My NHS rant

This is an older post but I thought I'd post my NHS expierance anyway:P

A few weeks ago ,Dale came home with a mate, both were pissed and they started playing with a screwdriver (they are men )
It ends up being stabbed in Dales ear by accident,we take him to the A&E because of all the blood and the fact that he couldnt hear anything. After waiting about 5 hrs in the waiting room,he gets called back,the doctor looks at his ear briefly,tells us to go back in the waiting room,calls him back again, cleans out the dry blood and tells him he has to come back that Monday after he uses some eardrops and gets his ear cleaned up some. So they can see his eardrum to make sure its not punctured.
 The doctor said he will call the  ear,eye and throat department that night ,so all we have to do is wait for their call Monday and they will tell us what time he has to come in. Monday comes around....and it gets to be in the late afternoon,so I call to see whats going on. The department said the doctor never called and that they never even heard of Dales visit to the A&E, they said they will call the doctor and call us back. No call. By this time he is still in a lot of pain, so I call back,they didnt even call the doctor! and they had a "its not my problem" attitude about it I was so angry that I just hung up. Luckily a couple days later his ear cleared up and everything is fine now (except for his ego )
It made me so angry because he had a friggin screwdriver stabbed in his ear,blood everything,and he couldn't hear,and they couldn't care less. It just seems to me that just because its free to get medical treatment,the hospitals don't care,therefore if you paid for medical treatment you will be treated better

I might be going out on a limb here but shouldn't you be pissed at your boyfriend instead? Boys will be boys? If he is over 21 years of age or so he should act like an adult. I understand partying and having fun, really I do, but you are expecting his child and his actions most likely cause you worry and stress which isn't good for either you, him or your unborn.

I might be going out on a limb here but shouldn't you be pissed at your boyfriend instead? Boys will be boys? If he is over 21 years of age or so he should act like an adult. I understand partying and having fun, really I do, but you are expecting his child and his actions most likely cause you worry and stress which isn't good for either you, him or your unborn.

I have to say I agree with this sentiment.

I used to drink.  A lot.  Too much.  It never occurred to me or my male mates to horse around w/sharp objects after drinking too much.

Actually he is 20 but his age has nothing to do with it, he is legal to drink.
And he didn't poke his own ear out with it,it was his mates fault. Besdies its not like they were sitting there playing with pointy objects, it was a long extendable screwdriver that has a magnetic tip on it and they were picking stuff up with the magnet on it and his mate decided to poke Dales ear with it, which he got hell from me about
 My post has nothing to do with that anyway, I was posting about how crappy his care was at the hospital not how "irresponsible" he and his mate acted when they were drunk

well I do agree that it was in the error of the GP to say he's going to telephone and didn't that was crap...but in fairness the A&E registrar did asses your bf and gave him the ear drops not because it was his nonchalant attitude but perhaps that's what he found best for your situation...wouldn't it be worse if he was admitted over the weekend and then the ENT on Monday just said it's nothing really send him home...was he still pissed when he went to the GP ? perhaps they couldn't give him anything else because they had to wait till the alcohol wore off. That's one of the things that annoy me is when the GP organises something with the patient and fails to handover the information to other members of the disciplinary team ...

I'll tell you my NHS rant and this is from the other side of the coin:

I'm doing my placement in a general paediatric ward...I hate the way the ward  runs...on the first day when we are supposed to be orientated into the ward I was told to come in at 7am...so I get there and it was this look like I am the first student nurse they have ever had...they told the other nurses not to come in till 9am...so it's the sit there , stand over there , read this ....stalling basically because they don't know what to do with me. The nurses are discussing what to do with the student nurses and acting like they have to babysit and cracking jokes about making us "clean things" to give us busy work. So the other student nurses come in and where told to go "orientate ourselves" with the surrounding they gave us a map of the hospital and told us to go find out where the pharmacy is , A&E and Outpatients....so we did it in a few and came back expecting to be told of what to expect with our placement at that particular ward. NOPE we are told to sit in the seminar room because such and such will come in to discuss things with you...and we wait ....each one of us kept coming to find this person and she was either at lunch , or stepped out for few or gone somewhere to go back into the seminar room and wait...about one hour before were are scheduled to go home is when one of the nurses said to go to the treatment room and stock it up. The next day we get assigned a "mentor" more like tormentor... which take the opportunity to make you do all their grunt work meanwhile the sit on their ars* to chit chat about such and such's upcoming wedding or so and so's leaving do. We had 2 patients with MRSA and are told what to do when handling these children ( IE . wear a gown and gloves every time) So in I go in the cubicle with the proper attire and this "Mentor" tells me off for wearing gloves.I told her that I was informed that was the proper procedure to do everytime I came into this room.... so she handles the patient without any gloves and tells me how she "can't work" with gloves on and "prays that she doesn't get MRSA for doing her job"  This ward is very cliquey and you try to chit chat at lunch in the staff room and it's a complete coldness because you're only a temp...I thought I was being hypersensitive but the other student nurses have sensed it as well....the whole ward is disorganized and they don't communicate and A LOT of mistakes occur because the nurses on that ward think they are too superior and above their co-worker...usually I can handle the harshness of the patient's problems I may have to deal with if you've got a good support from nursing team but the nurses here are crap it's all too frustrating and these 6weeks are going to be fecking long.

I gonna rant again ...

the mentor I've got gave the wrong medication to a patient ...

I went to the treatment room with one nurse and she was lecturing me about giving medications when my mentor/nurse came in . The mentor asked me if I could bring so and so's drug chart which was by his bed so I went over to the bed..the mum was there and saw me taking the chart so I said hi what I was doing and the nurse  would see them later on...as I was heading back towards the treatment room I pass the mentor on the way..firstly the name of the person she told me was not correct so I asked her was that the name of the individual and was that the chart she wanted she said yes. She was on her way to give medication to someone else and I returned to the treatment room and set the chart on the table for her....as I went back to continue the lesson with the other nurse the mentor comes back to the treatment room and says "oh crap I've given the wrong medication to the patient because you were talking to me about so and so I went over to that bed and gave him the medication instead"

 

What cheek to accuse me of being the reason she gave the wrong medication!!!

The procedure is check the chart and the person before giving it ...the worst was that when I went to the bay to tend to other patients the mum caused a big scene saying
"YOU TOOK THE DRUG CHART SO THE NURSE GAVE THE WRONG MEDICATION"
in front of everyone...it was awful
The nurse didn't apologize to the family only kept saying it was a small dose of antibiotics the child was already on antibiotics , mum you are over reacting.


3 more weeks to go....

 
Hey does anyone know what happened to celtictothecore? with his white blood cell count?

It was the result  of a respiratory infection that I had picked up in Derry just prior to the blood test, thanks for asking.

I like your new quote Celtic!  Hope you're all better now.

Glad things worked out okay Celtic!

Alicia
I don't know if this helps but at least you know what kind of nurse you DON'T want to be.  Keep focus on the patient and you'll make it just fine.

I gonna rant again ...

the mentor I've got gave the wrong medication to a patient ...

I went to the treatment room with one nurse and she was lecturing me about giving medications when my mentor/nurse came in . The mentor asked me if I could bring so and so's drug chart which was by his bed so I went over to the bed..the mum was there and saw me taking the chart so I said hi what I was doing and the nurse  would see them later on...as I was heading back towards the treatment room I pass the mentor on the way..firstly the name of the person she told me was not correct so I asked her was that the name of the individual and was that the chart she wanted she said yes. She was on her way to give medication to someone else and I returned to the treatment room and set the chart on the table for her....as I went back to continue the lesson with the other nurse the mentor comes back to the treatment room and says "oh crap I've given the wrong medication to the patient because you were talking to me about so and so I went over to that bed and gave him the medication instead"

 

What cheek to accuse me of being the reason she gave the wrong medication!!!

The procedure is check the chart and the person before giving it ...the worst was that when I went to the bay to tend to other patients the mum caused a big scene saying
"YOU TOOK THE DRUG CHART SO THE NURSE GAVE THE WRONG MEDICATION"
in front of everyone...it was awful
The nurse didn't apologize to the family only kept saying it was a small dose of antibiotics the child was already on antibiotics , mum you are over reacting.


3 more weeks to go....

Uhhh.  What a cow.  I cannot believe she blamed you for that.  How unprofessional!  I am usually pretty defensive of nurses because I know that they often get blamed for stuff that is out of their control and not their fault but she needs a lesson on responsibilty.

I'm long gone from that placement and last I heard was that she had an incident report filed on her.

Sadly there was another incident with another nurse that took some micropore tape and taped a child's pacifier to their mouth in order for the child to stop spitting out the pacifier every five minutes. The baby really liked sucking on the pacifer and he did it so hard he accidently kept popping it out of his mouth and then he would cry so every so often we would go and pop it back into his mouth one of the nurses got fed up doing that so she stuck tape to the pacifier and his mouth and thought "how clever am I" and boasted about it..she got reprimanded.

My current placement was better 2 out of all the nurse are crap ..the rest are excellent and friendly and team spirited.

I await to see where I am next.

Sorry for the hijack I saw NHS rant and added my own rant after I got back that day.


I am glad things are better for you Celtic

I can't believe a nurse would actually tape something to a baby's mouth! Even an ignoramus should know better! How scary is that?

Pediatric nurses back in the day used to do that quite a bit actually.  I always thought it sounded like a bad, bad idea.   My friend's 10 month old baby died when she choked to death on a small sticky price tag that she pulled off of a toy at a birthday party.  If that can happen, a child can end up choking on micropore tape.  Slap that nurse!