The government wants nurses to have a year honing their caring skills before starting their training proper.
The BBC report that the Royal College of Nursing has ‘ridiculed’ this idea…and called it ‘really stupid’.
In fact the BBC seemed so pleased with that phrase, ‘A really stupid idea‘, that they couldn’t repeat it enough times today.
It probably is a really stupid idea but that’s by the by….if the RCN had said it was ‘A really magnificent idea’ I doubt that would have got much air time on the BBC.
Here’s a really magnificent interview on ‘Morning Reports’ (5:05:30) with Unison’s Karen Jennings.
The interviewer does ask some relevant questions but also seems to feed her some easy ones that she easily bats away.
The worst point is a major failure by the interviewer.
Jennings claims that patient safety is at risk and that staff are stressed by the shortage of staff, and that this is caused by the ‘cuts’.
The interviewer feeds her a line…‘Is this a recent phenomenon?’
Well….what do you reckon she said?
The problems have only arisen in the last couple of years she claims…since 2010 ‘actually’….it’s a disaster in the making she tells us.
Really? Who’d a thought a Union bod would come up with that?
Not the BBC because the interviewer didn’t have the obvious rejoinder ready for her….
‘What about Stafford Hospital….didn’t that occur under the Labour government long before 2010…you know..when over a thousand patients died due to lack of care and money was being poured into the service?’
A disaster in the making indeed.
Doesn’t that one point completely undermine her narrative? The service was obviously atrocious before 2010….but the BBC lets her get away with it…and Labour who seem to have escaped all culpability for the deaths.
Wonder what Karen Jennings and her Union buddies think of this:
Labour rules out ‘massive’ NHS spending increases
Labour has said it will seek to “protect” NHS funding if re-elected while acknowledging that increasing budgets is unlikely in the current economic climate.
So the same policy as the Coalition then?
The R4 news clip I heard today didn’t feature a union rep. Rather it had a union stooge – a nurse who plaintively whined about the ‘lack of staff’ and denied any essential lack of care.
Funny that. My experience, and that of many I’ve spoken to, is that nurses are either too “professional” these days to perform basic nursing duties, or prefer to cluster together to discuss their boyfriendss and holidays, than to feed an ailing patient.
.
What is really at once so transparent about the BBC’s handling of this story was that it led on the militant RCN attack on the governent’s policy and, instead of running a response, ran the opinions of a (no doubt union-sourced stooge) to amplify the message.
So, come on then albaman and the rest of the BBC’s glee club. Where’s the balance in that?
“Is this a recent phenomenon then or has it been the case that staffing levels haven’t been high enough for some time?’
‘The government of course will argue that its protected NHS budgets while other goverment departments have suffered more, and again the Coalition will argue the changes its put into place in the NHS which came into force at the start of this month mean the health service runs more effeciently , so don’t we need to give these commissiong boards s chance to put these changes into place?’
‘But the government also reforms have put some of your members at the heart of decision-making haven’t they?’
‘Each board has a nurse on it doesnt it?’
all the NHS needs is a few more millions chucked at it and everything will be ok
RCN
Would that be ‘millions’ as in cash, or ‘millions’ as in patients? If the former, no chance, and if the latter – don’t worry, come 2014 and the expected ‘trickle’ of Bulgarians and Romanians will swell the number of potential patients a tad…
Swamping the urban areas of Britain with millions of third-world savages was also a ‘really stupid idea’, but one that doesn’t seem to ever get mentioned on the BBC for some reason.
The RCN is quite right. It is a completely stupid idea that nurses should, well, nurse patients. Surely their job is to mess up the medicines, forget to turn patients or make beds or feed them.
The idea that nurses actually care for their patients is laughable.
Wannabe Doctors are encouraged to do this before applying for university. Next door neighbour’s kid worked with mentally handicapped children. So why no nurses ?
Heaven forbid that UNISON members have to prepare themselves for the hard work they have ahead of themselves in their vocation…perhaps it’s those who just see it as a career that have a problem with it ?
In case you’ve just crawled out from under the covers, it’s St Georges day. Make the most of this day for the English :0)
Waes hael cousin
That is racist! You will be visited by Kenneth Loach’s louts in Left Unity and the UAF
I am a Nurse (A fairly Senior one at that) and certainly will not defend some of the profession that are at fault, but please do not tarnish us all with the same label. There are still many many Nurses who love to care for our patients and really enjoy the time when we can make a difference to a patient by even the simplest of tasks. Fortunately this counts for the majority of my colleagues. Also surprisingly although many of my colleagues are in Unions, this is purely to protect us and most of my colleagues are not rabid left wingers! There seems to be a mix of views but certainly there are quite a few UKIP (previously Conservative Party if there actually was a conservative Party!) voters. So please try to remember like every profession there are good uns and bad uns, but in my experience most of us seem to have our hearts in the right place.
Quote:”There are still many many Nurses who love to care for our patients and really enjoy the time when we can make a difference to a patient by even the simplest of tasks.”
I’m sure there are, and I’m sure they are still respected for their dedication, it’s not something I could do, that’s for sure. It’s the gobshites speaking out on behalf of the RCN that are under scrutiny here though and perhaps those who see nursing in terms of ‘just a career’ – I can’t imagine that is for the good of the profession personally.
Well said. One of my daughters is a mental health nurse, dealing with drug addiction and alcoholism. I frankly does not know how she does it – and stays conscientious in spite of all the stupid management above her.
But like with the teaching profession – we need better and surer ways of rooting out the bad apples who tarnish the good name of the real professionals. And unfortunately the unions have a tendency to resist that bitterly.
Good Point yes Chris in Wales we shouldn’t chuck the good in with the bad just like the police [yes really some are actually good at their job and not crims ] and other services but sadly the good are silent and powerless in huge organisations! so cop flack when those organisation are questioned!
It’s a fact of life that the good get on with the job and seek nothing but their due have to be burdened with the mouthy /lazy /tossers who want everything they do not deserve !
“So please try to remember like every profession there are good uns and bad uns”
Yes- that applies to bankers as well.
Well the’ good uns’ need to make their voice heard or you will inevitably get tarred with the same brush as hard line trade unionists who are in control of the RCN.
The BBC is just doing what it always does, presenting the RCN the BMC and other ‘professional unions’ out to promote their members interests, as professional bodies concerned with the quality of the service they are supposed to provide. The BBC will always ride to the defence of its public sector colleagues no matter how undeserving they are.
Clearly the RCN should not be allowed to be both a trade union for its members and also given some sort of supervisory powers over nursing quality. The same goes for all professional bodies.
My observation has been that the older the nurse the more they understand the ‘caring’ part of their role. I have seen wards that survive only by constantly managing crisis after crisis. The nurses must be exhausted by the end of their shift. But it was the older nurses in general be they the sisters or the auxiliaries who had a smile for the patient, or a reassurance for the worried visitor. But as Scoobywho pointed out, trainee doctors are expected to do some volunteer work in a caring role before they ever get accepted for a place at university. But this is the biased BBC site and it is the leading questions asked by BBC staff to both Labour and Union staff that Alan is writing about and the majority of us agree with (I assume Dez and Co don’t see it that way).
“The government wants nurses to have a year honing their caring skills before starting their training proper.”
Every copper (even the ones on ‘fast track career progression’ to ACPO rank, or to a role as a _______ Police Association rights commissar) spends two years as a bobby on the beat learning exactly what the job entails.
I fail to see why nursey is too good to spend time learning the basics before climbing the career ladder. Teach ’em the basics and maybe you’d see a few less ‘patient neglected to death’ stories in the press.
That “really stupid” comment jarred when I heard it and as you say the BBC obviously enjoyed repeating it. If the RCN wants to be treated as a professional body rather than another public sector bolshy union, they would do well to avoid such remarks. Unfortunately they come across as the public face of nursing at a time following Mid Staffs when a little humility and even shame would not come amiss.
I used to be a registered nurse (and my wife currently is a registered nurse) and, certainly in my wife’s experience, there is a definite lack of staff on some wards.
My wife would often come home feeling really down after being on a 12 hour shift that she felt that she didn’t have enough time to do her job properly.
Some days she didn’t even have time to take a break.
However, I strongly believe that this situation is not because of a lack of funding for the NHS. It is that funds are used wastefully and inappropriately.
Listening to the interview you mention here, the Unison rep mentions things such as “nurses not having enough time to feed patients or get them to the toilet on time”.
These duties have long since ceased to be “nursing duties”. You do not need to study for three years in order to take someone to the toilet or feed someone.
You do need some training (it isn’t quite as easy as it sounds – especially when the person can neither walk nor stand or has some degree of dysphagia) but you don’t need to be a qualified nurse in order to carry these duties out.
Care Assistants (or whatever they are called these days – they used to be called Auxillary Nurses) are far cheaper than qualified nurses and we do need more of these on the wards in order to ensure that basic care duties such as mentioned above are carried out.
Of course, Unison and the NMC will say that more qualified nurses are required. The NMC has recently put up its registration fee to £100 per year (latest figures publish (2008!) show 676,547 nurses on the register.
(For no reason whatsoever, I will just say that when I qualified in 1993, it was £40 for THREE years).
I think most of us gladly accept that there are many caring professional nurses. But, as has been mentioned, they are not the people running the RCN. This is a familiar problem with many unions and it is one only the members can address.
The BBC will always find people to say what it wants to hear said. Nurses, and other unionists, need to make sure that their spokesmen and spokeswomen are not firebrand militants promoting a political agenda that has little to do with the trade or profession in question.
RCN leader Carter claims nurses are drowning in paperwork. To an extent that is true, not necessarily because of more paperwork, but because in order to protect nurses jobs in the face of budgetary overspend, a lot of essential admin staff who took the burden off nurses have been got rid of.
One thing you should never trust politicians to do is run anything of any importance. Not the Health Service, and certainly not the country.
alternatively, you could offer up a blue pill for those that don’t want to languish in some shithole hospital.
Time for home truths. A lot of these old dears “languishing in a shithole”, as you say, shouldn’t be in hospital at all – they are nursing home fees dodgers, along with their expectant relatives. There is no cure for old age, and no cure for dying from it. Hospital is the worst place to die, alone. They should be at home surrounded by their loved ones, and instead, they are lying in their own excrement in hospital.
I’ve seen a lot of these wards – demenented, gaga old ladies calling for nurse constantly as though nurse were her daughter at beck and call, 28 of them in one ward. I chatted briefly with one of the few nurses – she was agency and didn’t intend to come back. No politician is going to say it, for fear of bursting the public’s bubble. The public want it to be Danny Boyles NHS, in reality, it is a shithole because no one can afford Danny Boyle’s NHS. That was funded by the Olympics budget, for twenty minutes.
There is a lot of paperwork for nurses to do these days and it is mostly to avoid litigation. Hospitals are scared to death of being sued by anyone for “negligence”.
So, they give nurses lots of paperwork containing lots of boxes to tick.
If the box is ticked, the job was done and no court can say otherwise. If the box is not ticked, the nurse will find him/herself in all kinds of trouble.
The irony is that when the nurse is spending so long filling in these forms, he/she is being taken away from actually spending time with patients and so negligence is more likely to occur.
And when time is running short and the end of the shift is beckoning, do nurses sometimes tick boxes even though they haven’t actually done the thing the box represents?
I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions…
Try arguing that with the lawyers. The Nursing Notes and Medical Notes are a legal requirement, not a “waste of nursing time”. Documenting what you did when is actually part of nursing care and always has been. Notes are individual care records, essential to handover between shifts and different professions, not ” box-ticking”. Its amazing how everyone has an opinion about health service bureaucracy, even when they nothing about it.
I was a qualified nurse for around 15 years. I worked in the NHS for some of that time, worked as an agency nurse (in NHS hospitals, BUPA hospitals and care homes) for some of that time and worked in care homes for some of that time.
I do know a bit about it.
Yes, they ARE a legal requirement – that’s kind of my point.
They are not so much about providing better nursing care, as about providing a solid case should anything ever come to court.
When I say “box ticking”, I am referring to the paperwork. I know it isn’t all about “box-ticking”. Care plans have to be updated on a regular basis and an entry has to be recorded in every patient’s care plan at the end of every shift (all complete with academic references to justify any action taken).
It is far more time consuming than merely “ticking boxes” – I was being generous by using the term.
The point remains. When a nurse writes something in the care plan to indicate that he/she did something then he’she did indeed do something (even if he/she didn’t).
When a nurse doesn’t write in the care plan that he/she did something then he/she didn’t do it even if he/she did and is liable to find themselves in trouble.
Based on these two scenarios and limited time, which do you think is the most likely to happen?
Fair point, Anthem.
The term “box ticking” has been taken up by journalists across the political spectrum as “unnecessary bureaucracy”. They haven’t a clue what it means and the public who don’t know any better go along with it. I expect when journalists fill in expense claims – that wouldn’t be “box ticking”
I can’t see what is stupid about this idea which to me is as much about testing someone’s suitability for nursing as it is to get them used to the basics. If they can’t hack that first year of applying the basic principles of care because they either think it is beneath them or they just aren’t caring enough, then they aren’t suitable for the job. From several experiences of family and friends it’s pretty clear that lack of compassion amongst nursing staff is more widespread than anybody cares to admit and something radical needs to be done. I’d back it up with psychometric testing before they even start training – care and compassion are surely essential personal qualities required of anybody wishing to join the profession.