there were things I saw that shouldn't be happening. However I intend to go to see the Chief Exec NOT to complain, but to explain things from a patients perspective, and to make some simple suggestions that would help, but more importantly to make some observations and suggestions from a health professional's perspective to improve the care received.
Of course I still could be out of a job after this, so if you see me begging on a street corner, be kind and give generously......
