I was walking through the Town Centre walking past some tables in an outdoor cafe this week when I heard someone shouting my name. He was the elderly husband of a patient of mine. I said hello to him and he took my arm and took me over the the table he was sharing with his wife and friends.
He introduced me to them by saying that I was the nicest nurse in the world who had saved the life of his dear wife.
Ermm. I didn't save her life. She had a seizure and I stayed with her, administered 02, put her in recovery, gave IV diazamole etc etc. But okay. This is rare so I'll glow a bit.
He went onto say that the nurses on my ward are so hardworking and outstanding and etc etc etc until I was red in the face. Okay. Cool. He then said " I don't know how you girls do it every day". I didn't know what to say other than thank you and we always try to do our best. Nurses don't take compliments well.
Some people are so kind. It's good to know that someone felt that they were taken care of properly.
Sometimes I find positive feedback hard to take because I can always think of a millions things I could have done better if I had the time and the resources. You get a complaint and your feel guilty, someone says you have done well and you feel guilty too. Weird.
But I'm not complaining.
This Angel is pissed off. I'm Nurse Anne and I work on large general medical ward in the NHS. These are the wards with the most issues surrounding nursing care. The problems are mostly down to intentional understaffing by hospital chiefs that result in a lack of real nurses on the wards. "The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain, for they merely make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy and the narrow more narrow"-Florence Nightengale
In an atmosphere if universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell.
Why has Nursing Care Deteriorated
Good nurses are failing every day to provide their patients with a decent standard of care. You want to know what has happened? Read this book and understand that similiar things have happened in the UK. Similiar causes, similiar consequences. And remember this. The failings in care have nothing to do with educated nurses or nurses who don't care. We need more well educated nurses on the wards rather than intentional short staffing by management.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nursing-Against-Odds-Stereotypes-Undermine/dp/080147292X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263123140&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nursing-Against-Odds-Stereotypes-Undermine/dp/080147292X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263123140&sr=8-1
About Me
- Nurse Anne
- I am a university educated registered nurse. We had a hell of a lot of hands on practice as well as our academic courses. The only people who say that you don't need a brain or an education to be an RN are the people who do not have any direct experience of nursing in acute care on today's wards. I have yet to meet a nurse who thinks that she is above providing basic care. I work with nurses who are completely unable to provide basic care due to ward conditions. I have lived and worked in 3 countries and have seen more similarities than differences. I have been a qualified nurse for nearly 15 years. I never used to use foul language until working on the wards got to me. It's a mess everywhere, not just the NHS. Hospital management is slashing the numbers of staff on the ward whilst filling us up with more patients than we can handle... patients who are increasingly frail. After an 8-14 hour shift without stopping once we have still barely scratched the surface of being able to do what we need to do for our patients.
My Favourite Posts
Are all those nurses on the ward really nurses? Not by a long shot.
Safe Staffing Testimony videos .
Why do nurses need degrees?
Fighting back against the Media
Why do Patients starve in hospital?
Why do the elderly suffer the most?
Where is Matron?
The Times is full of it
The Times doesn't know anything about Nursing
What happens when people complain?
Staffordshire
Did University training pull student nurses off of the wards? NO.
Things I WOULD LOVE TO TELL PATIENTS AND RELATIVES AND GET A AWAY WITH IT.
Nurse Anne's Information Pamphlet for Hospital patients and Relatives.
Safe Staffing Testimony videos .
Why do nurses need degrees?
Fighting back against the Media
Why do Patients starve in hospital?
Why do the elderly suffer the most?
Where is Matron?
The Times is full of it
The Times doesn't know anything about Nursing
What happens when people complain?
Staffordshire
Did University training pull student nurses off of the wards? NO.
Things I WOULD LOVE TO TELL PATIENTS AND RELATIVES AND GET A AWAY WITH IT.
Nurse Anne's Information Pamphlet for Hospital patients and Relatives.
Quotes of Interest. Education of Nurses.
Hospitals with higher proportions of baccalaureate-prepared nurses tended to have lower 30-day mortality rates. Our findings indicated that a 10% increase in the proportion of baccalaureate prepared nurses was associated with 9 fewer deaths for every 1,000 discharged patients."...Journal of advanced nursing 2007
THIS MEANS WE NEED WELL EDUCATED NURSES AT THE BEDSIDE NOT IN ADVANCED ROLES
Dr. Linda Aiken and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania identified a clear link between higher levels of nursing education and better patient outcomes. This extensive study found that surgical patients have a "substantial survival advantage" if treated in hospitals with higher proportions of nurses educated at the baccalaureate or higher degree level.
THIS MEANS WE NEED WELL EDUCATED NURSES AT THE BEDSIDE NOT IN ADVANCED ROLES
Dr. Linda Aiken and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research found that patients experienced significantly lower mortality and failure to rescue rates in hospitals where more highly educated nurses are providing direct patient care.
Evidence shows that nursing education level is a factor in patient safety and quality of care. As cited in the report When Care Becomes a Burden released by the Milbank Memorial Fund in 2001, two separate studies conducted in 1996 - one by the state of New York and one by the state of Texas - clearly show that significantly higher levels of medication errors and procedural violations are committed by nurses prepared at the associate degree and diploma levels as compared with the baccalaureate level.
Registered Nurse Staffing Ratios
International Council of Nurses Fact Sheet:
In a given unit the optimal workload for a registered nurse was four patients. Increasing the workload to 6 resulted in patients being 14% more likely to die within 30 days of admission.
A workload of 8 patients versus 4 was associated with a 31% increase in mortality. (In the NHS RN's each have anywhere from 10-35 patients per RN. It doesn't need to be this way..Anne)
Higher registered nurse staffing levels resulted in reduced numbers of urinary tract infections, pneumonia, upper gastrointestinal bleeding and shock in medical patients and lower rates of "failure to rescue" and urinary tract infections in major surgery patients.
Thirteen separate studies on nursing care in the late 1980s and early 1990s analyzed by Patricia Prescott,
RN, Ph.D. in late 1993 documented a direct correlation between safe staffing levels and lower mortality
rates and other related patient outcomes.......
Registered Nurses in NHS hospitals usually have between 10 and 30+ patients each on general wards.
Earlier in the year, the New England Journal of Medicine published results from another study of similar genre reported by a different group of nurse researchers. In that paper, Needleman et al3 examined whether different levels of nurse staffing are related to a patient’s risk of developing complications or of dying. Data from more than 5 million medical patient discharges and more than 1.1 million surgical patient discharges from 799 hospitals in 11 different states revealed that patients receiving more care from RNs (compared to licensed practical nurses and nurses’ aides) and those receiving the most hours of care per day from RNs experienced fewer complications and lower mortality rates than those who received more of their care from licensed practical nurses and/or aides. Specifically for medical patients, those who received more hours per day of care from an RN and/or those who had a greater proportions of their care provided by RNs experienced statistically significant shorter length of stay and lower complication rates (urinary tract infections, gastrointestinal bleeding, pneumonia, cardiac arrest, or shock), as well as fewer deaths from these and other (sepsis, deep vein thrombosis) complications
In a given unit the optimal workload for a registered nurse was four patients. Increasing the workload to 6 resulted in patients being 14% more likely to die within 30 days of admission.
A workload of 8 patients versus 4 was associated with a 31% increase in mortality. (In the NHS RN's each have anywhere from 10-35 patients per RN. It doesn't need to be this way..Anne)
Higher registered nurse staffing levels resulted in reduced numbers of urinary tract infections, pneumonia, upper gastrointestinal bleeding and shock in medical patients and lower rates of "failure to rescue" and urinary tract infections in major surgery patients.
Thirteen separate studies on nursing care in the late 1980s and early 1990s analyzed by Patricia Prescott,
RN, Ph.D. in late 1993 documented a direct correlation between safe staffing levels and lower mortality
rates and other related patient outcomes.......
Registered Nurses in NHS hospitals usually have between 10 and 30+ patients each on general wards.
Earlier in the year, the New England Journal of Medicine published results from another study of similar genre reported by a different group of nurse researchers. In that paper, Needleman et al3 examined whether different levels of nurse staffing are related to a patient’s risk of developing complications or of dying. Data from more than 5 million medical patient discharges and more than 1.1 million surgical patient discharges from 799 hospitals in 11 different states revealed that patients receiving more care from RNs (compared to licensed practical nurses and nurses’ aides) and those receiving the most hours of care per day from RNs experienced fewer complications and lower mortality rates than those who received more of their care from licensed practical nurses and/or aides. Specifically for medical patients, those who received more hours per day of care from an RN and/or those who had a greater proportions of their care provided by RNs experienced statistically significant shorter length of stay and lower complication rates (urinary tract infections, gastrointestinal bleeding, pneumonia, cardiac arrest, or shock), as well as fewer deaths from these and other (sepsis, deep vein thrombosis) complications
RN's spend less time on the basics these days. Why?
They can't help it.
Patients today have much higher acuity, yet the skill levels of staff have declined as hospitals insist on replacing trained nurses with unlicensed assistive personnel. The registered nurse still is responsible for everything. He just covers a much larger, and sicker group of patients than his colleagues of yesteryear.
•Lower levels of hospital registered nurse staffing are associated with more adverse outcomes such as Pneumonia, pressure sores and death.
•Patients have higher acuity, yet the skill levels of the nursing staff have declined as hospitals replace RN's with untrained carers.
•Higher acuity patients and the added responsibilities that come with them increase the registered nurse workload.
•Avoidable adverse outcomes such as pneumonia can raise treatment costs by up to $28,000.
•Hiring more RNs does not decrease profits. (Hospital bosses don't understand this. They think that they will save money by shedding real nurses in favour of carers and assistants. The damage done to the patients as a result of this costs more moneyi.e expensive deaths, complications,and lawsuits, and complaints....Anne)
Patients today have much higher acuity, yet the skill levels of staff have declined as hospitals insist on replacing trained nurses with unlicensed assistive personnel. The registered nurse still is responsible for everything. He just covers a much larger, and sicker group of patients than his colleagues of yesteryear.
•Lower levels of hospital registered nurse staffing are associated with more adverse outcomes such as Pneumonia, pressure sores and death.
•Patients have higher acuity, yet the skill levels of the nursing staff have declined as hospitals replace RN's with untrained carers.
•Higher acuity patients and the added responsibilities that come with them increase the registered nurse workload.
•Avoidable adverse outcomes such as pneumonia can raise treatment costs by up to $28,000.
•Hiring more RNs does not decrease profits. (Hospital bosses don't understand this. They think that they will save money by shedding real nurses in favour of carers and assistants. The damage done to the patients as a result of this costs more moneyi.e expensive deaths, complications,and lawsuits, and complaints....Anne)
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Disclaimer
I know I swear too much. I am truly very sorry if you are offended. Please do not visit my blog if foul language upsets you. I want to help people. That is why I started this blog and that is why I became a Nurse. I won't run away from Nursing just yet. I want to stick around and make things better. I don't want the nurses caring for me when I am sick working in the same conditions that I am.
Of course this is all just a figmant of my imagination anyway and I am not even in this reality. Or am I?
Any opinions expressed in my posts are mine and mine alone and do not represent the viewpoint of the NHS, the RCN, God, or anyone else.
Patient confidentiality will not be breached in this blog.
Of course this is all just a figmant of my imagination anyway and I am not even in this reality. Or am I?
Any opinions expressed in my posts are mine and mine alone and do not represent the viewpoint of the NHS, the RCN, God, or anyone else.
Patient confidentiality will not be breached in this blog.
Are YOU CRYING?
There is no crying. THERE IS NO GODDAMN CRYING IN NURSING .
3 comments:
How lovely! It's rare moments like this that make the job worthwhile, in my opinion.
One of My Old Boys accosted me in the supermarket once, he threw his arms around me and enthusiastically waffled at length about how lovely the staff on my ward were. That sort of thing makes me so proud of what I do.
It's so hard to do our best sometimes, low staffing levels and demanding patients make the job stressful and frustrating, but knowing we CAN make that much of a difference despite all that is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.
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