Nightingale must be turning in her grave

Anne Wotana Kaye

For a long time, I regret to say the Holy Cow of British society has become, just a cow. Not all, of course, but so many of the modern nurses sit in their Nurse Station, untidily clad with their hair below the shoulder, wearing nose rings and sour expressions. Patient needs are attended by Nursing Assistants, or the half-trained NVQs, often from overseas and often not too familiar with the English language. Modern 'nurses' are too high and mighty to fetch a bedpan, too over-educated to see whether the food placed by the bedside of a frail patient is actually ever eaten. They are not overly fussy about hygience, they wear their ward dress and shoes outisde the hospital, and scrubbing up just involves a dozy swipe with some type of gel. Oh dear, Nightingale must surely be spinning in her grave, we are truly going backwards to the bad old days.

Anne Wotana Kaye

There was something I wanted to add to my posting of 9:06am. I believe the main purpose of this new qualification requirement is to save the NHS money. Nurses, however 'educated' are still far cheaper to employ than doctors. Today, nurses are called Nurse Practitioners, Nurse Managers, etc. and many patients hoping to see their GP, after quite a long wait to actually arrange an appointment, are shunted off to the nurse. With the best will in the world, a nurse is not a doctor, and patients with cancers and other serious conditions should be able to have consultations with their doctor, if this is what they wish and require. First chemists were given the opportunity to test for various STDs, diabetes and blood pressure in large chain-store chemists. Soon no doubt, minor surgery will take place in supermarkets, unless I am behind the times, and it already is happening.

EDDIE

The object of the degree for nurses is to form a cheaper second tier medical service of “felschers” as they used to have before the war in central Europe to provide some help for the very poor. The degree nurses will become hospital administrators and also see patients in the surgery in place of a smaller number of GP’s who in turn will be available for consultation by the super nurses if they want to avail themselves of this facility. There will also be a lower standard of training for Consultants and the real work of nursing will be done by untrained or basically trained people who will sometimes be supervised by the very busy graduate nurses. The Royal College of Nursing will really love this advance and the possibility of higher status and pay. As far as the Government is concerned it could save them a pile of money.

Stephen Roberts

I agree entirely. My sister went into nursing immediately after nursing my father through terminal cancer. She wanted to do it. Now she has long retired, I have discussed the issues you raised with her and she said that she saw the new generations moving away from patient CARE towards professional career(ism) (is there such a word?). She was emphatic that it was a move in the wrong direction. In 5 years working in the NHS I saw countless examples of "nurses" ignoring the patient problems that most affected their quality of life.

Augustus

Bring back matrons, and take it from there.

Oflife

This is a bi-product of society in general here in the UK. The culture of celebrity and 'reality' TV has ruined women with catastrophic consequences for our nation on the whole. Ironically, one can observe young males are becoming more effeminate (physically and personality wise) while women drink and behave like thoughtless non-caring louts and unfit mothers. Just visit a town centre after about 6pm any day of the week. Women are a vital bedrock of humanity whose compassion and empathy is priceless. What is that expression? Behind every successful man is a woman. (And sometimes, as was the case with Mrs. T, the reverse!)

Rebel Saint

Compare with what has happened to policing. The degree qualified police are 'fast tracked' to senior positions or drive around in patrol cars catching speeding motorists, or visiting the homes of 'hate criminals' to meet their quotas. Meanwhile the lowly qualified PCSO's are patrolling the streets and having to deal with drunken teenagers, thugs and yobs.

In teaching, the highly qualified teachers get extra time away from the children to do lesson planning, marking, assessing, whilst the lowly qualified Teaching Assistants get on with listening to children read and helping them write.

There's more crime and educational standards are dropping, yet the qualifications for entry are getting higher & higher!

The Royal Mail has their first Chief Exec who hasn't actually been a postman. They are now getting edicts about the speed they should be walking at!!

Baron Pipin II

It could only be that my having lived under communism allows me to see the ‘issues’ ridden NHS so differently from the lot of you. The two societal constructs are so alike in every respect - from the ownership, the management, the absence of true competition, the central control, the symptoms of failure and the cures for them, the reliance on targets, the mission statements etc., down to the ‘to everyone according to his needs, from everyone according to his ability (to contribute to it).’ The NHS cannot continue in its present mode of operations. Switching the status of nursing to improve it is akin to employing better cooks to save the sinking Titanic.

Three things are likely to happen. A ‘black market’ will encroach even more on the delivery of health as has happened in dentistry, the access to the NHS will get curtailed more and more, and the NHS’s insatiable need for funds will escalate to the point at which its ‘Berlin Wall’ will crumble. And please, do spare me the examples of excellence in the NHS. The Soviets beat the Americans in launching the first man into orbit. A fat lot of good did it do for the masses, or the survival of a system that began its life from noble and heart warming intentions, not unlike the NHS, only to morph into total paralysis, and eventual collapse.

Treesleeper

I think there should be a new policy that requires politicians to have at least three brain cells, two of which should at least demonstrate an ability to think.

dean

Such experiences are not confined to the NHS; they are equally likely in the private sector. My wife went in for a major operation in May and the nurses wanted to discharge her after 3 days, ostensibly on the basis that 'we're running a business here and need the bed'. Luckily, following my intervention and that of the consultant, they were made to see sense. But whatever led them to think they were the ones making the decisions in the first place? Not nice people at all.

Mark

I usually agree wih Melanie Phillips but on this issue I do not. Maybe, since my frame of reference is the American health care system, I lack the relevant context. But it seems to me that nursing is a job, one that has become amazingly complex in response to technological and pharmacological advances in medicine. I would rather have an educated, articulate nurse taking care of me than a nurse who means well but is intellectually unsophisticated. Similarly, I would rather have a "real" doctor in charge of my case than a nurse practitioner, because a nurse, however well-trained, lacks a physician's more extensive medical background.

Fergus Pickering

My daughter, who is an Occupational Therapist, said that the nurses who studied with her, never came to the lectures and did bugger all work because they knew they didn't have to know all THAT STUFF.

Bill

I do not recognise the picture you present here of the nursing profession. My son was in a children's hospital last year and we found the nursing staff obliging and caring if not overstretched. My one concern was standards of cleanliness seemed lax due to the fashion for nurses not to have their hair covered. But that was my only concern. My son unfortunately had to have a catheter. There was no issue with the nurse have into empty it. The only person concerned about personal dignity was my son and where possible this was respected.

GeoffM

It's funny (well, not at all really) but before we escaped the UK my wife had experience of UK hospitals and they are vile. Not just because of dirt or infections but because most of the staff are distant and "organisation focussed" rather than "patient focussed".

Almost a year ago my father died in the most appalling circumstances - starved, dehydrated and in agony - all down to uncaring staff who would not communicate with us and wards closed off to visitors due to infection (case pending).

We live in France now.

Our GP has only one member of staff, a part-time cleaner. We can get an appointment easily - or just go in and wait. She actually knows her patients and cares for their welfare.

When we visit French hospitals they have no fountains, murals, paintings, fancy receptions, staff milling about (usually avoiding eye contact with annoying patients and relatives - they must teach NHS staff how to do this).

Parking is free.

They are quite understaffed in comparison - but - the signal difference is the focus.

Focus upon the patient. A culture of nurture and care, decent food, cleanliness and respect.

workie ticket

One of the great successes of the Hard Left who have virtually destroyed an honourable profession, like they have done with teachers and the police.

What Anna W K says is spot on - even in so called flagship hospitals care is virtually non-existent and it falls to family or even visitors to neighbouring beds to do the little things which make a stay in hospital bearable - like feeding patients.

Publius

@Mark
"who means well but is intellectually unsophisticated"

I fear you have not come across the kind of graduate that far too many British universities are turning out.

Charlie

Mark,
"I would rather have an educated, articulate nurse taking care of me "

But from Melanie's article it seems that you would not have access to this vision as she would be otherwise occupied.

Educated and articulated maybe, but willing to do the dirty work to keep you clean and comfortable in a hospitable bed while seeing to it that you have sufficient liquids and food in light of the poor physical state you may be in?

Maurice, MD

So it is now considered beneath the dignity of a nurse to spoon-feed a patient?
When Elizabeth I's chief minister Lord Burghley was in his last illness, the Queen sat by his bed and spoon-fed him.

steve

Thanks, Melanie. I recently had a hospital experience where the standard of care fell short. I put that down to the nurses being overworked and understaffed but now I know it was because of "ultra-feminist orthodoxy." Probably that same orthodoxy is to blame for nurses expecting to be paid in the first place instead of just caring for free. It's a shame we can't have the level of care that would have been available at the time of Nightingale.

J.A.Evans

But it is getting worse. Also this morning the government announced , as a sop to protests about immigration, that doctors from outside the European Union would be prevented from working in the UK. Have they failed to notice the cutting edge of medical research is often headed by doctors clearly of Asian origin . Have WE failed to notice how our hospitals are staffed by these clever and conscientious people. What hope now?

C. Gee

Compassion is no longer a personal virtue. It is something you vote for government to act in the name of and pay taxes for. Society is compassionate, so that no person needs to be.

Fraser

Melanie Phillips - I salute you! You have written an excellent summation of what has gone sickeningly wrong with nursing today. I only hope that your views get a wider audience, and that perhaps the public will start to wake up and realise what is happening to our once great NHS.

Well done, and thank you.

Nicholas

The "progressives" will scorn this "grumpy old man's" view of the past but I can well remember the hospital ward cleaning regime of the 1950's. It began very early in the morning and the nurses did it. Everywhere was scrubbed and disinfected, the beds were changed, the patients taken to be bathed or given blanket baths. The regime was overseen by the matrons and was almost military in its regularity and routine - as you would expect from its heritage.

The essence of nursing, as instituted by Nightingale, was cleanliness and cleaning. It involved cleaning wards, beds, bedclothes and patients.

The current regime, if you can call it that, is just plain slovenly. It is a disgrace but the current sentimental, mawkish idiocy that turns nurses who don't deserve it into sacred cows (lazy cows more like) means it will not be tackled properly. Britain and the British people have lost their way and they deserve everything they are going to get.

Christopher Chantrill

The thing to remember is that the cult of careerism is the cunning trick we have played on men to get them to turn from piracy and plunder to the harmless corporate rat race.

For women, as for Dorothea Brooke, it will always be true that:

"Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on earth. But the effect of her being around those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

"George Eliot" knew that 140 years ago and there is nothing the feminists can do about it.

colin

sorry mel i've just started a nursing degree and i belive that personal care and having a reasonable understanding of concepts such as autonomy is important compasion and good personal care must be at the hub though, your right..dont get to het up abouut this thier are still gonna be people who care who take the degree hava a little faith

JamesC

Thankyou melanie, agree with you 99%. However where you write 'strike a deep chill into to every heart' this is an understatement. Melanie it is far worse, it's the stuff of nightmares. Also what is even more awful is that most people can't see it. God bless

Realistic Nurse

This article demonstrates very little understanding and insight into modern nursing. As nurses, we are faced with many challenges. I have met very few nurses who feel that the every day basic tasks are above them, but rather, that it is wiser to utilise our skills in the most effective way. I work with many dedicated and wonderful care assistants - The basic care they provide enables me to run my department effectively, and focus on care planning and managing. I cannot imagine how my role is making patient care worse. I am a nurse, a professional woman with a career and an education. I refuse to feel guilty for wanting the image of my profession to be improved, to make it more academic, to give us more influence. We are nurses, we are not mindless drones.

Fergus Pickering - I do believe your daughter is seriously mistaken.

I would also like anyone who accuses nurses of being lazy to spend a day with me. I extend the invite to any of you.

Roger K

Yes the picture you paint is vey true both in Britain and here in New Zealand. I see from some of the comments on the blog that some did not take on board that there are, as you stated Melanie, still some nurses who are very dedicated highly motivated people, who do care and do a great job.
But there is a graet divide between the few and the many.

I see the problem as not just ego feminism but generaly that there is a demand for higher qualification than necessary to do or start any job. I can remember when cub reporters did not need a degree to start!

Over here in New Zealand we have another layer of PC. Nurses have to be culturally correct as well! A large chunk of their training is in Maori senstivities! Some body who is ill and wants help doesn't care about the colour of their skin nor how well they know the legends. And somebody lying in dirty sheets and bed sores doesn't care about the toy certificates on the wall.

C. Gee

Realistic Nurse:

You say, "I refuse to feel guilty for wanting the image of my profession to be improved, to make it more academic, to give us more influence. We are nurses, we are not mindless drones."
What we need are mindless drones. Actual robots able to feed, bathe, change, encourage and make comfortable the sick. Then the nurses' assistants can elevate their status to drone-managers, just as nurses have elevated their status to care-managers and planners.

I would very much like to know what care-managing and planning is all about. Duty rosters, timetables, shifts, keeping track of overtime hours...Not for the lazy. Certainly nothing to feel guilty about.

Society is compassionate now. Individuals do not need to be.

xtract

Sorry, I spoke out of reaction to the current and past state of things. In my early posts, I detailed exactly how I came to my view of said Ds but that does not my it can't change. Sorry, was rude.

Fergus Pickering

Realistic Nurse, my daughter did not say that nurses did bugger all work as nurses; she was speaking about university work. She said what she saw. It was probably not true in all cases.However, whether or not they all, or even most of them, came to lectures was a matter of observation. Perhaps they were the wrong lactures for nurses.

Ray

My ol' man's a refuse and recycling engineer,

'E wears a refuse and recycling engineer's 'ead protection.

'E wears outer garments pertainin' to his 'profession',

And lives in a one bedroom apartment on a social housing scheme.

He looks looks a proper narner,

In 'is steel toe-capped safety footwear.

'E's got such a job to pull 'em up,

That in a less professionalised era 'e's told they were called 'daisy roots'.

(With apologies to Lonnie Donegan)

Neil Saunders

"colin"

Your immaculate spelling, punctuation and capitalisation fill me with every confidence that your nursing will be of a comparable standard with your use of the English language.

John Thomas

Did anyone see that excellent TV programme "Casualty 190 ..."? - where nurses really really cared, and did all the menial jobs, and in one case, they actually prayed over a collection of dead babies' bodies (it'd be off to the gulag with them, if they tried that today). But though based on original documents, this was still a modern British media thing (BBC maybe), so there just had to be one episode glorifying abortion. The Culture of Death is always with us.

Anne Wotana Kaye

Neil Saunder: I agree with your comments about COLIN's ability to write in the English language. But Neil, you must remember we are horribly out of date. Colin represents the brave new UK scholar who practices diversity in his use of the language. The robust, (popular buzz word) display of what appear as grammatical mistakes is actually a transparent (another buzz word) use of multicultural modern usage. No doubt his examination papers will be marked by computers - caring computers who will emphasise with his vocational choice.

Neil Craig

IOt is part of the trend which saw a minister say that Labour's intended policy of requiring anybody involved in child care to have a formal qualification was a step in ending "child poverty". I simply cannot believe that even Labour ministers are so economically illiterate as not to know that when the supply of any service is artificially reduced the priice goes up. Child care is about 4 times as expensive as it need be because of regulation & the intent is to do the same to adult care - & ensure the nomenklatura has its fingers more firmly around the throat of anybody who just wants to work for a living.

Augustus

Nicholas - Hear! Hear! You've got it in one (and my mother was a matron).

burgess

Bravo, Mel! Spot on as to the way it is and the why as well. But alas, “What Is To Be Done?”

My experience is in US over the last 20 years. There are some remnants of the way it was and should be, and they stand out like beacons in the darkness, but they are fading.

In addition to the horror stories of neglect and abuse I would add the loud, rude barking and guffawing up and down the hallways like a bunch of drunken sailors.

Keep up the good fight, Mel.

Frank G Zavisca

As am Intern in Bufalo NY in 1970, my patient needed to use a bedpan.

A "LPN" (Licensed Practical Nurse - 1 year of "college") refused to help, saying "I am not trained to do this".

So I, the DOCTOR, helped the patient with the bedpan.

logdon

colin
November 12th, 2009 9:16pm

You takin' the piss, or what, Col?

logdon

Realistic Nurse
November 12th, 2009 10:57pm

This article demonstrates very little understanding and insight into modern nursing. As nurses, we are faced with many challenges...

And at that point I moved on.

Nothing to see here.

Garbage by rote.

Stick a few grossly over used buzz words over and over and over until we all die of boredom by a thousand cliche's.

Saves the NHS a bed, I suppose.

Howard Patrick

'It isn't just me'. A number of other people who have had the misfortune to either be in hospital or visit patients have made comments along the lines of, 'why are so many nurses seriously fat these days'!
I know this is not marxist PC language but at the age of 67 I don't give a damn!

Herbert Thornton

My own family's experiences are very similar to those described by Nicholas.

I was in the Lancaster Royal Infirmaryin 1947 for an appendicitis operation and the insistence on cleanliness in the ward and the thoroughness with which it was carried out - every day - was most impressive.

More recently - only a few years ago - a brother-in-law was in a hospital in London for an operation and he told me that the airconditioning duct attached to the ceiling above his bed was used as a roost by pigeons. He told me that he know they were pigeons because he could hear them cooing.

Frank P

Surprisingly in this context nobody has mentioned the issue of psychotic drugs being administered to dementia sufferers to render them more 'manageable'. Knocking out noisy or wandering patients at night with the 'chemical cosh', so that nurses wishing to sleep during night duty hours (thus leaving their days free for other activities or second black-economy second jobs) is a widespread practice not publicly acknowledged, not only in private care homes but the geriatric wards of hospitals. The excuse that is always available is hat such patients are disturbing other patients. The collusion by doctors who prescribe such drugs as haloperidol in these circumstances is a scandal.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/1800-Dementia-Patients-Die-Each-Year-After-Being-Wrongly-Prescribed-Anti-Psychotic-Drugs/Article/200911215452114?lpos=UK_News_Third_UK_News_Article_Teaser_Region__9&lid=ARTICLE_15452114_1,800_Dementia_Patients_Die_Each_Year_After_Being_Wrongly_Prescribed_Anti-Psychotic_Drugs

Anne Wotana Kaye

Frank P. Unfortunately the drugging of patients to "shut them up" has been going on for as long as I can remember. I was horrified more than fifty years ago to see this practice done in hospitals and nursing homes. Today, the situation is worse in that babies and young children are drugged by GPs and so-called specialists to make them docile and more easy to control. No wonder we have so many obese children! The drugs affect the metabolism and other biochemical functions. GPs are also very swift to prescribe tranquillisers and behaviour controlling drugs, it keeps the patients quiet, and it stops the GPs having to spend time finding out what is making the patients so unhappy and ill. The worst thing today is seriously mentally ill patients given behaviour controlling drugs, then sent out for 'care in the community.' Alas, we have all seen the results of this save money/save hospital beds policy.

martin o

Ann. Perhaps you mean 'empathise', rather than emphasise. Goodness me, how careless not to check your work! Wouldn't want you giving me an injection. Colin is probably much more assiduous a nurse, even if unlikely to win a round of Countdown.

David Ossitt

On the 12th, I posted the following on Coffee House; I suspect that I should have posted it here.

On this subject Melanie Phillips ended with:-

“Truly, under the mind-bending camouflage of ‘progressive ‘ideology Britain is going backwards into a pre-modern, unenlightened, crueller age”

On radio 4 this morning John Humphrys; posed questions to The Chief Nursing Officer Christine Beasley and Head of Nursing at UNISON Gail Addams.

The waffle and doublespeak that he uncovered in his interview was truly horrific.

It became obvious that in the future the nursing as in, “The work of caring for the sick or injured or infirm usually under the supervision of a physician” will be done by support staff.

I suggest that we welcome these changes; and that we recruit these support staff from that body of young men and women who do not have an academic degree, who see the care of the weak the sick and the needy as a high and extremely worthy calling.

I also suggest that these support staff be trained to the standard and in the same way as those we used to call SRN and that we call these support staff “Health Carers”.

Anne Wotana Kaye

martin o: This is a horrible example of "Those in glasshouses shouldn't throw stones." I bow my head in shame, and regret I pressed the 'Post your comment' button too quickly. I do wish it were possible to double check a posting before sending it off.

Snowman

Unbelievable, an example of pristine cleanliness here and there, half a dozen of awful personal experiences here and there, and so it goes. As a thread on a blog of storytelling that’s hard to fault.

Has it occurred to any of you that if the survival of the outfit depended on your either booking in or not, the running of it would improve? Without dozens of managers or sub-managers with impressive titles and clipboards, without visits from a higher authority, without any of the trappings of an institution that has morphed into a monstrosity that exists more to self-satisfy that to serve its original purpose? Only a masochist would entertain the idea of a repeat visit to a place that wasn’t clean enough, drugged patients, employed nurses the didn’t nurse…..

taylor jackson

she was a very good person