As I walked past a porter in the hospital, he smiles and asks ‘well, were will you be based today?’ I tell him I am back to the old bit of the hospital again. ‘I do not think I have seen you in the same ward twice’ he laughs. ‘What are you today nurse or care assistant?’ ‘Actually, who knows,’ I say. ‘I am used all over and mostly as a care assistant,’ I moan. He laughs again and says, ‘I wonder when you will become a porter for the day.’ I have had my nurse training and now stagnation and degeneration. I heard a nurse say that if a ward is short of care assistants it is cheaper for them to use a band 5 nurse than to bring in an agency care assistant. I feel cheap! I have spoken to this porter a lot because I get all the accompanying the patients jobs to places such as the X-ray Department. The porter looks hard worked and tired but he always smiles. I have often moaned to him about Sister Poppins and he just laughs but he knows she has a reputation for being a tyrant. I feel sorry for the porters because they are on such poor pay for the jobs they do. They are always patient and they spend such a lot of their time walking at the beckoning call of everyone. The porter made me think of the character from the anti war film Platoon, Sergeant Elias, played by William Dafoe. He did his job and was a reasonable person. His quote from the film sums him up. “I love this place at night. The stars... there's no right or wrong in them. They're just there.” Elias the porter was just there too and always at the right time. I get to the old part of the hospital and feel the draught and watch the goose pimples appear on my arms. I look outside to see that it is raining again and I watch patients huddle in the doorway in their dressing gowns and slippers with a chimney of smoke going in all directions from their cigarettes. I go along the corridor and report to the nurses’ station. Jabba the Hutt catches the corner of my eye. She is sitting in the same place I saw her when I did my night shift with her. I wonder if she has moved at all since then. She is not eating biscuits but has a giant sized bag of tortilla chips. It is just after 8am and I ask what the plans are for me here today. She states that I am to help her today. I had a big sinking feeling, I felt like I was standing on a pile of mud and suddenly it turned to mush and I was being drowned in it. I am given many tasks all at once. I am as usual a care assistant cleaning, washing and toileting, the usual procedures. The only good bit about this is that I am being paid a nursing salary for a care assistant’s role. The downfall was though that I am actually a nurse and while carrying out any of these procedures even as a care assistant I am still liable as a nurse. I trained as a nurse and wasted many hours studying even being shown how to run a ward. The more I am used as a care assistant my skills will lessen as a nurse. As for job satisfaction there is none because I am task driven. Someone else is using their brain for me; I am a machine within a bigger machine. When I do get the chance to be with patients I do my best for them. I am not challenged I am bored! This is not what I trained for; I already had lots of experience as a care assistant.
University Challenge
Jabba does not smile, she moans at me to do her work while she sits there drinking coffee and eating crisps. I am now trying to make patients beds but there is no clean laundry. There are patients to go to theatre but there are no theatre gowns. Instead of making the beds with clean sheets we turn sheets around hiding food and blood stains and whatever else stains there are. I examined a couple of the mattresses and I was sickened to discover that they were dirty. These were beds awaiting patients. I also noticed the bed rails were disgustingly dirty. This whole ward was disgusting, it should be condemned. We are all taught very early on that we must use orange bags for clinical waste but there were no orange bags. I heard the ward was saving money. I watched as nurses and support workers tossed all sorts of disgusting waste into clear plastic bags instead of orange ones. Jabba kept dishing out the orders and I was her slave. Then out of the blue another nurse appeared she had been on some course and had come back into the ward. She looked at me, as I flicked through patients notes and said, ‘who are you?’ I informed her who I was and she abruptly told me that I should leave the nurses’ station because there was no room. She started asking me what I needed to know about the patients and then she told me about all her qualifications with a smug face. Talk about blowing your own trumpet. She then asked about my qualifications and before I even had the chance to answer she said, ‘yes you will know doubt just have a nursing qualification and no doubt be at the beginning.’ She had the manners of a pig. She looked like Miss Piggy too. In situations like this I never usually take up such a challenge because qualifications do not give someone better intelligence. On this occasion Miss Piggy needed brought back down to earth. I informed her of the qualifications I possessed and her face changed from one of smugness to one that looked like she had drank a full bottle of vinegar while sucking a lemon. I was a challenge because I had more qualifications than her. She started to ask me questions on nursing, just random questions. She was waiting on me tripping up but I didn’t. I had been through all this before with Nurse Ratchet and I decided to show her that I was actually more knowledgeable than she assumed. When she asked questions not only would I give the answer but I went on and on. She got annoyed with me and her Piggy face went from pink to red. She then told me to go and do something mundane and was on my case for the rest of the day. It was worth it though to bring her down a couple of pegs. I asked a care assistant if Jabba the Hutt got the vacancy she was after. The care assistant said she did not and that another nurse got it. There are nurses that are true gems out there as I stated previously and the nurse that got this job is a true gem, so I was pleased. It was lunch time and I helped to put out all the patients lunches. There was a patient there and she looked really dehydrated and I saw her jug of water had just been plonked down really far away from her, the water was warm. I would never drink it so I didn’t expect her too. She was not able to reach it and it would not have surprised me if she even knew it was there. I put down her lunch but she looked too weak to get her meal. I set her up so she could eat but she had very little ability, she was so frail. I started to help her eat and was told to stop by another nurse. ‘We do not have time to do that,’ she said. I asked if someone could take over and was told that everyone is busy. This annoys me, why bother having patients in hospital if they are unable to get a meal and lots to drink. It reminded me once when I was in A&E. I had not eaten or drank anything all day and got my first sip of water at 11pm. I was not on IV fluids either. I worked out that I had gone sixteen hours without water. I felt worse because I was dehydrated. It is basic common sense to supply fluids unless there is some reason not to. What is the point of pumping loads of drugs into patients if they also do not get basic nourishment? I was in this ward as a care assistant but I am a nurse. It is my duty of care to ensure patients are cared for, so I fed and watered this patient. The other nurse did not like it but why should the patient suffer. Oh dear I disobeyed orders again to care for a patient what punishment will I receive? I was sent off the ward to accompany patients to X-ray most of the day. I did not mind because I could have a laugh with Elias the porter and it was better than being shown how to do a bed bath all over again by Mrs F Flat.
Professionalise This!
I have come to the conclusion that nursing is not the profession that it promises to be. From around the middle of the nineteenth century the division of labour changed by establishing a grade of trained nurses. Trained nurses were placed between the doctors and the nurse domestics and they took on the work which had previously been carried out by apothecary surgeons. In 1916 the College of Nursing was formed. Although in contrast to doctors nursing achieved only small increases in autonomy and remuneration. Low pay is still the case today despite efforts to professionalise nursing with research and degrees. Nursing too is obviously made up of mostly women and nursing staff are the largest group employed within medical care making the likelihood of being given a salary anywhere near that of other medical professionals less than slim. Even in a previous study with nursing students they themselves divided nursing into ‘real nursing’ and ‘just basic nursing care.’ ‘Real nursing’ was viewed as that which used the knowledge of academia with which they were being trained for. ‘Just basic nursing’ was that which was done by auxiliaries and untrained staff. What appears to be happening is that the two types of nursing have become merged and hazy. Care assistants are being given more responsibilities while those that are educated to degree level are often being used as care assistants. The nurse is taught that she/he is accountable for all care and thus the job description of the nurse is actually very hazy. The nurse is expected to give all types of care which in theory sounds plausible but surely it is a waste of money training nurses to constantly be used as care assistants. A nurse can be used as a care assistant but a care assistant cannot be used as a nurse. Surely it is time to redefine the nurses’ job description. Student nurses do not go to study nursing degrees to become care assistants this is possibly why nurses leave the profession in their droves when they get the ‘just basic care’ parts all the time. They study to do the technical part of nursing.
Nursing Is Like Football, A Game Of Two Halves.
Now the other part which starts to emerge out of all this is that those with a degree can sometimes make those without them feel threatened. If a vacancy comes up, those with the qualifications are more likely to get it leaving those without, stuck in a job perhaps even burnt out. But because these older nurses have been there for so long they have perhaps came up through the ranks as an E grade, F Grade or even Sister. These people are in positions of power and rather than embrace and share knowledge with those that come in who are newer they are hanging on to their knowledge keeping it locked away. ‘It’s my football and you’re not playing’ syndrome. If we take away their knowledge which they have gained over the years what are they left with? So they retain their power by retaining their knowledge. Knowledge is power!Because they feel threatened they bully and use people like me as care assistants while they keep the knowledgeable ‘real nursing’ parts of the job for themselves. They are the ‘real nurses’ I am just a care assistant with a qualification in nursing.If the roles were clearly defined patients would be getting their basic care needs from care assistants including being fed if needed and encouraged to drink. Nurses could get on with what we are supposed to be doing. Demarcation of roles is required. I go back and forward to X-ray today and have lost count. Jabba the Hutt moaned at me but I guess she is sounding off because she did not get the job she went for. She did not get that job because someone came in with actual nursing qualifications coupled with experience and perhaps it shone through that she was a nursing gem. She will be Jabba’s boss; I can sleep well tonight knowing the patients are in safe hands. I throw my bag over my shoulder walking back along the corridor and past the dark doorway where patients are gathered smoking. I am beginning to see what is wrong with nursing but who will listen and pay attention? I go home to find a sealed brown envelope with my name on it. I tear it open to reveal a massive cheque. I had paid too much tax and Sister Poppins would not deal with it so I was on emergency tax for ages. I sat down thinking of all the nice things I could buy while the drudgery of today’s nursing gets pushed into a back drawer in my brains filing cabinet. Tomorrow is another day!
