US nurses fight ....and they already had better ratios than we do!

American nurses have been speaking out about the dangerous conditions in which they are working. Do you know what really struck me when I was watching the following videos? The staffing conditions in the UK are much worse. Exponentially worse. All the horrors that these nurses describe are extant here. We need to get a movement going and we need to get people to listen.

The nurses in the USA have a little more going for them when speaking out however. They have many more job opportunities than UK nurses. If a UK nurse pisses off the NHS she is done. There are private hospitals here etc but they are not as numerous as they could be and neither are the jobs. The region I used to live in across the pond had 7 different hospitals owned by 7 different companies all within a 40 minute drive from my home. In addition to that there were 75 plus facilities that where hiring all within an hours drive. These places were owned by 10 or so different companies who were all in competition with each other. In addition to that I could have looked at working in a doctors office, a school, one of the many home health care companies or for an insurance company. The jobs were plentiful. If I had publicly shopped the hospital I worked in for unsafe staffing, I still could have possibly had another job somewhere else. My new employer might have been hesitant to hire a whistle blower, or they may have loved the fact that I made their competitor look like shit.

Not here. Not here. UK nurses are gagged if they want to survive financially. You mess with the Goliath NHS and you are pretty much done. Margaret Haywood, the nurse who helped to film patient neglect and expose it on panorama has recently be reinstated. Who thinks she will actually get hired on a general ward at an NHS hospital? I don't think they'll touch her with a ten foot pole but for her sake (and the patients) I hope that they will hire her.

The nurses of California fought hard and publicly for the safety of patients. Nurse patient ratio legislation was written and passed. Soon other states followed suit after their governments listened to the testimony of brave front line nurses.

I don't care if you are in a socialist hellhole like the UK or a capitalist pig stye like the USA. The fact is that in both places the people who run hospitals and health care facilities are crooked bastards who resent having to put money into front line services. They intentionally short staff their facilities and then whine (fake whining as they don't really give a shit) about the "nursing shortage". They kill patients. They claim that they are staffing their facilities very well whilst having no understanding whatsoever as to how to staff a unit. They give each nurse so many patients and so little in the way of support and resources that working 12 hours straight without a meal will barely keep your patients alive let alone allow you to "care". Nurses are professionals with a license. If something out of my control happens because I am running in too many directions at once I have to take the blame. The managers who play with people's lives walk free. That's always how it has been. People will always blame the stupid, uncaring, mean, incompetent nurse while missing the big picture. This is why the situation has deteriorated so badly.

Take a look at the vids below. I want you to keep in mind one thing throughout: the situation is worse in the UK. If the nurses testifying in this video are describing just how people die when one RN is running between 8 patients keep in mind that an RN in England will be running between 16 patients on a similar ward.

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q18ttHO4Uyc We don't use restraints in the UK. But we have more patients. We just have a lot more of total falls out of bad rather than half falls out of bed.

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIkwHcuA0F0
I like this woman. She has been a bedside nurse for over 30 years and is shocked about the deterioration in care. She knows the score and you won't hear her twittering on about "uncaring over educated nurses". The unholy trinity of nursing i.e. Lorraine Morgan, Claire Raynor, and Monica Dennis.... all left bedside nursing around the time that the nurse in this video started apparently. The three of them think that nurses invented nursing assistants to get out of doing nursing care. They don't have a fucking clue. Also listen to what the woman in this video says about the numbers of patient one RN should have. Nurses on surgical wards in the UK are taking on a hell of a lot more than 8 patients. Do the math for what their mortality rates are why don't you? Let me tell you, the idea of giving an RN a large number of patients (more than 6) and then throwing a few care assistants in that the nurse should oversee is a total fucking FAIL.

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIHrFg33d34

Well said babe. This woman is another one who has been nursing since around the time the unholy trinity left nursing. I blogged earlier about how those that run hospitals have manufactured the nursing shortage to save a few quid. It's true. States like California that have enacted nurse patient ratio legistlation have had NO trouble recruiting enough nurses, and preliminary research has shown that their staff sickness rates have decreased, and they have saved money despite the fact that they have a lot more RN's to pay. The reduction in patient complications and complaints has saved so much money that it has offset of the cost of all those RN's. Their nurses are well educated, provide total care and no one is complaining about not being bathed or fed.

4.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkhZ9dCZIp8&feature=related

More from Oregon. I like the guy at the end of this video. I like what he says I mean.

So you think that these videos are American and have no bearing here? Bullshit. The hospitals here are also "balancing their budgets" on the backs of the nurses. The situation here in England is much worse than what is being described in these videos. Much worse. And the nurses here do not have the back up of the politicians or the public, thanks again to the likes of the Claire Raynor and Lorraine Morgan perpetuating the historical hangover image of nursing...you know...nurses are uneducated slags who should be able to care for 100 patients for 16 hours without a break and sweep the floor with a smile and look beautiful and fresh as a daisy at the same time. If they won't do this they need sustained beatings whilst we ignore the crooks who run these hospitals. Ladies and Gents the statement in italics is basically the essence of what the government, mainstream media, hospital chiefs and dinosaur nurses are saying.

And then we wonder why the nursing care in our hospitals continues to deteriorate.