The Uppity Bitch from the DoH. (Northern Doc reminded me all about her)

I read this on Northern Doc and it reminded me of a little story. It happened on an evening shift preceding my night shift.

Once we had some bint from the DoH show up in the middle of a shift. There were 2 nurses and maybe 2 carers to a full fucking medical ward of patients, with all the things that I describe in other posts happening all at once. There are not enough hand washing facilities and they are in very bad locations. The domestics are around for several hours in the morning and on the evening and they have to serve hot drinks and prepare meal trolleys and dish up food plus do all the washing up in a short amount of time. They also have to manage hospital laundry from the ward. Ten bags can pile up in an hour and the domestics have to pack it up and get it to where ever it needs to go.

All the DoH trollop did was constantly interrupt the nurse while she was pushing IV drugs to say things like "You must clean the commodes every hour and fill out this form and that form and put this coloured sticker on that and this coloured sticker on this. Every hour, no ifs ands or butts."

She pulled the nurse off of her 5th attempt to start the drug round "You must wash this every hour, and fill in this form and that form, then fill in this sticker and put it on to show you have cleaned. This colour for Mondays, this colour for Tuesdays etc etc"

She stopped the nurse in the middle of mealtime to ask her to inspect trolleys and trays for cleanliness. Mealtime is when the nurse is still trying to start her delayed medicine round as well as monitor 15 patients and feed 5 of them. And the phone is ringing constantly. And she is trying to answer call bells. The two care assistants were feeding 2 of the 10 feeds on the ward. The nurse was supposed to pick up 5 of them. The other nurse was staying put with a dying patient and his heartbroken family with no back up.

The nurse responded with talking about the things that I talk about on this blog. Nurse patient ratios that are unsafe (triple what is recommended by the International council of nurses, the RCN, and AMA etc) constant interruptions, poor facilities, untrained support staff, lack of management etc.

The bint responded with "It's not really about lack of staff and facilities is it? It's about dirty nurses not wanting to take pride in their work". She cocked her head in a funny manner as she said it, and actually smirked. She said it with a mock syrupy sweet voice. It was sick. One of our care assistants is a hell of a mimic and she repeated it perfectly for me, when I came in for the night shift that night. The very proud hands on nurse was just weeping at this point, as she handed over to me.

This nurse was left speechless by this DoH fucktard. She had just put in a 12 hour day without a meal and she was treading water trying to manage multiple patient problems that were occurring at that time. There was a lot more going on than the meals and the medications. She still had 2 hours to go on her 14 hour shift and would not even consider feeding herself. This nurse has a degree in biology as well as nursing and she has been nursing for over a decade. She is very proud hands on nurse. She is older but she pushes herself every day to do her job and do it well. She thought that she was career changing into nursing to "help people" and that she would be respected for it.

One of the care assistants piped in to the DoH twit. "We are struggling to care for the patients in any capacity and although we don't mind cleaning, we are going to take care of the patients first. Often we work double shifts without breaks etc and we still don't get most things done. Everything is a rush job. Cleaning every hour and filling in five forms and coordinating them with coloured stickers without additional staff will deny the patients any kind of nursing care at all".

DoH whore smirked again. "I suspect that is a bit of an exaggeration. You don't look busy". Again, it was done it a sickly sweet patronising voice.

It's a damn good thing Nurse Anne was not there. I would have gone crazy and I would have gone medieval and nutted her right there, in the middle of the ward, and I would not be blogging about this or nursing ever again because I would be in prison for assault. I would have gone apeshit. I am always professional and gentle at work. Always. No matter how bad I feel inside. But this would have sent me over the edge. At work, I look like a nice little white girl with a smile on my face and a gentle manner. But I could have easily gone jerry springer guest on her.

When the nurse went to see why a patient was collapsed in her chair and diaphoretic, the DoH slut was right behind her, lecturing her about hand washing. And when the nurse ran to the next patient because the care assistant reported that he had a pulse of 35, the DoH cow was right behind her, trying to pull her aside to talk about coloured stickers for commodes and drip stands. And when the nurse sorted that out and headed back to her drug round over an hour late, the DoH skank was right behind her, wanting to observe her washing a bed pan out, to see that she was doing it correctly.

This is what we are dealing with folks. This is how they think they are going to prevent MRSA and CDiff. Leave one nurse to 14 patients and constant interruptions and expect her to clean commodes and drip stands and document it in different places every time.

The tramp from the DoH was NOT interested in the fact that:

Nurse patient ratios are crucial in fighting hospital acquired infections.

Poor hand washing facilities leads to poor hand washing when nurses are trying to literally do 15 things at once.

100% bed occupancy and beds to close together lead to cross infection.

There are too few domestics who have too much to do in a short period of time.

The managers are racing patients up from a&e the minute they find out we have a discharge planned. The porters are in a hurry too, and they just dump the new patient into the old patient's bed. It will only have been cleaned if I had 30 seconds of free time to clean it while I am stuck with someone with chest pain and someone who needs oxygen. We have had to walk away from really sick people to clean a bed because a&e is sending up a neutropenic patient 2 minutes after another patient was discharged. If I don't stop what I am doing to clean that bed the porters will dump the new patient in a dirty bed. Everyone is busy. Targets Targets Targets. As a ward nurse you get admissions when it is convenient for a&e, not when you are in a position to actually care for a new patient. I have begged the manager to hold off on sending admissions for 15 minutes when we are trying to feed patients, or give drugs. It never works. Targets.

We have two working blood pressure/temp/pulse machines for the whole ward which includes people with cdiff and mrsa.

No, the bitch from the DoH wasn't interested in any of this.

But she definitely got a lot of pleasure out of smirking the line "dirty nurses".

I think would have bitch slapped her about 180 times, and then happily trotted off to jail.

I see things like this, and it scares me.

Look, I believe in handwashing and hygiene but let me tell you something. Cdiff and Mrsa and a whole lot of other superbugs are every where. Everywhere. Waitrose, your child's school, colonised on the lady sitting next to you on the train. Stickers and handwashing posters are not going to do a lot about this. Deal with it.