Keir Starmer announces “Ballooning NHS waiting times and delays getting vital treatment in A&E and cancer care is harming health and costing lives, according to Lord Darzi’s government-commissioned report.
It is doubtful if anything sensible will come out of this report; as implementing it will mean dismantling the multiple empires built up by Admin staff who replaced Matron; today they rule the NHS, in Matron’s place .
Long gone are those sensible people who ran hospitals; today they are replaced by costly levels of self-perpetuating bureaucracy that has dug itself into an impregnable position.
Today’s reality in hospital
I had been sick, so rang the bell for a nurse. As one came through the door she screamed “You’ve made a mess all over the floor”.
Yes Sunshine – that’s what nursing is all about – when there were Matrons they would have told you in their induction speech what to expect. But there is no matron today to lend wise counsel and years of wisdom to nurse training.
\Instead, nurses are taught to rely on computers and smartphones, and Matron’s personal pride in running an efficient hospital has gone out the window. Pride in a job well done doesn’t have a monetary value, so today’s highly-paid CEOs who replaced Matron don’t have the same ethos.
Dumbing down nurse training
Today Matron has been replaced by highly-paid Administrators; long on theory but short on practical experience; They know all about saving money, but little about what patients really need. As I found out recently, nurses are trained how to take your blood pressure, but not how to interpret readings. Seems this has been cut out – probably to save time. and/or money.
This machine issued to trainees costs over £1,000 – replacing the small cuff machine costing a tenth. Trainees are experts at trundling these around, but seem incapable of interpreting what results show;. One trainee had no idea why I was worried when my reading shot up dangerously.
And a fresh horror is appearing; Community Hospitals. These sound friendly, but basically, the NHS has looked at the number of elderly patients” bed-blocking” because they can’t go home, and come up with a plan that enables grannie-with-dementia to be discharged back into the community, drugged up to the eye-balls and wearing continence pads.
But if you are elderly, but have your wits about you enough not to want to exist in a drugged state, you can find it difficult to come off the drugs.
Reality today
My many long-term conditions, started when I caught polio aged 15,. These mean I have been an in-patient in 28 different hospitals. I’ve made friends with nurses in British, German, French, Italian, Austrian and Swiss hospitals, and skilled nursing helped me survive and thrive. But for the past few years I have found nurse training in the UK is being dumbed down, and we have to advocate for ourselves if we want proper care.
Good nursing care is vital to recovery. but it needs well-trained nurses to carry it out. If trainees don’t receive proper training, things fall apart. Our new Labour government announces they aim to reduce long waits for treatment, but I think it won’t work unless current nurse training is tightened up.
Everyone mentions their ” wonderful doctor”, but without the nursing to back up prescribed treatment we would struggle to get better.
Nurses are so important
Lying in a hospital bed in my local town, I could observe the way nurse training has changed from when I was a victim of a polio pandemic, Then, nurses worked tirelessly and got us through the worst. But today, when I ask a nurse to do something, often their response is “I must protect myself”, rather than what they can do for me. Yes, safety training for staff is vitally important, but do patients need to be reminded of what should be an integral part of training? It made me feel guilty for asking.
I agree that nurses should be trained not to strain their backs, etc. But they are there to help patients, and we don’t need to know what they are doing to protect themselves.
Staff Training
Once, being cared for in a major teaching hospital was a big plus. Today, it’s the contrary. Recently, in Oxford’s John Radcliffe teaching Hospital, the trainee nurse taking my blood pressure told me it showed a reading of 170. This was way above my normal reading, but didn’t seem to concern her. Even though she could have checked in my notes and seen it is usually around the 120/130 mark.
Finally, an Agency Nurse let the cat out of the bag; the sister in charge of drugs had forgotten to order my blood pressure tablets. If the trainee had done as she should, and informed a superior, this would have been sorted without fuss. But it seems nurse training is carried out at arm’s length – and trainees aren’t encouraged to bother superiors.
It wasn’t the first encounter I had had with the Sister-in-charge of drugs. On admission, I had told the nurse doing my check-in that I was allergic to preservatives in certain drugs. This was also noted on my printed hand-over form. Hospital Caterers had picked up on this and sent a dietician to talk over what I could eat, but the ‘drugs sister’ hadn’t bothered to read these notes, and ordered drugs for me that contained preservatives.
My face and body blew up in a painful rash and I am still being treated for this, one year later.
For the future
It is up to us, as patients, to monitor how we are nursed. If anything seems wrong it probably is, so it’s up to you to alert whoever is in charge. Don’t sit back and think “Nurse knows best”. So often today they are a trainee and don’t..
While Matron has been ousted by the new breed of Administrator/Accountants (on vast six-figure salaries), Matron on her sensible salary, with her common-sense approach to patient care, will never be allowed back into the system.
Britain has produced many innovations in medical care, from Jenner and Hunter, Lister and Fleming, to Florence Nightingale and her revolutionary nursing methods during the Crimean War. ]Today, American nurses celebrate Florence Nightingale Day, and when Daddy worked in Turkey I remember going with him to represent the British Community at the Annual Nurses Award Ceremony, held in Scutari Hospital where Nightingale had worked..
The ceremony was very moving, each nurse carried a little lamp commemorating “The Lady with the Lamp”, and it was obvious her legacy meant a lot.
Let’s hope that today’s nurses think of her legacy, and training improves to what would have been acceptable to Miss Nightingale.