Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
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Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
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Old people are left to go thirsty, made to go to the toilet on those dreadful commodes instead of being walked to the toilet and ignored while nurses and probably doctors chat round the nurses statio
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Forums » Off duty » News & media » Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
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Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
posted at 13/10/2011 10:26 AM BST
on bmj.com
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Old people are left to go thirsty, made to go to the toilet on those dreadful commodes instead of being walked to the toilet and ignored while nurses and probably doctors chat round the nurses station. These are the findings of the Care Quality Commisison whose inspectors looked at 100 hospitals. A report in the Telegraph says : After carrying out spot checks at geriatric wards in 100 hospitals, the commission found that 35 needed to make improvements, 18 were failing to meet legal standards and there were “major concerns” at two trusts. Its report is the latest to conclude that pensioners, who account for almost half of in-patients, are routinely denied the most basic care because of a culture of neglect among staff. In some places, elderly patients were left rattling their bed rails or hitting water jugs on tables to attract nurses’ attention." |
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Re: Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
posted at 13/10/2011 4:37 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Re: Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
posted at 13/10/2011 7:59 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 1317
First: 7/3/2009 Last: 15/5/2012 |
Unfortunately I've seen quite a lot of this going on in different hospitals. Be it the burden, the wear of many years, the process of becoming less responsive and listless, the complaints about low salaries or anything else, still it is a real problem and it is unacceptable. People in healthcare need to be empathic, otherwise they should not be in healthcare. Many times nurse complain about the hard work, the burden of many patients, the problems with families,not enough staff etc... But if you look at how work is organised, sometimes you wonder why they shoot their own legs.... Stagnant old ways of doing rounds at specific times, this for medications, this for changing the bed, this for measuring vital signs, etc. Why wait until an old patient is on the verge of urinating on his/her clothes, when you can prevent it by asking if he/she needs to toilet? Just ask before, don't wait for the situation to form so you react to it...I don't guarantee it wil prevent each time the "accident", but it will help. And if nurses are indifferent and don't react to patients requests, then it should be delt with seriously, even terminating the contract and taking another nurse in instead.
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Re: Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
posted at 13/10/2011 10:45 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2072
First: 10/3/2009 Last: 16/5/2012 |
In my country the salaries for those caring for the young (child care) and the elderly are low as it is for those doing medical research. Society places a monitary value on care and we get what we deserve. The same applies to teachers. Merchant bankers, stock market traders on the other hand are well remunerated as they circulate the electronic binary numbers which keep the modern fiscal system from dying. I do note that many nurses I see have little or no knowledge of my patients' management problems despite my letters and notes in charts and attempt to involcve them. It is rare to have a nurse accompany me when I see a patient. They are water boatmen on the surface paddling with the aid of surface tension so they don't sink. The chart at the end of the bed is laden with pages of unnecessary legalistic proformas including wound care even when the patient does not have a wound.
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Re: Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
posted at 14/10/2011 8:51 AM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 279
First: 12/7/2010 Last: 19/4/2012 |
I have rotated in many hospitals (Middle East, USA and even India) and have never come across the nurses mentioned above. In fact, I am in awe of nurses who do so much for so little, who are so caring and kind to the patients. Nurses are awesome in that they juggle a million patients AND have time to teach skills to medics when there's no doctor in sight. I wonder how doctors' lives would be, if there were no nurses! Mine would be shortened for sure! I am pretty sure the nurses mentioned above do exist but I have yet to meet them. If nurses have the power to make our lives easier by their efficiency, then I guess the inverse is equally possible. I did come across a terrible student nurse who had the audacity to joke about at the bedside of a dead patient. I will never forget the disgust I felt beneath the paralysing numbness of witnessing my first death. If I were his Dean, I would have chucked him out of nursing school, on the spot. Geez. |
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Re: Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
posted at 14/10/2011 10:11 AM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2072
First: 10/3/2009 Last: 16/5/2012 |
I must be wrong then after 30 odd years in the saddle. I entered medicine in 1970 and worked for the first two years as a nursing orderly and made a thousand beds with hospital corners, cleaned out tuberculous sputum mugs (stainless steel then with no paper inserts) with Bon Ami (a sort of abrasive cleaner), did bowel washouts on tetraplegic bikies, and made breakfast and lunch for fifty or more patients with a few kilograms of cheese, a crate of bread and a toaster and a few hundred pounds of lettuce and tomatoes. I was a medical student at the time (year 1 and 2 of my six years) and did this on the holidays for six weeks and saw a lot of people die and knew the agonal bowel motions of a man about to have a cardiac arrest in terminal heart failure. I wrote a poem about it. Then the charge nurse knew all patients and nurses knew all the patients in the ward and not just the six on their list and did not give "blonde moments" as an excuse for ingorance or that they had just returned from "days off" or was having a period. The sister in charge ruled her ship like Captain Bligh and accompanied the consultants then called Honoraries on ward rounds. Nurses were ranked in years of experience by lines on their white caps and we students fell in love with many of them. Some married them as well. Things have gone down the drain. We are lost in medicine. Mediocrity rules supreme. Standards have been subverted by legalese documents. Matrons are now Directors of Nursing who rarely are seen on the shop floor. Paperwork and bull have replaced care and back rubs. Everything is smoke and mirrors. I rest my case but I could be wrong.
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Re: Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
posted at 14/10/2011 2:17 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 1317
First: 7/3/2009 Last: 15/5/2012 |
No, you are not wrong. I remember vividly as a child my visits to the internal medicine ward where my father was head and I remember the nurses, dedicated to patients, caring, accompanying doctors when they came to patients, encouraging patients. There was a thirst to learn as much as possible, my father also taught at nursing school, and as a doctor he had no problem to pass on so much knowledge to nurses so they can really help. With so much less technology available back then in the sixties and seventies, there was so much more human warmth and real care for the patients. The head nurse Lyuba went on to become an important source of care for the residents of the area when we left to Israel and did so much for people during the unsteady time of Perestroika and later on when Soviet Union ceased to exist. I visited the hospital three monts ago. Although the whole staff is practically new, they all remember those nurses and doctors and miss those times. I was also lucky to encounter some last Mohicans during my studies of medicine,so I've still seen nurses who were really sisters and brothers to patients. Nowadays? Better not mention what I think. One of the reasons I am not an internist is the situation I have been observing for long. I understood that given my family history of CVD I will be finished if I stay in the area of internal medicine, although I really love my profession and love the patients.So, I went on developing something else. Not the usual blablabla of quality assurance and risk management, but something involving assessment of clinical, communication and attitude toward work and patients skills, something that gives me the possibility to "wire in" from different perspectives(doctors, nurses, administration and most importantly patients) and not merely write my conclusions, but to be able to teach on spot, to generate a change at all points. It is extremely unpopular, it is not about saving money (although good work I believe means less money spent for repairing damages...),many people won't respond to it immediately, it is Sysiphian effort, but it is the only way to try to restore something that is sorely missing in our modern days. The human face of medicine.
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Re: Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
posted at 14/10/2011 3:18 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 20
First: 27/9/2011 Last: 13/1/2012 |
One of the main points raised by the Care Quality Commission was that there was a failure in nursing leadership. Now I have very little experience of this, but have been told that the wards used to be a lot more ordered when the matron had a lot more power and kept all the nurses and doctors in line. Can we not give matrons more power and responsibility to keep things ship-shape, and so someone takes pride and responsibilty in the care for our elderly? |
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Re: Have nurses stopped caring about old people?
posted at 16/10/2011 3:46 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 1317
First: 7/3/2009 Last: 15/5/2012 |
Leadership and responsibility are only part of the picture. I wrote about the whole. You don't give aspirin only to a seriously ill complicated "patient" such as our healthcare system, unless you want just to lessn some discomfort..... It is about the whole system, it is about first of all the desire to work and not just to come to work,the desire to do more to help the patients, the desire to really change. It is about beginning to do things with more care.It is about being a "mench" that is being humane.It is less complicated than it sounds. You don't have to write a 20 page report on it. Simplicity is the key ingredient.No more abbreviations, no more figures, charts, sophisticated terminology and models, more trust and participation among the involved and less comments of superiors on paper.Do it, intervene, go to the wards,work hand in hand with the staff. It is education, it is instructing by example it is about real faith and certainty it will work and changefor better.Yes, leadership and personal example are crucial.But it is not enough to sit from theside and expect the staff to perform the changes necessary.It is jumping into water with the staff.
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