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Ta Timbo - sorry to hear about the deplorable care your daughter received. Did you file a written complaint as that should alert the managers of failure in providing the expected level of care.

When your average ward has 40 patients divided in two ends -each of two 8 bed bays and 4 side rooms which are staffed during a weekday early by a senior nurse, a junior nurse aided by two care assistants to feed, toilet, bath, wash and/shave, dress and make the beds, take the obs and do the menus of those twenty patients. The qualified nurses have to do the paperwork, join doctors on rounds, do drugs rounds, chase notes, admit/discharge patients, prepare them for ops/scans, change dressings, setting up and maintaining drips traing students. etc. Then the task of actually doing the hands on duties generally fall on the care assistants who are unsung heroes in doing the majority of the personal nursing care and act as the eyes and ears for any significant changes in a patients condition.

So if you have a ward of bed-bound patients like orthopedics or care of elderly with high dependency serious stoke patients then things go crazy. When I was a student with 3 others it was the only time on an early to do care to what I would say was to an excellent standard. i.e gents all get a good hot shave, baths and showers or a 'troublesome' elderly confused gent with dementia and a broken leg, MRSA and a skin complaint, I found took me a whole morning by myself doing the HCA role when I was a supernumerary student to assist to feed, apply ointments, shave, dress and found with consistency of care he was charming when discussing his cricket playing as a young man, time in the RAF, running his business and raising a family, and was just troublesome because of the lack of stimulation (he'd been in for two months in a sideroom all by himself) and just wanting attention (kept forgetting he had a broken leg) . and because of the MRSA no one stayed for any length of time in his room except to do the basic care , except when the staffing levels allowed which was rarely. It was very sad leaving the ward knowing they were doing what they could but were spread so thin in doing what they were all trained to do.

Still the expectation is that no shift whether night/early or late should allow any patient be handed over soiled /dirty clothes/ bed linen to the next shift except in exceptional circumstances i.e other patients having life threatening priority. I always viewed it to might take 5 minutes to help a patient immediately onto a bedpan/ commode was a saving in time if I didn't attend if it then took 15 minutes to sort the situation out later.

All sounds very similar to here. Not enough staff, but I really don't think it's because there aren't enough nurses, it's more that there is a reluctance to pay for them, encouraging everyone to leave the profession & look elsewhere. I worked a 40 hour week on top of my full-time study for three years to earn my qualification. For a degree-holding position, we're the poorest paid profession in Australia. I get decent money by doing agency, which allows me to work much more than full-time & pick my shifts to some extent, but I have no job security and often don't know if & when I'm working until the last moment. I choose mainly night duties as this allows me to steer clear of most of the policits, most other nurses, most visitors & most of the doctors (except on the few wards like ortho & maternity where the surgeons turn up at the crack of dawn or before to do rounds before operating). I'm ashamed to find my compassion, although still there, vanishes pretty quickly for a patient who does something annoying, like the perpetual complainer, or those who aren't willing to help themselves. I'm also becoming less & less tolerant with nurses who give crappy handovers or who stuff up in whatever way, despite that probably being caused by being over-stressed or over-worked. The expectations & responsibilities are huge.

One of the things that bugs me is that we are responsible for the doctor's medication orders. If a doctor writes an order wrongly, or goodness me, surprise surprise, illegibly, the nurses are still to blame if a wrong dose/drug is given. Even when the order is as clear as anything, if the doctor is remiss & writes ten times the correct dose or something, they're not liable in the slightest.

In Intensive Care a week or so ago I had a rude patient who's even ruder spouse was visiting. This spouse asked if I was working over Christmas & I said yes, that I'd put my hand up to work because of the penalties (something our government is threatening to stop). He replied that that was good because my tax would be paying his pension. His tone was completely smug & when I said he oughta see some of the taxes I pay, he shrugged & said that was my choice. I said something about working harder & only having to pay more. He said that I didn't work harder, just longer & that again (another shrug), it was my choice, it was just a job like anyone elses. I was pretty much speechless after that & as you can imagine, the level of care the wife received after that plummetted drastically to the absolute minimum I was obliged to provide. I don't know why this doesn't occur to people. Moments after he left, she shat herself from shoulder to ankle. I cleaned her up without a word as she struggled with the embarrassment. After she'd apologised with a bright red face for about the fourth time (more, I think to deal with her humility than because of what I was doing), I used his words & said "no problem, it's my job, just the same as somebody else's job sitting behind a computer in a plush office with photos of their loved ones on their desk, or helping people to choose that perfect present in a nice little gift shop". She shut up then & didn't say a word for the rest of my shift.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing is ALWAYS handed on from shift to shift. Patients aren't treated the same after that & they miss out on the smiles or friendly chat that most nurses like to give while we provide care. Hospital can be a pretty lonely, depressing place between visitors. And humbling, dignity-depraving things like incontinence can be made SO much less embarrassing by a nurse providing the right environment instead of silence.

Sorry... Just be grateful I'm stopping here. I'm still proud to be able to call myself a nurse, but we're all getting very tired.

What have we done VTRgirl started WW3 in the Nursing field

Some very interesting and good points Even though we are countries (the furthest possible) apart it seems we are not that far apart with the same issues as we have here in Nursing

Any of you who work in the Nursing community, you have my up-most respect and admiration for the job that you do, you are special people and we the general public appreciate you very dearly

Chris.