Hospital staff....
My mum tells me ' If I ever get poorly DO NOT let me go into hospital. I'd rather die at home '.
I always laughed it off and said no chance. However the more time I spend in hospitals and see the shocking amount of errors the nurses, doctors etc make I kind of understand why people would feel that way, especially older people who have less chance of surviving infections etc...
I am greatful for the NHS and what they do day in day out but sometimes it angers me that a lot of the staff are incompetent. My fiance has been on the receiving end of a LOT of errors some which could have been fatal. She had a drug line and a feed line in, both were labelled and one of the fucking idiotic nurses put it in the wrong line and she ended up really poorly with an infection ( This was when she was neutropenic and struggled for weeks to fight it off ).
She has had numerous infections in her lines that have been in way longer than they should have and they have just been saying ' oh yes we'll be back later to do that ' and never bother.
One time when she was really poorly they left her with no food for well over a week just because ' the nutritionist has missed a visit ' ... For fucks sake you dont need a nutritionist to tell you the human body needs calories. Needless to say they got a good telling off and a 2,000 calorie bag was put up swiftly.
The cleaning standards are ridiculous as well, one cleaner came in with a mop, mopped underneath the bed for about 1.5 secs, spent about 20 secs doing the rest of the floor and left. Her mum cleans the room religiously on every visit because she has seen how badly the cleaners do it. Do they not get inspected or something ? Almost everytime she goes in for routine treatment she ends up with gastro-enteritis or some other horrible bug and ends up staying in for weeks instead of days.
Just this week one of the doctors had taken her blood about an hour before I got there, I went to visit and saw a bloody needle just sat on the top ! As well as the dangers to their staff I had my son with me who could have easily grabbed it and injured himself. One of the nurses said it was a sackable offence and did we want to report it but we said just make sure it doesn't happen again. Unbeliveable.
There is zero communication between doctors, nurses and healthcare assistants. There's times where they have came in to take blood samples and literally 30 secs later another nurse will come in to do the same thing only to be told they've just been done. This has happened many, many times with observations ( blood pressure, temp etc ) as well which is more of an annoycance than anything else but still when you're tired and poorly you dont want them coming in every 5 mins to do something that only has to be done every half hour MAX. They have also sent her home twice with drugs far too strong and have called hours later warning her not to take them, one of the times she had already taken them and spent the whole day in a zombie like state, wasn't nice at all. Thankfully the other time she had forgotten to take them.
Just the other day her temp was almost 41 degrees and she wasnt at all well, she was starting to hallucinate and was vomiting, we had told the healthcare assistant or whatever the fuck they are numerous times and they said we'll be back with something soon. She always gets paracetamol to help bring her temp down so we asked again for some paracetamol, after checking her temp again the nurse says ' hmmm its over 40 thats not good, so what do you want paracetamol for ? Have you got a headache ' ? I swear to god I felt like punching her in the face, where do they get these idiots from ? I went out and asked another nurse and she brought some in.
Another shocking aspect of it all is that she is scared to press the buzzer because the nurses have attitudes with her when they answer it and she has suffered sometimes due to not wanting to bother them. If they dont like it they shouldn't be in that job, simple as. ( this is only 2 or 3 of them the rest seem to be nice and always talk to her when they come in etc ) the others are miserable and dont talk ( being nice and friendly to the patients should be a priority as well IMO ).
Again just the other day she was severely de-hydrated and a doctor had asked for a drip to be put up, hours later she called me worried sayin she feels terrible and has asked the nurses a number of times, they just kept saying ' we will sort it soon but we're dealing with someone poorly at the minute'. She felt like her head was going to explode and was on the phone panicing about it all which of course upset me. They eventually put it up but surely they have enough staff on a ward to deal with more than 1 patient at a time ? Everytime i visit there's 3-4 nurses sat drinking tea, eating sweets and discussing clothes, relationships etc...On a night its ridiculous they might as well be having a fucking party on the ward. How they can claim to be overworked and underpaid is beyond me. I should imagine A and E nurses jobs are far more stressful than those on a cancer ward mind.
I could go on all day if I wanted to, I have forgotten most of the stuff that has happened. There has been times when I have been furious and wanted to kick up a fuss but then I'm scared they will treat her even worse and at times I think she'd be better off at home but deep down I know its for the best. It's just every day she spends in there I dread what could be going on that we don't know about.
Like I said I am thankful for what they have done and I'm sure MOST of the staff are fully competent and do everything they can to help the patients etc...I just wish they were a lot stricter with cleaning, drug / meal checks etc...To me a hospital is somewhere we'd like to think our loved ones will be safe. Instead I worry constantly that she is not getting looked after properly.
Rant over
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