Thursday 19 November 2009

More on Degree Nurses

Want to fly into a violent rage? Or bang your head into a wall over the fact that some people have no clue? Read some of the comments here.

There was one good comment.

I haven't yet had the balls to look at the daily mail and their readers take on all this.

15 comments:

murse said...

The daily fail article here and it's comments are the funniest fucking thing I have ever read. Dear God, people have no idea what a nurse is or does, do they?

Anonymous said...

Oh lord, Anne! I did not see these comments before. Nursing no longer needs a real PR firm in the UK. It needs a freaking miracle! Beam me up, Scotty! There is no intelligent life form here!
Casey in the USA

Nurse Anne said...

It's just bizarre. I know people can be dicks about nursing in the USA and Canada but here it is just cultural.

People over there are more switched on even if some of them are dicks.

When I went to nursing school over there and told the locals about it they were like "Nursing!!! OMG that is sooo hard. Why don't you do an easy degree like teaching or communications and have fun at University rather than being in class 12 hours a day plus doing clinicals"

GrumpyRN said...

Anne, I have been having an ongoing argument with the Ferret Fancier here http://ferretfancier.blogspot.com/2009/11/who-will-do-nursing.html it never ceases to amaze me that even doctors who we work beside on a daily basis don't understand what we do, so what chance does the general public have.
Loved the Daily Mail first line "Moves to make nurses take a degree course to qualify could harm patient care, it was claimed last night" why let research and facts get in the way of a good story.
Now, do you think we could institute the Spanish system where if you are in hospital a relative comes in and washes and feeds you?

Nurse Anne said...

Isn't shocking isn't it grumpy. I think we should walk out and let the docs implement all their own treatments etc. They ahve no idea.

My next post is title: Minette Marin is STILL an asshole.

She blatantly lied in her dm article.

Anonymous said...

I hope to hell that Minnette Marin, Claire Rayner and all the idiot Daily Mail readers end up with a nurse who is smiling and mopping their brows as their lab values go spiraling into critically crazy numbers, as after all the nurse doesn't need to know what all that mumbo jumbo means. The Doctor will take care of that. :)

It really makes me wonder what else in the media is actually factual as absolutely everything written about nursing is just anecdotal fabrication.

Nurse Anne said...

Claire Raynor, Monica Dennis, and Lorainne Morgan need to be forced to come to the hospital and work on an acute medical ward as the only nurse for 18 patients. The day before they do their shift they should get a crash course in all the legal stuff. Example: If you miss this you could kill a patient and end up in front of a judge, if you don't get all those done really quickly you will really harm a patient etc etc etc.

Then I want them to show me the "caring" whilst they are the only RN for 18 acute medical patients with only a 16 year old carer to help.

Minette Marin should tag along to watch.

Freaking Monica thinks that Nurses don't realise that basic care is their jobs and she thinks that nurses dump things like basic care onto the care assistants as a result.

Matt said...

The dailyheil amuses me on almost a daily basis with its stories. Its analysed well by the guys at the mailwatch forum. As a previous poster mentioned, nurses need a good pr firm for them here in the uk. The unions never seem to do anything when the public need educating on what a modern nurse is expected to do and how they now need to be educated to be a nurse. I have heard that the NHS in Scotland are starting to do this to counteract what the press and Claire Rayners private healthcare funded patients association have been saying. Sadly, it sems to be only north of the border leading the way again. As usual.

Nurse Anne said...

That's fab though Matt. It's a start anyway.

If I win the lottery I will be producing adverts that highlight what nurses do and what conditions they work in with a few mortality stats thrown in. Voice over example: "thousands of patients die from hospital drug errors every year. Most ward drug errors result from Nurses being interrupted repeatedly while they are trying to mix, prepare,obtain, check multiple drugs for multiple patients that are all due their meds at the exact same time. Not getting drugs on time is also a serious error that can have dire consequences. No other staff on this large ward are actually nurses so they can't help with drugs. Think" Then I will have the fucking things aired during prime time. Repeatedly. And fuck anyone who tries to sue me.


I would also show a nurse making attempts to mix prepare and give some IV phenytoin that is loooong overdue already. Voice over "Nurse Mary is the only nurse on duty and this the only person who can get to John with his medication to prevent seizures" On her first attempt to get to the patient's room she is interrupted by a visitor who asks for a bedpan for mum and has an "you are too posh to wash outburst" when Mary tries to delegate the job to the care assistants. The second time the nurse tries to get to that room with the phenytoin the same thing happens again and the voice over highlights the fact that this nurse is the only nurse and care assistants cannot give meds". The third time the nurse tries to get to the patient with the IV phenytoin she is interrupted by a phone call from a relative screaming at her asking why she hasn't bothered to wash grandma's nighty. The 4th attempt, same such thing again. The 5th attempt, same such thing again. The 6th attempt same such thing again. The last scene will show the patient having a massive grand mal seizure (never pretty, always shocking, head hitting the cot sides biting through the tongue) and in the background you will hear people saying "how dare these nurses try and dump the bedpans on the carers rather than do it themselves.

The problem with that is, of course, that some poor old soul would be in hospital and start having a chest pain and then not say anything because he was terrified of interrupting the nurse.

Remember that woman who was trying to get handouts for nurses from footballers? Not cool. We should be asking for handouts to fund stuff like a PR campaign NOT to line our pockets. Notice I never talk EVER about how piss poor nurses are paid for the work that many of them do. I do not want anyone to think that I am shouting out simply because I want hand outs or to be paid more.

By the way does anyone know just how the hell I could produce these adverts for free and get them aired? Ha ha ha. Yeah right.

Nurse Anne said...

The NHS sure wouldn't like my adverts but it would save them a hell of a lot of money as a result of less mistakes and adverse events in the long run.

Matt said...

the adverts would be intersting Anne. It seems that the public are in the mindset that nurses should drop what they are doing to help them otherwise the are uncaring. I have ben stopped by a relative whilst I was pushing a trolley with a patient on to my theatre to ask me where he can get a cup of coffee from. I've had someone sopt me through a gap in the curtains while I was dressing some nasty bilat leg ulcers expecting me to go over and help them. He got told to go away. I have had a patient shout at me for being noisy because he wanted to sleep. I was counting compressions out during a resus. I wish people had more of an understanding of how hard the job is, and that its not all mopping fevered browns and being subservient to the medics. It would be nice if the RCN and other unions got involved in a campaign to do this, but I doubt they will. This does not put me off wanting to be a nurse, I love the work, I love the interactions I have with patients, I can't wait till the day I qualify and get my nice blue tunic.

Nurse Anne said...

Matt even when I was wearing a "do not disturb" sign during the drug round people were still making a beeline to me to tell me that their mother needed the toilet. He walked past 2 care assistants making a bed with nothing else to do in order to tell me this.

I was doing a drug round, sorting 3 acute admissions, dealing with a pneumonia patient going septic and a COPDer who was going bad. The drug round was already 2 hours late and that includes pain meds and antibiotics that must be given on time and regularly throughout the day. The care assistants could help me with NONE of that.

If I stopped the round everytime someone needed the loo no drugs would get given ever. At any given moment in the shift the people asking for the loo and needing a bedchange outnumber the staff at least 5 to 1.

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