Things that drive you nuts!!
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mandelbrot
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Ray Foley
truthseeker
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Father in law taken by ambulance to Vincents A&E at 1am. Not allowed in to see him, told to wait, someone will speak to us when doc has seen him.
Wait 7 hours. At 8am, he walks out in his pjs, he still hasnt seen a doc despite serious health problems. He is massively agitated and upset. We leave.
Wait 7 hours. At 8am, he walks out in his pjs, he still hasnt seen a doc despite serious health problems. He is massively agitated and upset. We leave.
Pfffft.. it doesn't even sound like he was drunk and making a scene, how do you honnestly expect to been seen promply by acting civilised.
truthseeker
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There was only one drunk. He was very quiet.
It was actually as though there was no hospital staff. People in the waiting room were helping other people in the waiting room.
A
AgathaC
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Not getting even a text message to acknowledge that a gift and card was received.
This is crazy- did you try making a big scene?
There's no point as the staff who are actually there are working their butts off under extreme pressure. The people responsible for these situations are never anywhere near the frontline to answer for their decisions or incompetence and seem happy to let the nurses and junior doctors take all the flak.
I don't accept that. I know that Doctors and Nurses always say it's not their fault and they are martyrs etc but they have an active and empowered role in how the hospital is run. I’d also point out that they are looked for and got pay increases far ahead of the rate of inflation over the last 10 years which meant that better staff to patient ratios were harder to achieve. Doctors and Nurses as groups/ professions are very much part of the problem, if not the main problem, in the health service.
Well, I am talking from experience. I have many times had to go to Tallaght A&E and the nurses are run off their feet, while a couple of junior doctors on duty are trying to get around to see every patient and talk to frantic relatives. The managers, consultants and other senior staff are nowhere around, and at weekends there is no one to take x-rays, do blood tests etc. presumably a decision made by some senior person sitting at a desk in the background somewhere. Raising hell with the nurses in A&E is not going to achieve anything. They are usually extremely apologetic and understanding, but they can't actually do anything.
How does a nurse have an 'active and empowered' role in how the hospital is run? They don't agree a budget, or staff numbers or decide which wards will be kept open or how much consultants will be paid.
Also, nurses aren't exactly overpaid for what they do. They just looked for a reasonable salary for the responsibility they undertake. They are not a highly paid profession.
We are going off topic here but Mrs Purple worked in hospitals for years and many of her friends still do.
Senior nurses have a management function in how the hospital is run and there union plays an active role in preventing changes and hospitals being run for the benefit of the patient. The same goes for doctors.
Irish Doctors and Nurses are amongst the best paid in the world. That doesn’t hold true for Consultants; they are the best paid in the world.
High salaries, inefficient work practices, hostility toward management (and often from management), theft of equipment and drugs; these are all part of the problem.
We can either have the average amount of doctors and nurses on the average pay or we can have less than the average on higher than average pay. That’s self evident. By the way, our nurse to patient ration is way above the EU average so under-staffing isn’t the problem.
The real problem, though, is the layers and layers of highly paid HSE officials eating up money that should be going into opening up more wards to stop A&E areas becoming clogged up; assigning more doctors to A&E Departments ;and paying specialist staff to work at weekends. In that situation, patientscould be moved more quickly and efficiently through the A&E Department and it would not become a holding ground for ill patients waiting for hours and even days for a bed to become free or for a doctor to examine them or for an essential test to be carried out.
I can't agree with you about nurses. I think they have a hugely responsible and incredibly stressful job and are often a lot more use than some of the doctors. I totally agree that our consultants are ridiculously over paid and this scandal has been going on for years. We need less well paid and more consultants in our hospitals.
And don't start me on drunks and drug addicts being rushed in by ambulance and having to be seen straight away to the detriment of genuinely ill patients
truthseeker
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No. There was no point. There was a man there for 17 hours with a continuously expanding head due to some allergic reaction and apparently he had had the problem before and knew he needed some particular shot but he was getting nowhere despite a bit of prolonged scene causing by him and his pals. He left too without medical treatment.
There was also a man who came in at the same time as my father in law with a suspected heart attack and despite the fact that he had a history of heart problems he hadnt been seen after 7 hours either. Im genuinely not sure there were any doctors there at all. There were no more than 8 or 9 people waiting to be seen in the waiting room, but according to father in law the inside of A&E was just people on trolleys waiting on beds.
After 7 hours my father in law was really upset and hadnt had any sleep and with his health history it was probably safer to take him away so he could rest properly, so we brought him home, put him to bed and brought him to his own GP later that afternoon to get checked over.
They wanted him to sign a disclaimer stating he had refused medical treatment and left of his own accord so he crossed out 'refused medical treatment' wrote across it that he hadnt been offered any medical treatment in 7 hours so he was leaving.
Good administration is an essential part of any organisation. I’m not saying that over-staffing/ inefficient structures aren’t a major part of the problem but they aren’t the only problem. Clerical staff in the HSE and the public sector in general are not as over-paid as the so-called front-line staff.The real problem, though, is the layers and layers of highly paid HSE officials eating up money that should be going into opening up more wards to stop A&E areas becoming clogged up; assigning more doctors to A&E Departments ;and paying specialist staff to work at weekends. In that situation, patientscould be moved more quickly and efficiently through the A&E Department and it would not become a holding ground for ill patients waiting for hours and even days for a bed to become free or for a doctor to examine them or for an essential test to be carried out.
I can't agree with you about nurses. I think they have a hugely responsible and incredibly stressful job and are often a lot more use than some of the doctors. I totally agree that our consultants are ridiculously over paid and this scandal has been going on for years. We need less well paid and more consultants in our hospitals.
And don't start me on drunks and drug addicts being rushed in by ambulance and having to be seen straight away to the detriment of genuinely ill patients
The problem in A&E isn’t the staffing levels in those departments, it’s the fact that no one is available at nights and weekends to discharge patients from wards and so create space for patients to be moved from A&E after they have been treated.
A colleague in work found his elderly mother lying in her own excrement in a hospital. He was told by the nurse that there were no orderlies available to change the sheets and it wasn’t her job to do it. There was a time when nurses “lowered” themselves to help patients in that sort of situation. Times have changes I suppose.
Nursing used to be a vocation
Now it's a degree subject and graduate salaries expected
There are care assistants for many of the cleaning tasks
Was it realy worse in the old days when nuns ran hospitals?
Everyone wants to hold a clipboard and have a job title these days
Now it's a degree subject and graduate salaries expected
There are care assistants for many of the cleaning tasks
Was it realy worse in the old days when nuns ran hospitals?
Everyone wants to hold a clipboard and have a job title these days
I totally agree with this actually. I have been in hospital a couple of times in recent years. There is an enormous difference between the 'older' nurses ie 40s and 50s who trained on the wards and the younger ones who have a degree in nursing. Definitely I would say the older style training attracted more caring, competent and down to earth people into nursing. The older nurses seem to just instinctively know what to do to make you feel better, have no problem doing the more menial tasks and see the patients as people. The younger nurses are more focussed on text book stuff and seem out of their depth if anything unexpected happens. There was just always something more reassuring about an older nurse walking into the room, even if they didn't have a first class honours degree from UCD.
mandelbrot
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Or is it possible that the older nurses have the benefit of half a lifetime's experience under their belt...
No, its more than that. They have a totally different attitude to nursing and are much more down to earth and practical in the way they approach things. I think a lot of younger nurses are more attracted by the academic side of it nowadays and not so keen on the day to day ward stuff.
The strange thing is that professional training structures are closer to trades than to academic qualifications.
Both trades and professions have time spent on the job and in off the job training but basically they are based around hands-on training under the tutelage of qualified people who are currently working in the profession/trade.
I’m not equating the skill levels etc between the two areas before anyone gets precious, I’m just pointing out the structural similarity.
Nursing used to be closer to a trade; more hands on and less academia. Now it’s closer to the traditional profession. While that’s good for the ego of some it may not produce better nurses.
Both trades and professions have time spent on the job and in off the job training but basically they are based around hands-on training under the tutelage of qualified people who are currently working in the profession/trade.
I’m not equating the skill levels etc between the two areas before anyone gets precious, I’m just pointing out the structural similarity.
Nursing used to be closer to a trade; more hands on and less academia. Now it’s closer to the traditional profession. While that’s good for the ego of some it may not produce better nurses.
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