General Chat

My mother was SRN and a senior sister. She did her training during ww2 in the south of England where as well as everyday nursing they also had the extra practice of the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and D-Day. She tells me that she will never forget the long lines of ambulances waiting for the incoming ships during the summer of 1944 and the handsome sunburned men. Germans and English were treated the same side by side.

My point is that despite not having any of the modern NHS facilities and drugs ( penicillin was just rolling out in small doses ) the survival rate was surprisingly high even for serious wounds. How so ? EZ. Very close and attentive nursing together with obsessional devotion to hygiene. That seems to have gone.

fwiw my niece ( a graduate nurse never afraid of the mucky side of nursing ) has emigrated where she earns twice as much and does not have the never ending stresses of the NHS. My mother was never very keen on SENs and niece was not very keen on nursing assistants either. She believes that diagnosis for doctors, not nurses.

The root problem with the NHS is its existing monolithic structure. The organization is far too large to be properly managed or financed by anybody.

Poor health care on the ward is symptomatic of that. Two years ago my wife was in hospital for a heavy duty neck operation ( cancer ). The surgery was excellent but the post op care ( even in intensive care ) poor and I had to camp out in the hospital for nearly 2 weeks.

The British practice of "wards" with 12 patients and more dates back to Florence Nightingale and should be dropped urgently. It is degrading and promotes cross infection. Modern medicine has typically 4 people at most to a room with 1 or 2 being the norm.

It is fairly obvious that the Tories are moving to breaking up the NHS into islands of health care which may or may not be provided by the state. I don't particularly like this privatization by stealth but it at least recognizes that the status quo is not an option.

Labour - which seems to view the NHS through the eyes of Unison as a big job creating scheme - has no credible NHS policy at all beyond an "NHS tax" which would vanish in an instant while changing nothing.

Meanwhile the best option is to keep fit and out of hospital. My mother is 93 and that is certainly her approach!

my d-i-l has to take her uniform home as nursing staff have no lockers!!! as new unit and those who arrived first got the lockers - hence all the admin staff have lockers

Auxiliaries are now called HCAs = Health Care Assistants

I believe that support workers are the old auxiliaries.Think they changed the name a few years ago when they brought out NVQs.
May be wrong,but that's how my daughter got into the health service,but all geared to theory...not care.
The cleaning,food etc all contribute to the problem since it was sourced out to private firms.
I still think that uniforms should be left in hospital and not taken home to wash at low temperatures.

I sometimes feel ashamed to say I worked in the NHS, where has the basic care gone????

Liz (SRN)

How sad for you Elizabeth..............a few nurses have respect willingly given by grateful patients and relatives, sadly the majority have no people skills at all, they are not deserving of any respect at all.

Bring back on the job training, matrons and, as Kay says, auxillary nurses.

out of her own mouth - says it all really :-(

As a former nurse (who rose to the dizzy heights of Matron :-) I have read all these comments with sadness.

I started nursing in 1945 (BEFORE) the NHS and saw the differences the introduction of it made.

My own experience about 2 years ago still astonishes me !!

I suffer from Glaucoma and have Field of Vison test every 12-18 months at the local hospital

This particular time I had a slight infection in one eye - the nurse said "open your eye properly" (each eye is tested separately) I tried to explain why I could not- her reply "do'nt argue do as I say" :-0

I was the last patient and walked back to reception with her

I said to her that I was a retired nurse and did not intend to argue with her-her reply "yes but when you trained nurses were respected and it is very different now"

I really was speechless :-(

It's heartrending and upsetting to read these stories, we should all get decent and dignified care in hospitals, we used to be able to trust in the nurses and doctors to do their best but these days, everything is down to funding and cost, it seems.

I have to say that on my day visit to our hospital's eye clinic recently I was treated very well, as were all the people attending for cataract ops and such. I had to be tested every hour and was there from 8am to 5pm and couldn't have been treated better, with drinks and sandwiches being provided and a friendly atmosphere so that I felt as if I was with friends for the time I spent there.

I would be very worried about being admitted to hospital these days and especially if I was in no state to speak up for myself.

Lizx

Bring back the aux nurses,,,,,,they were a god send on wards and soon was quick to notice when something was wrong..........the NHS today is a total shambles,,,,glad I'm not in uniform now days.........the stories that I hear from local to national is horrendous.

Nothing surprises me any more, Ann. I used to respect nurses but recent experience has made me reassess that view.

well I just hope everyone with a grievance complains loud and long

It still makes me feel ill thinking about how my Mum's partner was treated in hospital. He died at the end of 2012 and was in hospital for much of that year. Existing conditions were ignored, he wasn't offered bathing facilities for days and was shoved in a ward, dressed in a blood-covered gown (after an emergency transfusion) to breathe his last. Disgusted.

It is a national disgrace the way the elderly and vulnerable are suffering through lack of compassion.

It makes my blood boil whenever I see a vulnerable person treated badly or ignored.You don't need a degree to nurse, just compassion, bags of common sense and the ability to listen and learn from a qualified senior nurse alongside the patients themselves.

During Mum's illness, she was treated really well in the nursing and care homes, but sadly neglected by our 2 local hospitals.................she had no way of communicating her needs, even if she had the ability to know what those needs were. I had to be there with her for most of the time just to make sure she was fed and had fluids.

The NHS in it's haste to save money and meet targets is actually costing more money y not meeting the basic needs of so many who have no voice.........so sad and unecessary :-( :-(

shocking - absolutely shocking

The man in the next bed to my friend's Dad also had a knee replacement op on the same day - just happened I also knew this man - he was 96 years old but in fine fettle and had had the other knee done a few months back - he also developed bed sores on his feet, deteriorated rapidly and died a week later

A senior consultant at one of Britain’s leading private hospitals has been charged with manslaughter after a patient died following a routine knee operation.

David Sellu, 65, a consultant surgeon at the Clementine Churchill Hospital in Harrow, is also accused of committing perjury at an inquest into the death of James Joseph Hughes, 66.

Mr Hughes flew from his home in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, for knee surgery in February 2010 but died a week later when complications were not treated in time.

The inquest heard he had suffered a tear to his bowel which was not identified until it had become septic, triggering a fatal heart attack.

The coroner was told that when Mr Hughes complained of stomach pains after the operation, vital blood tests were put off to give him a “peaceful night”.

Mr Sellu told the inquest the surgery was then delayed further because he could not find a “willing” anaesthetist.

By the time Mr Hughes was operated on, Mr Sellu admitted his chances of survival were “not high”. He died the following day.

Father-of-four Mr Sellu, who was a senior lecturer in surgery at Imperial College from 1993 to 2000 and is an associate professor at a Florida university, was charged with manslaughter after attending Harrow police station by appointment. He is to appear before Hendon magistrates on August 13.

The Churchill is one of 15 hospitals operated by BMI healthcare in London and has 141 beds making it one of the largest privately-run clinics in the country.

Mr Hughes’s family discovered another patient had died at the Churchill in almost identical circumstances two years earlier in a case involving a different doctor.

His son James said: “We were shocked to discover this identical case. They said in that report that they had put in place new working practices to make sure the same thing couldn’t happen again.”

A spokesman for BMI Healthcare said: “We note the decision to charge Mr Sellu. The team at the hospital were deeply saddened by Mr Hughes’ death and our thoughts and our sympathies continue to be with his family".

The surgeon was jailed for 30 months after being found guilty of manslaughter.
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(This piece was copied from the London Evening Standard. The deceased was my partner's brother.)

and they call it progress :-S

Couldn't agree more Brenda. eldest stuck Project 2000 for 18 months. She was not allowed to interpret any symptoms, thereby learning, only regurgitate what text books told her was 'the correct approach'.

She was attending a hospital in West Wales on a residential learning placement in neonatal care. When she asked if she could comfort a distressed little one she was told absolutely not. That would set an unwanted precedent and parents would expect their child to be more than just fed, watered and changed.

It was all learning by rote from text books.

Jane.....same thing happened to my daughter.
A few years ago She got to gd 3 NVQ ,worked in a hospital and decided to go to uni to study further .
She had one placement of 3 weeks in a year and had to write a 2500 word report on it.
I read it and thought it was really good.
She didn't pass as it was descriptive and not reflective.
What that has to do with nursing I don't know.In fact my late OH went to the Royal College of Nursing as he was disgusted and they said that nurses have to know almost as much as doctors n research etc.!!Unbelievable!!
She ended up back in hospital as a senior support worker and had junior nurses attached to her hip as they knew very little.
No wonder,since the practical in uni was so little except for learning how to inject an orange!

A lot of things are missed because in some hospitals the nurses do not help with washing patients. when I nursed washing patients gave you the opportunity to spot things, like signs of pressure sores to enable you to prevent them, It was a time when you could talk to the patient to find out how they were feeling and if there were any problems but that doesnt happen any more. Cleaning teeth doesnt happen so more and more patients are getting sores in their mouths. Catheter care doesnt seem to exist anymore.

The NHS is a mess. Teaching nurses more about the conditions is great but they do need to spend more time on the wards learning basic nursing care. I can remember one degree nurse during her training ( her first ward) saying she would not work with me as I was only a EN. She forgot that I had twenty years experience so knew a bit more about nursing than she did.

bring back matrons - oh yes!!!! and get rid of the men and women in suits who have no contact whatsoever with patients - far too many chiefs and not enough Indians