Surrounded by Idiots: The Complaints Manager.

Received a phone call from a colleague fairly recently. I am going to document what she said on this blog.

She also works on the same ward that I am/did.

Not too long ago she was one of two RN's for the whole ward. She was the RN for one side and sister was the RN for the other side.

They were running their assess off, constantly interrupted and overwhelmed and by 11 AM everything was fucked up. Half the meds weren't given, gent levels etc weren't done, discharges weren't going anywhere because the nurses couldn't sort them out, patients were filthy, and no call lights were being answered. Their were 2 care assistants who were trying to bed bath everyone, and answer bells. Nightmare.

So around 11:30 AM this moron from the complaints department struts onto the ward and proceeds to glare at the nurses with complete contempt. She tells them that a another complaint came in about nurses not feeding patients.

This is a regular occurance:
http://militantmedicalnurse.blogspot.com/2008/03/protected-meal-times-what-fucking-joke.html

Moron collars the sister, and pulls her into the office and demands that she sits there for 2 hours answering questions about the day the complaint when in, what staff members were on, do they not understand that nutrition is vital etc etc. She made sister formulate a response right there and then. Kept her in that office well past dinner time. Moron also had the nerve to roll her eyes at Sister when Sister declared that she needed to get back onto the ward ASAP. I don't even understand why moron bothered, her official response to the complaints will only be lies.

That left one RN and 2 care assistants to cope with all the patients, alone. We really, really needed Sister back on the ward. When she came out of the office, moron collared her again, insinuating that sister wasn't interested in the complaint or the situation.

The dinner trolley appeared at noon and the three staff were trying to feed 10 plus people themselves whilst managing care for the other 19. Moron would not get off Sister's back. People were not getting fed.

The staff nurse was in a blind panic because so many orders from docs that needed to get done stat were not getting done. She told me that she really thought someone was going to die. Listen people you can have the most brilliant doctor in the world but if you don't have a nurse that is able to implement and coordinate all these orders you are fucked.

Some visitors were on the ward at this time. We are not strict about visiting times when people are extremely ill and family cannot get there during the set hours. The lay out of the wards is such that they can see everything, even sister in the office engaged in discussion with moron.

While sister was being held in the office, and the 3 staff that were left on the ward were struggling to cope, two of the visitors walked downstairs to the patient complaint services office to complain about "oblivious" nurses not feeding patients. Never mind the guy with the pre-renal failure who hadn't even had any fluids started yet and that the staff nurse was trying to stop him from pulling his cannula out.

So at least 2 more complaints came in on that very day at that very lunchtime. If the people who were complaining or perhaps the managers were not completely fucking retarded maybe we would have been given more nurses instead.


If I hadn't witnessed these kinds of experiences myself all the time I would never believe it.

EDIT: I understand that the term retarded as used in context here is very offensive, crude and not at all politically correct. I apologise for that. I am even offending myself right now.

I am sitting here wondering if there is a better term to use to describe the behaviour of these people. There is not. They just have low IQ's. They retard the nurses efforts to care for the patients.