Another Classic Quote from High Level Nurse

We already had a previous comments post. This new comment wins hands down. 

I cannot tell you if the person who said the following is a Matron, a Clinical Lead, a Nurse Specialist, a non ward based Nurse manager etc etc.  But she is one of the above.

Like most of the silly commentators mentioned in my previous post she is an older nurse, trained under the old system; she hasn't worked on a ward since 1982 and she HATES Nurses who choose to stay at the front lines providing direct patient care.  She sees them as "Nurse Failures".  Thank god that us University educated Nurses don't think like that. We are going to be on the wards providing direct patient care until we retire anyway.  It is where you start out when you graduate Nursing school and these days it is where you stay as there is NO PROMOTION and recruitment freezes.

She has given the frontline staff nurses even more scores to do.  Not content with having them down twice a week she now wants us to do them on all  35 patients every day (irregardless of risk factors) and document the results in 4 different places. Each sheet of paper of course requires the nurse to write the patients name, date of birth, 9000 digit long NHS number on both front and back.  There is the waterlow score for pressure areas, the nutrition score, the fall risk score. Blah blah blah.  If a patient deteriorates and moves from a low waterlow score to a high one then obviously there is higher risk of pressure area damage and certain actions we will then need to implement. As if we wouldn't realise without the score....eye roll.

We told Nurse Ancient that this amount of writing is ridiculous, physically impossible etc etc.  She called on us to ask why her scores were not being done.

When we told her we had too many patients, too many things going on at once and  that doing this insane amount of redundant paperwork was impossible and pointless she called us "whingers".  And then she said:

"You don't really have to score them every day if you are busy.....just copy down what the last person wrote or make it up...guesstimate....just make DAMN SURE THAT THE DOCUMENTATION IS COMPLETED".

Um.  Well what is the point then?  If I am going to write all these names, patient info, scores and numbers on 4 different worksheets back and front for 35 people I need to know that it is actually going to benefit the patients.

Still not going to do it.  She can bite us.  They just had 5 RN's quit simultaneously off the 40 bed even more short staffed hellhole ward below mine.  Let's see if we all get sacked for refusing.

Our younger  RNs are scared of the Queen Bee "Nurse" quoted on this post. There they are running around, trying to get all this stupid paperwork done so that they are seen as "good nurses" by their "superiors". 

Militant Medical Nurse knows that being a good nurse is inversely proportional to being a good employee.  Fuck the non essential paperwork, I have patients to nurse.  I am trying to teach this notion to the youngsters.  Safe patient care first: fucktwittery last...Of course if the hospital gets sued and the paperwork is not 100% complete (including scores) a barrister will use that to nail the trust (and clinicians responsible for patient) to a wall.

will continue