Hospital angels?

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Good or bad - tell us about your hospital experiences. Are the nurses really angels?

When I was in hospital last year a jobsworth nurse bullied me relentlessly because I was wearing a visor for covid protection & she insisted I had to have a face mask.

I explained I was exempt due to allergy but still she persisted. In the end somebody in authority came to look at me & said the visor was acceptable. After that, this nurse didn’t speak to me nor me her!!

The next morning after my operation some idiot nurse said I needed Oxygen & slapped an oxygen mask on my face. After 10 minutes my head started to spin & I was on the point of passing out. I just managed to cry out before I became unconscious. They came over - took the mask off my face - took my blood pressure & just left me there to recover. No words of explanation - nothing!!

Another time when my Tony was in hospital (B4 Alzheimer’s) there was an old man in the next bed. This old man asked a nurse 3 times for a bottle as he wanted a pee. The nurses were gossiping & ignored him. The old man wet the bed. The nursed had to change it. Where’s the sense in that?

I think a lot of nurses enjoy the feeling of power.
Unfortunately, they give a bad name to the nurses who truly are angels.

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I must say that for the most part any hospital stay and I have had a few in the past decade has always been fine.
There are issues out with the nursing staffs control and that is the chronic understaffing which has meant nurses have not got the time to spend with patients.
On one occasion I waited quite some time to have two cannulas removed which were falling out, solution I removed them myself.
I think the worst aspect of a hospital stay is actually getting out especially if your Dr has prescribed medication as I have seen me wait 4/5 hours on getting this before I could leave, solution I take a note of what I am prescribed and contact my GP for a prescription meaning I can leave the hospital at AM instead of PM.

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PixieKnuckles

6m

I had a lovely time in hospital the first time round, even though the local hospital minister (whats the name for them? Chaplain?) came round asking if I needed anything! The second time I was in, was similar to how you described, Carol…with nurses chatting, not fulfilling things requested of them by patients etc. I was unable to swallow properly due to my op, and they gave me fish & chips to eat, despite instructions to only give me soft things!

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My experience as an inpatient maybe a tad skewed as for my sins, I have to be accommodated in HDU wards. My main area hospital was both caring and excellent with nurses that were completely patient orientated and in general nothing was too much trouble in that particular hospital. Now this was before C-19 worked its dastardly culling, so I cant comment about how it now functions, but I cannot envisage it changing too much.

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I was taken to hospital earlier this year and it was pretty grim.
I had not eaten a thing for over 24 hrs so asked them if I could possible have a sandwich or drink at least. Nothing arrived. Then I saw the nurse who said she would get me something was sitting at her desk watching the world cup on her laptop!

I didn’t know I was being kept in, so had no washing stuff with me. After 36 hrs without so much as cleaning my teeth let alone washing, I asked if there was a shower anywhere I could use. Nobody had told me a thing or offered any help.
The whole 3 days I was in there, I could not even comb my hair as they said they didn’t have a comb anywhere.
I was getting depressed, and felt neglected and lost, I hated it in there.

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Carol, I suppose nurses come in different categories. Dedicated nurses are understanding & caring but many others are in the job because they want fair pay, but don’t want to work too hard .
When I broke my wrist a couple of years ago I heard a young doctor say to a nurse, “Wow that break was also a part dislocation, so she must have been in a lot of pain” The nurse replied " No she wasn’t I saw her sitting there quite content" & then got her mobile phone from her bag to chat to her mum! I was taking strong Ibuprofen tablets from my doctor & had told her that! :roll_eyes:
I am afraid it wont get any better because nurses are now doing many of the jobs that doctors used to do, but the only qualifications they have are short training courses… it takes a doctor at least 5 years.

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That’s appalling Mups. I would have to complain about that to hospital management together with PALS. I would like to think that kind of neglect would not occur in my area hospital because they definitely work as part of the community. So much so, the last time I was in HDU they were so rushed, I offered and took over feeding the poor chap opposite with both arms out of action and the reaction of the ward staff was fantastic that I helped out while I was recovering with full use of arms.

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Aw that’s terrible - I feel for you Mups.

I hope you made a complaint.

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I had the best care one could imagine after heart surgery,I had my own nurse in recovery, and when i went onto the next ward, I went into AF after surgery, which can be dangerous, it was in the early hours of the morning, one of the heart surgeons came and checked me over then gave the nurse instructions on what to put in my line,…I could never Praise these surgeons and specialist nurses enough, my surgery took place at the Brompton in London, my surgeon Antony De Souza he also came to see me once I was with it on the general ward, as the first few days I was out of it.

So thank you the Brompton team, you were amazing and saved my life,:heartpulse:

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I could never say anything bad about the nurses I came in contact with either during my childrens’ births or during my various stays in hospital for either a detached retina, my back operations. or even more recently my covid vaccinations.

They are wonderful even the one that stole my morphine was lovely. How they remain so nice when faced with dopey patients is beyond me, they are all very special

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I ended up for an overnight stay following a TIA, couldn’t have been treated better, this was June of last year at the height of the covid restrictions.

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From the Experience Ive recently gone through with losing my husband ,No Nurses are not Angels , they have no Empathy .
I made sure I told the Doctor in charge of my husband what I thought of one particular Head nurse Who was in Charge of the Ward , I could have caused a stink but I let it drop .
But the Experience has now put me off having the major surgery I need .

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I wonder if its a general demise experienced by some, I was hospitalised back in 1977 with a collapsed lung, there was a matron who kept things in order, same with when our first was born, in 1990, I went in to see the wife when the ward opened at 2 pm, got there at 5 to and was told off by a matron for being early, its the lack of discipline today imo.

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This Head Nurse Lied to me and ranted down the phone to me like a Fishermans wife , drunk or drugged up .
When a couple of hours later when I went in to hold my husbands hand while he died , she was no where to be seen , obviously need to go in hiding .

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Aw Eliza. I am so sorry about that. :hugs:

I think you should have made an official complaint about that head nurse - even if it got you nowhere it would have blotted her copybook.

Maybe you could request a different hospital for the surgery you need.

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Sorry to hear that.

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The problem is there is a shortage of experienced nurses. As many of the experienced hands have left the profession due to years of demoralising government policies & increasing management levels. Saying to Nurses, here is a 3% pay rise, but here also, is pay cut due to NI increases to pay for it. Is insulting.

New Nurses are university graduates who have paid for their own training, they have minimal experience, but to keep them, they are being promoted, as government policy is. Nurses pay rises are related to promotion. As a nurse who does not seek promotion, will in real terms, due to inflation, get a pay cut due to decades of lower than inflation pay rises. So many ward based experienced nurses, who do not want management roles, will often not have had any real world pay rise for decades, or they will have become demoralised & left the profession.

We cannot expect a senior nurse with no real ward experience to manage a ward well & so called modern matrons are simply another level of management. Not another level of ward based care.

Yes nurses get what are called pay increment, which means that as the nurses experience builds year on year within a nursing pay grade, they get an annual pay rise. But that is small & only available for a few years. So no promotion into management & after a few years a nurse needs to either take annual real world pay cuts or leave the profession. Oh & a nurse has to pay for their own professional registration to work as a nurse too. The NHS only allows 50% of that fee to be reclaimed.

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Oh dear!! So many reasons why nurses aren’t what they used to be!!

All I can say is: it doesn’t take experience or a Uni education to talk kindly to people or to give an old man a pot to p*ss in when he asks for one!!!

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For what it’s worth, this is just a ramble that I’m rambling on about concerning the NHS. And I shall run away from any flak that comes my way from spouting it.

I gave up working in the NHS around 13 yrs ago after about 30yrs working in various guises and then I meandered into the private hospitals hereabouts.
Going private is far better care wise obviously, should one be lucky enough to afford it that is. Specialists hospitals are good too, certainly the noted cancer hospital up this way was, and also a hospital specifically for the care of the elderly was, which is no longer there.
It’s general hospitals I have a beef with and general wards, rather than specialist wards.

It’s a stupid thing to say, but for me the staff who get the thumbs up for showing more kindness, interest in the pts themselves and showing a bit of compassion, not to mention cheering people up … were the porters. Those poor underpaid foot soldiers walking miles every day and night that are so under rated. They didn’t just pick up and deliver pt’s wherever … they treated them as people, an actual human being, not someone on a conveyor belt.
Yes, for sure, a good number of nurses were/are pure gold, but you have to pick through the dross to find nurses as good as they were way back when. There’s just too many pts on that never ending conveyor belt and not enough staff to give anyone proper care or even time anymore. It’s the way the system is now, which is awful. Thank goodness for kind cheery porters.

My PITA ex is now a year down the line (or it might be a tad over that now), after being a pt in 5 different hospitals, admitted 9 times with one stint in a care establishment (pre going home). He’s just been discharged yet again after yet another op trying to correct the initial op that was cocked up a year ago. His problems are still ongoing - he’s been told it will be approx a year until he can walk again. So that’s two years all told of being in pain and unable to walk because they got it wrong. And he says he’s seen too many nurses who simply don’t really care anymore. In his head he often thought ‘I am not just a number’.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not worried about him one bit, just highlighting the ‘Care in The NHS’, which frankly isn’t up to much any more. My elderly friend contracted two infections on two separate admissions, one of which saw her off. I myself have contracted infections after ops too, as probably you all know of someone who has too.

I know there are plenty who praise and have faith in the NHS, and that’s good. But after seeing all sides, being a pt or working there, personally I don’t. It’s not worth the paper it’s written on now. It’s almost guaranteed one will receive poor treatment, lack of care, having belongings nicked or lost and more besides. As regards food, if you’ve not been forgotten that is, one is never sure what that spoonful of something on the plate actually is.
My thoughts for a long time have been if you need to be admitted into hospital, expect to go home in a worse condition.

(Please excuse my humour below, no offence is intended) …

… But it’s ok in the mortuary … :wink:

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Reading this makes me fear getting sick I’m very fortunate I’m healthy and reasonably fit. How worrying

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