Nursing needs its leaders to respond to Francis
Penny Nibbs
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Comments (12)
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Comment on: The big question: should 'excellent' nurses be paid more than others?
The question is who decides who is "demonstrating a commitment to patient care"? If its Management, my guess is that it would be a deeply flawed system, as they like to promote people who scratch their backs and don't challenge the management system.But tend to ignore the people who really do all the hard graft on a ward or in a department.
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Comment on: The care gap that cheats nurses and patients alike
As long as Patients and Care are measured in "pounds shillings and pence" by the Muppets who decide which of the hospitals/ GP surgeries and all the other care providers can have money to run, Nurses will have to learn the pounds shillings and pence language to communicate effectively with them. As I say, they are Muppets, so can only speak one language, filthy lucre or "how much of it can we save, so that our jobs are secure, because we are tighter than Scrooge and the goal is to be cost effective". To be sure, they will not be putting themselves or their loved ones into the NHS system if they can help it, if they need hospital/ primary care, so they won't know what first hand experience of their policies have done to good people - both patients, Nurses and other types of carer. Sadly, also, it is pretty well impossible to transcend the philosophical gap between the psycho-social world of care, compassion or even just dignity. So try as we do( and some of us do with ear piercing/heart rending shrieks), our pleas fall on tuned-out ears of the Muppets who hold the purse strings.
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Comment on: Nursing bodies condemn prank call
To make it the DJ's fault, is a wonderful way of covering up the toxic stew which their deeds stirred up. Effectively they wandered into a zone of " the culture of Nurses and Nursing in the UK" which they naturally had no knowledge of and could never have dreamed of the consequences of their actions, as a result. What no one with any clout actually wants to examine is: why was this poor Nurse so stressed by this event, that she couldn't see her way out of it? With all the Noise about it being cruel and wicked hoax, no one seems to stopping and asking themselves... what is it about the culture in King Edward the V11, which would make a nurse feel so mortified that she is pushed over the edge. I have worked there and I have a suspicion that I know what they said to her, I am sure most of us nurses with a scrap of imagination, do too. Clearly it wasn't as supportive as the Management of KE7th thought it was. Though I suppose what Management thinks of as support and what nurses see as support, are worlds apart at the best of times!
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Comment on: Government announces roll out of 'patient budgets'
I can't see this ever happening( not that i think its a good idea in the first place, just another loony idea from the home of ridiculous ideas). I can see rationing looming, those who shout the loudest /those who make themselves a real nuisance scooping the jackpot and gate keeping being the devil in the detail... I tried to get my GP refer me to the NHS funded but local authority run, Weight Loss programme. She was SO reluctant to do it, it took me 30 minutes, in a 10 min slot to get the much needed deed done. What are my chances of getting something out of her budget for our health care? I think a snowballs hope in hell.
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Comment on: "If the cap fits: does nursing need to rebrand its image?"
Some of the nicest kindest people in Nursing have tattoos, coloured hair and ironmongery to challenge an ironmonger. However these people would never have been accepted for Nursing looking like that 30 years ago, when" standards of Nursing care" are now thought to have been better. This is poppy cock you know, go back 30- 40 years and we were tying patients into their cot beds/chairs to save them from climbing out and hurting themselves. We didn't know any better, but I do now. People died in pain because Nurses simply didn't know enough about pain control and didn't have enough power to demand better from equally ignorant doctors. i could go on... I do think that some of this" bring back the old days" of nursing is rose tinted glasses myself. I think good care depended on the givers then, like it does today too. Matrons were not the answer, in the hospital where I trained they were obsessed with Student Nurses being subservient to them and "knowing our place", never thinking just doing as we were told. Heaven help you if you asked difficult questions, lots of nurses were told to leave" because they weren't suitable" ie they thought too much. And a Matron's special in PARTICULAR was ensuring that the wheels of the beds were all facing the right way on the lino line.( Which didn't contribute to care one jot.) As for hats, some people have pointed out that they were difficult to construct( depending where you worked), and I can vouch that the hats at St Georges, Tooting were a nightmare. And my veil when I became a ward sister often ended up under some heavy patient while I was lifting them.Which was hardly good for the starching or standing up straight and proudly either. Thankfully they never ended in a poo'y bed, but that would have sealed that veils fate. But there is one thing that no one seems to remember, am I the only one? The same linen hat or paper one, that was worn year in and year out without being changed or renewed, shared with friends in desperate moments? I remember many nurses( student and qualified) who showed this respect for their hats, in several London Hospitals. I think we are better off without hats! Like we are better off without buckles and belts, you know. Its not what you put on on the outside which makes a good nurse but who you are and how you relate to patients on the inside, that sets the caring nurse apart from the unreflective herd. And the most important value of Nursing research, to come back to the first person to comment, is the observational learning that the researcher does herself. That should change your practices for life. It is lovely and very encouraging when others read your research and open their eyes as a result of what one has produced, I know this personally. But most research doesn't seem to have a very long life in their consciousnesses. Time moves swiftly on.
