Angel of the NHS - What a Calamity! (part 1)

What a Calamity!

Thank goodness this is my last shift of four. Its 5.30 am it’s freezing outside and my legs ache from the last three, twelve and a half hour shifts in a row. My uniforms had to be hand washed last night because my washing machine broke down yesterday. I still can’t get that tomato soup stain out and I hope the patients don’t think its blood. I have got no food left in my cupboards because I haven’t been able to get to the shops, so I will need to go the staff canteen today. It’s now 7.20 am and I am supposed to be getting changed now but as usual there is a queue for the car park. There are no parking spaces and I will need to wait until the night shift staff comes out. Well, 7.45 am and I finally get in the car park and I know sister will go nuts at me. I arrive for handover out of breath to hear the last five minutes. Sister wants to have a word with me as she is none too happy with me being late.

From A to B

I am taking team A, a total of 12 patients and the other nurse is taking team B and she also has 12 patients. There is another nurse who is floating, an F Grade and a care assistant. There is also a student on our ward and I always hear how she is not included in the numbers as we go through the staff rota every morning. I have never understood this because she does the job of a care assistant. This ward is quite heavy and the patients need mostly all care just now. Three patients are being discharged today and two of them are mine. Sister catches up with me and corners me in the treatment room as I prepare for the drug round. Sister tells me she is really sorry but because I was twenty five minutes late I will need to have this deducted from my annual leave. She looks at me as though I am a naughty child. I often wonder how she manages to be so perfect. Sister Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way! I start my drug round and the breakfast trolley arrives. The care assistant, the F Grade, and the student put out the breakfasts.

Pooh Bare

I dispense the drugs to the patients and have the usual chatter while observing their conditions. Some patients are lovely and the ones that moan at me I make excuses for because they may be in pain or have worries, so I smile. I walk in to one room to find the patient is in the bathroom. I hear a shout “my god”, the man said, “someone has put pooh all over the bathroom”. I walk in to find the man covered in pooh. “Who could have done this to me he asks?” I smile reassuringly then ask him if he wants a shower! The patient is staying in a single room! Looks like a normal day in the ward. After the drug round I help get all the patients up and dressed. All the patients up, cleaned and dressed sitting by their freshly made beds by 10am! Sister likes them all out of bed. One up all up! For those that are unable to get up alone they must be hoisted up to sit in the chair. One patient refuses to get up, this is normal. The patient says she never gets up until 11am each day and just because she is in hospital why should she change this? The other nurse hears this and comes thundering through shouting at the patient to get up. The excuse given is that she must get up because the bed needs made! The nurse turns to look at the patient’s locker which is covered in cards and flowers and moans about there being too much clutter. She turns to me informing me that if all the lockers are not cleaned then the Sister will moan. So I finish helping everyone, start all my observations, while running back and forward to the phone to inform relatives how the patients are and have many conversations while going back and forward with Doctors, Speech and Language Therapists and physiotherapists. I am also arranging all my discharges.

Escape from Alcatraz

I do finally get on my break at 10.45!

I then realise I have no food with me. I get to the canteen and sit down to eat at 11am. I am exhausted already! I hear a voice and it’s my friend from another ward! We share stories of happier times before nursing like a couple of prisoners talking about their past lives before interment. We also talk about our escape and ways of tunnelling out nursing. We know we are both trapped; we exhausted our funding from Student Awards. We are like two prisoners who accepted their sentence of being guilty. We both love caring for the patients but we cannot get our heads around the other nurses who put up with this working environment. It is as though they too have accepted their fate and do nothing about these awful conditions. We discuss our views on nurse bullying and wonder if these nurses realise they are doing it? I get back to the ward for 11.15 and sister makes her way up to me, I fill with dread thinking about what I have done wrong now. She tells me another ward is down a staff member and I will need to go to help out. “Great!” I thought. What an idiot I am, from the frying pan into the fire. I went over to another Sister Mary Poppins in this different ward. She smiled at me with great effort, the strain was showing. She informed me what to do with an air of authority that could turn back a tidal wave.

I’m only human, but are they?

I, of course, did not know this ward. I worked hard and tried with great effort to speak to the staff. Maybe I had done something wrong to offend them but they would not speak to me. I pinched myself to see if I was still alive. Ghosts, sometimes think they are still alive. One nurse did finally speak to me but she spoke with hostility. Still, this proved I was still alive. I worked hard and before I knew it time had flown by. I held the hand and spoke gently to a lovely little elderly lady as she passed away. She had the most beautiful eyes. I felt sad that she had no relatives and I always get a lump in my throat when a patient dies.
This lump in my throat is what makes me human and I know that I care. If I stop getting that lump in my throat I will leave nursing for good!

Dead men tell no tales

I go into the treatment room to gather some supplies and I watch the other nurse make up the intravenous antibiotics. She is very quick and talks with confidence but talks to me as though my brain had stopped producing cells at the age of three. I ask general questions still just trying to make conversation. She has only been a nurse for a few months, yet I had the impression she had been there for fifty years. I asked about her antibiotics course because I realised she must have been quick to do this. She informs me she doesn’t need to do this course as she knows what to do with antibiotics. I questioned her on her accountability should a patient have an adverse reaction. She explains her rationale which appeared very convincing but only to her, in her place, in her mind, the equivalent of a gold mining camp back in the 1870’s called Deadwood in South Dakota, America where no laws existed. She said that should a patient die because they did not get their antibiotics she would be in the wrong. Was she the nursing equivalent of Calamity Jane who helped nurse Deadwood’s population during the smallpox outbreak? This is not the 1870’s and those that care for the sick no longer use barbaric practices and patients are protected by laws. This means us nurses are not deemed competent until we pass these courses, this protects our patients. As I am not from this ward I asked Calamity Jane about a specific procedure pertaining to the ward but was told I need to work it out myself and it is not rocket science.

You can do it, if you B&Q it

I was not aware of DIY nursing procedures. I quickly apologised and explained that I wouldn’t be carrying out this procedure as I was not trained. Ah well! I had lost the only one who would speak to me. It was cold stone silence for the rest of the shift. I wasn’t asking for more gruel like Oliver Twist. I wouldn’t do the procedure! I heard the nurses talk about how stupid I was as they huddled together. “It's easy”, I heard one nurse say. I understood if I got it wrong and do not have the training I become Calamity Jane too. At the end of my shift at 8.00pm, I throw off my uniform complete with tomato soup stain and become me again. My whole body aches as I walk into the fresh crisp winter air but I can ignore the pain as freedom feels good. I have two days off before I do this all again. What more in store? Will Sister Mary Poppins be nice to me and let me keep my 25 minutes for my annual leave? Will Calamity Jane take her courses before she is struck off? Will I have a whole shift where I have an uneventful day? Will the tomato soup stain come out? Tune in next time to find out what happens next to Angel of the NHS?