My Dad has just told me my 96 yr old Grandma has been admitted to hospital and he and my uncle are taking shifts to be with her around mealtimes, to ensure she's getting fed.

What's all that about ....??!?!?!
:o(

I have noticed on many wards that the introduction of family-feeding-relatives-being-good-for-holistic-patient-care actually being used as if-you-don't-come-in-to-feed-them-they-won't-be-fed-as-I-will-be-taking-the-time-to-complete-paperwork/have-a-coffee/ring-my-boyfriend....

It annoys me - as a student nurse and a healthcare assistant, I find that when you take that time with a patient you get to know them, and build up a good therapuetic relationship. I enjoy sitting with patients at meal times, and making it a social event, as appossed to the "dreaded lunch hour".

It really infuriates me. I hope that you're family are able to manage it, if not ask the ward if they have assistant feeders (awful title) but they come in purely to help feed patients that need assistance, and they are all volunteers...so they have a different attitude.

Hope she gets better!
Beckie

When I had a baby by caesarean I was kept in for a couple of days. During each meal-time my husband was forced to leave, giving me a "protected meal-time". What this meant was that I had to haul myself out of bed, despite being immediately post-op to tend to my baby whilst my food went cold. If my husband could have stayed with me then he could have tended to our baby and I could have eaten in peace. Not that I'd have wanted to - I'm a vegetarian and one day the veggie option was "cheese and potatoe pie" which was actually cheesy mash. This was served with normal mash and sauted potatoes!!! Potato, potato, potato - a very beige and unbalanced dinner!

I'm also NHS staff and find the below-inflation pay "rise" a huge insult. Thankfully, my immediate manager is extremely appreciative of the work we do which does create a good working atmosphere and some motivation.

When I was a nurse I used to enjoy 'feeding time', I liked the chance to sit down and chat with the patients while I fed them. meanwhile feeding a patient properly results in increased wound healing and recovery.

But, it wasn't seen as 'proper nursing' which is one of the many reasons why I left nursing.

I can see the day arrive when you - and a lot of others - finally give up and quit. From what I have read here, a lot of doctors are just downright lazy and intent on pushing as much work as possible to those they regard as underlings.

It's always the way. Those at the very top get the most, and (insert word/phrase here) the rest.

It's less the doctors and more the government.

At one time the Labour government was all for those who work at the les glamourous end of the scale. Today there's so little between them and the Tories they almost drink from the same cup.

The NHS is treating those at the front line, ie Paramedics and EMTs, and those who work on the wards doing patient care and nursing badly, admittedly. But as a medical student and a HCA I feel I need to point out, doctors aren't downright lazy and intent on pushing work on. Yes there are some, but there are also some lazy nurses and HCAs. I have had many a time where the nurse is "on-break" again so I have had to move patients on my own. In the A and E I was in over the summer I noticed that some nurses would insist on breaks some of the doctors wouldn’t have a break all shift (8-4) and still be there gone 5 because they were tied up with patients.

Many doctors, including GPs, cannot put down the actual hours they do because they get the time sheets sent back as it is "not possible" (read “out of EWT directive”). Some GPs do have a cosy life, true, but they aren’t the only doctors.

As someone who is almost on the outside looking in (I am agency round my studies) I see everyone in the NHS being burnt out and under-paid unless you are lucky to be a consultant and only a consultant! (no teaching/commitees/over non-clinical but still work commitments). Doctors are not all inherently lazy and some might take offence to that comment.

Sorry I feel I need to give the other side as doctors are often critised because we earn a lot after 5-6 years at uni and on average 10-15yrs post-grad training!

I fear you may have a slightly biased view of doctors vic. i can assure you they work damn hard, under immense strees. if you imagine that a ward nurse has perhaps 5 or 6 patients under their care and a doctor might have 30 or so. so for each nurse their patient is their only priority the doctor might have a few sickies who all need looking after simultaneously. i have been on busy firms where there have been 40 or 50 patients that one or two juniors are looking after. they are often scattered throughout the hospital to compound matters. if you throw in that they might be on take or on the crash team then it makes it easier to understand why they might not always be around and why the might want a bit of slack when it comes to being bleeped about putting venflons in or writing mrs smith up for her maintenance fluids.

coi - final year medic

iceberg syndrome , the tip gets noticed,
or mushroom, kept in the dark and fed biological residuals, called recycling. [shite]

I did notice this article on the BBC website earlier today. It's irritating, particularly when people like us work long, often unsociable hours with nothing but burn-out to show for it!

There have been a lot of petitions put to the government this year about nursing, pretty much all of which have come back with a patronising "no". In the one you write about, the following line caused me to laugh in something of a cynical manner;

"The Government's view is that imposing minimal levels for nursing staff to patient ratios could be detrimental to patient care"

Since when were the Government bothered about detrimental effects to patient care? Perhaps they should have thought a little more carefully about that before they decided to sell our hospital buildings to private investors for us to rent back, and give all of our non-clinical tasks over to the private sector.

10/10 to the Government, yet again. Doesn't it make you want to bang your head against a brick wall?!

Elizabeth :)

Agreed, I could go on for hours about this particular refusal to deal with the realities of the NHS - but to be honest, I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall.

the quality of some of the GP's in inner city areas has historically been poor - it has never attracted the best, they go to the nice areas, leaving the people, who ironically need healthcare the most, with dubious staff.
I can only see it getting worse, as GP's pay improves, little competition for posts, then you are highly likely to attract a type of person who likes the money, can put up with sub-standard healthcare facilites/infra-structure without getting frustrated, more than the type who want to make a difference.
I know this is a generalisation, but it's also the reality of healthcare in inner cities.

I live in France and the GPs are not government employed like the UK - they work for themselves and are therefore 'freelance' if you like. (Although of course they are licensed to practice medicine...!)

This means that if you go to a crap GP and don't like him/her, you can 'take your custom' elsewhere. Although there aren't many poor Drs, the good ones have motivation to keep up the good work and therefore earn a bigger payday at the end of the month.

You do have bargaining power - it's called Agenda for Change! As far as I can see, it has done nothing but sell NHS staff down the river. Glad I'm out of it!

I was actually a bit shocked to find out that nurse/paramedic wage is £19k starting. Still totally under what's deserved (in most cases) for the job, it was higher than I thought.

How they figure that GPs/Consultants should get such an amount compared to the rest of NHS staff astounds me

yes, I have often thought about giving up, I'm sure none of us get paid enough to put up with the crap (sometimes quite literally) that we end up having to take.