Anne Milton: a letter to Nursing Times readers

Readers' comments (36)

• mike | 20-Jul-2010 0:35 am

  Here's a clue then Anne, stop taking us for granted and get more Nurses on the wards.

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• Anonymous | 20-Jul-2010 4:26 pm

  I never ever thought i'd agree with Mike from seeing some of your viewpoints on other subjects (although very well justified...but not for me, but in all seriousness agreeing to disagree is a good debate isnt it?) but thats simple statement is key....personally I cannot take much more, I am in forensic mental health and our staffing levels have been "reviewed"..im all for cuts and savings, although i despise the tories I ilke their policies on health....but for f***s sake will they just do something now and cut anyone on bnd 8 and above that has no direct patient input as of now.
  I risk getting my bloody neck broke every shift i'm on with some very dangerous criminals because the tossers who are paid more decide that four staff is enough to look after the most serious mentally unwell offenders...im just not having it anymore, as much as i do put patients first Im just do not want to be murdered at work...what have the RCN done about it...sweet fa, im up for striking with mike if this goes on, i might even buy you a pint at the picket line

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• mike | 20-Jul-2010 6:16 pm

  Anonymous | 20-Jul-2010 4:26 pm, it is difficult to say which aspects I have disagreed with you on because of your moniker, but I do not mind people disagreeing with me at all, and I love a good debate as long as it is civil, it is one of the best ways I can reinforce or change my own beliefs/opinions. Noone can agree on everything!
  
  But hey if you're up for the picket line mate then the more the merrier! (And I'll never say no to a pint!)
  
  You raise two important points though, the fact is that the government are actually trying to do something decent with this white paper and cut beauracracy and management, but as always Nurses are seen as a soft touch and are being targeted by directors and executives as a way of saving their own skin, on top of the already borderline criminal cuts and staffing levels they have imposed for years. We cannot let them do this. It is time for all of us to stand up and say enough is enough.
  
  Second you mention the pathetic and useless RCN. There has been talk on other threads between myself and a number of others about forming a new union, run by Nurses for Nurses. It may not be anything huge, and nothing is set down as of yet, but please feel free to join the ranks and put any suggestions forward.

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• jjjez@hotmail.com | 21-Jul-2010 2:45 am

  So does this woman want us to drift back to yesteryear where a great deal of care occured un-documented and un-accounted for. Or so it seems.
  It's either that or she is merely explaining that she has no idea that her waffling runs counter to the increase of paperwork and documentation begun in the then Conservative government.
  
  I want her to understand that nursing requires the phenomenal amount of documentation FOR the patients and simply saying nurses want to get back to the bedside is as backwards as thinking nursing requires a few people to spend a bit more chronologically impossible hours with people whom successive governments have failed to either maintain or attract to the profession BY DECENT PAY!!!!
  
  Ann Milton sounds quite naive if she doesn't understand that simply by being there patients generate volumes of paperwork even before any care has begun, nor does she quite understand that if ordinary clinical nurses rather than pre-retiree/ignorant (in the non-perjorative sense) persons then the volume but not the facts would be recorded.
  
  
  However whilst she dumbs down the complexity of our job to simply 'being with the patients' (which as we all know almost totally removes their independence unless you really leave them to try - duh!) i ask her to re-think what the direction of our profession is. We are Nurses not carers, counsellors, life-coaches, motivational speakers etc and thoug we may touch upon many of theses areas we are alone in doing so.
  
  To run counter current to the body-politic of all other health care professions in the acute (non-psych) sector is totally in-effectual in ensuring Nursings position which is central to patients lives, but we cannot do it well if we naively believe that 'spending time' with patients is a scientifically proven way to HEAL/CURE them which is waht everyone else is doing.
  
  Cut the waffle Ann, you are about to get a entire new set of Nurses in the duture who outrightly reject the cultural restrictions of the past; led by scientific advances we have emerged as the rightful practitioners of things though impossible to be carried out by ordinary nurses but you shall see. We shall take control of our working lives, but it won't be gained by clinging to the bedside, it will be achieved through the correct and outright application of scientific principles and not ritualistic stereotypical behaviour that dates our profession as olf fashoined and un-academic.
  
  Free yourselves from the bedside. The issue is about pay and fair renumeration not how much time is spent with patients.

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• jjjez@hotmail.com | 21-Jul-2010 2:54 am

  Soeey iaove i meant to say if ordinary nurse defined their own paperwork then certain over-documentation issues would be avoided

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• jjjez@hotmail.com | 21-Jul-2010 2:56 am

  geez they should've at least kept the spell check and option to edit feature from the last forum.
  
  why is that when you join and forum etc and they decide to improve it it's always less functional than before?
  
  Do web designers really have a continually depreciating view of our intellect. bad typing excepted!!!!!!!! Aaaargh!!!!!!!!!!!

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• Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 1:37 pm

  I dont mean that in a bad way mike, I also don't believe you do absolutes in the way you describe in the written word and when push comes to shove you are just as likely to hold an old ladies hand on your dinner break because shes frightened as much as anyone else is.
  What is a defiente yes or no, right or wrong, black or white area is how much I just cannot take much more from idiots like annette milton who just seem to think this will magically happen with how structures are right now....i am a matter of weeks even shifts away on some days from just jacking it all in with how muppets decide whats best for my working day without consulting me about it. Like you Mike Im a bloody good nurse, im not particulary arsed about money, a higher banding, what course im going on next etc...all i ever wanted from this lark was to meet people i would never have met in other circumstances and sahre life with them in a way only nursing allows, if all this means is sitting with a stranger talking about the weather, football and when the time comes right to ask what I can do to make them feel better than they would have done if we hadn't shared the same piece of flooring that day....I cant even do this anymore as im so burned out i just cant be arsed as awful as that sounds. I do blame myself for this....but should I with how things are?
  

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• Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 1:44 pm

  Oh yeah and i'm sorry jjezz but that is disgraceful what you believe...nursing is all about the exhange you have with poorly people and pherhaps in this horrible world you can be the only person who actually outwardly gives a shit about the poor bugger who is frightened and in the most vulnerable of all positions in needing something from other people to fulfill the basics of exsistence.
  science my friggin arse...nursing is art, a grand performance and not just about curing illness. The 90 year old man with every illness going can be the healthiest person you meet if he is happy and feels loved...a 21 year old with supreme physical condition can be the unhealthiest if they spend all day alone and dislike themselves...you sound a right knob!

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• jjjez@hotmail.com | 21-Jul-2010 6:09 pm

  Nursing is about maintaining and restoring function. the interaction with to your patients is secondary to your responsibility of maintaining SAFETY, which relies on your knowledge of the body and the interactions of the therapies you are providing.
  
  Having good interactions with patients is something natural that elies on our basic humanity and the very fact i/we are doing this job clearly reflects that we want to be with the patients and supporting them.
  
  However we must not pretend that simply interacting with the patients is the frontal dimension of nursing - it is not.
  
  Nursing is no more an art than physiotherapy, medicine or social work and if our job had a bit more clinical stability in terms of equal knowledge and ability people wouldn't be able to hide their incompetence of basic haemodynamics by assuming they are there to be the patients cheerleader alone.
  
  Every job in the NHS relies on patient interaction and we certainly do not hold the gamut though evidently we are the best at it.
  
  As for your last comment, your ridiculous and baseless assertions have no evidence whatsoever so although i might sound like a knob i can rest easy knowing that the treatments and therapies that actually have a measurable effect are found not from the pseudo-scientific approach but from scientific evidence and principles.
  
  A 90 year old with multiple co-morbidities is going to feel ill.
  
  Don't arrogantly walk around thinking that your interaction with patents is beneficial. you aren't doing anything that can be taught as good people skills are only as useful as the patients you attempt to bounce them off. But mark my words, they want to know you can keep them safe and alive. You are a perfect stranger n- at least in the acute setting and your one size fits all approach that people like yourself insist on using merely hides the fact that you know so little about what's really going on that you have to compensate by pretending to be a counsellor when in fact you are not.
  
  Don't walk around assuming they are 'frightened etc' they have seen and experienced more chages than you ever will in their life times, ones that are far more significant that VHS vs Betamax and the internet.
  
  The difference between me and you is that you are patronizing your patients whreas i respect them as adults, not to be molly-coddled and babied. Thye are in hospital for a reason and 100% of the time it is NOT FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT - fool!
  
  Count it!

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• Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 8:58 pm

  you are a knob...im CBT and systemic therapist as well as being an RMN.
  I do not know why people like you think nursing is right for them...been better off in mechanics wouldnt you?

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• mike | 21-Jul-2010 10:11 pm

  Alright guys, calm it down a bit. You are actually both right.
  
  Nursing IS a science, it DOES involve being able to medically cure and treat our patients. It DOES involve needing to know the mechanical effects of the body, the pharmacological effects of the drugs we give and exactly what to do to fix it. All the caring in the world will not mean anything if we did not have this. This DOES require Nurses to be very highly educated, skilled and multi faceted.
  
  However, where Nurses turn this into an art form is that we do this alongside the medical model with care and compassion. We CAN give CPR and a blood transfusion and understand the side effects of the drugs we give out whilst we offer a listening ear or hold a hand. (And yes anon, I would do that on my dinner break if needed, but I will be damn sure I take my full dinner break afterwards, I work to rule here remember?)
  
  Getting back to this story, I agree that this woman does not have a clue. Yes anonymous none of us got into this for the money or the status, you are right on that front, however this does not mean that we should not get the correct renumeration for the level of skill, education/qualifications, accountability and responsibility we have. Nor should we put up with poor working conditions such as low staffing levels.
  
  If Nurses are to spend more time with patients to give them the level of care we want to give, then we NEED a Nurse/Patient ratio and better staffing levels to do that, we NEED decent pay levels to allow us to live without working 70 hours a week and will ensure moral and retention.
  
  Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 1:37 pm, I understand your frustration with the bullshit and beauracracy in the NHS and moronic 'leaders' like Milton et al, but don't quit. Stay and fight. Read a few other threads on here, Nurses are becoming more militant and ready to fight, it just takes everyone to do so and we will be able to DEMAND the changes we need.

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• jjjez@hotmail.com | 21-Jul-2010 10:53 pm

  anonymous (why don't you get an account?) i am talking about acute adult nursing not mental health - the only place where your arguments are valid. Ann Milton isn't talking about mental health particularly so instead of calling me a knob - hope you demonstrate a bit more eloquece at work so you don't come off like the judgemental dunce you appear to be aspiring to currently.
  
  But then again considering how little faith there is in a great deal of psychiatric nursing practice i really do hope you are a better RMN than you are a contributor on this site.
  
  Use your big boy words baby, use your big big boy words.
  
  Count it!

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• Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 11:21 pm

  I agree with some of the above and some of what Ann has written. If we are going to improve the health service for ourselves and our patients we need to find smarter ways of working and organizing ourselves. It appears scary and painful and we desperately need new nursing leadership.

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• Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 11:51 pm

  jjez , i just despair pal....do not even get me started on comparisons between branches, id love this "medical" care defined...you do not design the equipment you use to melodramtically save lives, you do not manufacture the medications you give. All nursing has the major element of common sense as the most important one and to suggest the way you interact with people isnt important shows a great lack of it!
  do patients remember the nurse who did a sterling job of using a baxter pump to get a drip rate correct...or did a good job of dressing their pressure areas. They remember the nurses that give a monkeys, explain what they are doing, were soft,sensitive and kind...who asked you how many kids youve got, who say good morning and good night as they come into work and leave at night.
  aside from a and e and icu please tell me this miracle of saving lives? RMNs are pherhaps abit more straight forward and dont spend as much time justifying what they do, to cover over what they dont....you often see this with A and E nurses and prison nurses that they just dont take themselves that serious.
  pherhaps you shouldnt bother justifying why you dont think it important to not be a good communicator with warmth and compassion that might go someway in making someone feel abit better..and just say you dont want to...everybodys happy then.

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• Anonymous | 22-Jul-2010 7:38 am

  What is 'common sense' when it comes to nursing? Your above ranting justifies re-grading yourself as a char lady.

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• jjjez@hotmail.com | 22-Jul-2010 10:06 am

  Anon, what are you on about?
  This is some serious and untoward non-sequiturs here and you make almost no sense whatsoever.
  
  Medical engineers not physicians and surgeons design and build machines per se but they did invent certain techniques for practise like the Seldinger technique.
  
  Pharmacologists rather than pharmacists mass produce medications that doctors prescribe (but the emphasis is with the pharmacologists)
  
  
  Anaesthetics, of which the majority of early development was almost certainly American was done 99.9% by NURSES and countless other modern developments such as the spread of DC cardioversion pracitse are done majority by NURSES.
  
  If you're ignorant of what happens in adult nursing which you clearly are then why bother to keep harping on.
  
  
  LIFE IN GENERAL INVOLVES COMMON SENSE, so stop trying to dumb down what we/you do for a living.
  
  I can understand that in mental health there's no science seeing as psychiatry is extremely controversial and most off the drugs used have the same effect as placebos but it's not the same in acute care.
  
  If you want to come and counsel my patients then do so and use your skills after all you've learned that not me. But i work across the road from a mental health facility and if a patient who was a raging schizophrenic needed a drip he would be forced out to me and i would have a mental health worker sitting there like a statue in a chair for the doing whole day.
  
  That facility doesn't send anyone qualified over to assess them or offer therapy so don't start to get insecure because you chose a profession where the patients assessments are based on JUDGEMENTS and not assessment.
  
  Why don't you use some common sense?
  
  Does it not occur to you that actually A&E is filled with minors and walking wounded and a small minority are majors and resus cases? (IGNORANT) or that ICU is actually full of elderly co-morbid patients having routine operations that someone 30 years younger would sail through?? (CLUELESS!!)
  
  You are more likely to decline on a general surgical or medical ward because those places HAVE LESS STAFF THAN A&E AND ICU!!!!! DUUUUUHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
  
  I mean my god. please stop posting, the people who are reading this with me think it cruel that you set yourself for rebuttals so well.
  
  RMN's have a relatively easy job i think because unless the patients kill themselves, they are unlikely to decline because of what is physically wrong with them.
  
  And please take an A&E/ICU nurses out of those places to a general ward and they can't cope because actually those jobs involve far less interaction than ward nursing seeing as those patients are generally transient. (IGNORANT)
  
  Count it!
  
  

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• Anonymous | 22-Jul-2010 10:26 am

  Your attitude is appauling...pherhaps im over sticking up for a + e nurses and i mentioned prison nurse (general trained) but they do dumb down extrodinary work and are usually very humble about it...if they had this self-righteous attitude they would get a smack in the nose off every other patient with that level of cockiness.
  I had to do a good six months in general placements...i didn't see anything that dynamic that i was amazed, just lots of people moaning how shit there job was.
  I take my hat off, its not something i would want to do but more to do with the pretenciousness and hierachy that just seem bolloks. Ordering HCAs around to do everything they dont want to do...but say its because they havent got time, your taling shit mate whenver i have been the statue i just feel sick with the things you hear come out of nurses mouths...if im ever ill id go a mental health unit (i dont like like the owrd psychiatric by the way)
  RMN is not easy if the statue you refer to wasn't there.....well you wont see but its there for a good reason. I'd love to see someone like you on the secure forensic setting i work on, you wouldnt last till dinnertime.
  please define what this medical care is aside from giving out tablets, putting up drips, observations, the odd catheter (all stuff i do as an rmn) and i'l accept your opinions...otherwise il just say i dont care.
  Youve done me a favour actually talking to cold people who think being a nurse is the defintive feature actually makes me want to go to work to aurgue simplicity and common sense...nice one.

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• Anonymous | 22-Jul-2010 11:03 am

  If there was ever a case for 3 years common training and then branch specialization I think you two just made it. Ignorant numpties the pair of youze.

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• Anonymous | 22-Jul-2010 11:06 am

  And drop the hardman from forensic pychiatry routine bigman, it's doing you no favours.

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• jjjez@hotmail.com | 22-Jul-2010 11:38 am

  No your attitude is appalling particularly as your insistence that being humble is somehow condusive to good nursing.
  And people who attack people for what they say are the lowest common denominator in society, so thanks for proving how you aren't on anyones side really.
  More so you are condoning violence against hospital staff on the basis that pottering about like a nun won't get you attacked. never mind that most A&E violence is fulled by alcohol and drugs. the majority of staff attacked didn't provoke anything and were only trying to help.
  
  you are ridiculous and reinforce the stereotype of submission and deference to anybody and everybody.
  
  If you didn't get anything out of your measly six months then that is beacuse of you, not them and to compare value i had two days in an outpatients facility for my mental health placement - i learned quite a lot so it seems you were the one who was arrogant and wasting the time of others on your placements.
  
  My assistants (which they Nursing ASSISTANT!!! and i was one for 4 years!) and i work as a team and we rely on each other for so much. nobody orders anybody around because i work in a modern work environment where our Ward Sisters expects a great deal of autonomy and skill from hr band 5's like myself.
  
  However admitting that you are a statue reallly is quite funny. instead of being appalled by what some people say you could have educated them on what the patient is going through and provided some therapy for the patient, however as you admit to a being a statue and didn't counter that i can only assume that you did nothing and the physical care the patient got was what they needed in that situation. Oh dear. looking a bit flimsy now aren't you!!
  
  I'd be fine in a mental health setting and seeing as i was with someone who was bi-polar for two and a half years i am quite aware of what it is you think you are doing. On the other hand with your fundamental lack of knowledge of 'below the neck' it is you who would be helpess if you came to do bank as a band 2. i'm not saying i would be apprehensive but you would die of exhaustion within your 6 hour bank shift.
  
  And please it is well established that peoples physical helath is not adaquately monitored in mental health facilities so i wouldn't even bother trying to deny it. Please read more than the Sun.
  
  And those statues by and large sit and read magazines and the interactions of pain control, physical monitoring etc is left to me not you because that's my job, not yours.
  
  You've proven nothing other than you don't know what your talking about. common sense my arse. you don't have any sense at all.
  
  And not liking the word psychiatry doesn't somehow mean that the whole of your industry is led and contorl by psychiatrists not psychologists. so get a clue, read and please stop digging your own hole.
  
  
  You can't win this one based on the arguments you have because they keep getting quashed by - guess what- COMMON SENSE. Touche!!!!
  
  Count it!
  
  
  
  
  
  

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