Hospital and cleanliness - or the lack thereof

[polly]

Please could some one tell me where all these overworked staff are?

Everytime I go to Outpaitnents there seems to be plenty of nurses chatting and standing around drinking cups of tea!!

[lettie]

Originally Posted by polly

Please could some one tell me where all these overworked staff are?

Everytime I go to Outpaitnents there seems to be plenty of nurses chatting and standing around drinking cups of tea!!

Lol, you obviously haven't visited a medical/surgical/maternity ward for a long time then. It is possible to now work 13 hour shifts and not have a single brew on these wards. In my opinion we are perilously understaffed on the wards both by qualified nurses and support staff. It is possible to not see a cleaner for a full shift if it is the usual ward cleaner's day off. I have had to ring domestics on several occasions just to get our bins emptied.

If I won the lottery I would ****** off tomorrow because I am sick and fed up of not being able to do my job properly. Staff shortages, equipment shortages and ever increasing paperwork and red tape mean that I am constantly tied up doing other peoples work on top of my own. I feel, at times, that I cannot give the care that I have been trained and worked hard to give, due to having to deal with all this extra cr@p.

Visitors and patients do not help when they don't complain....... So please, feel free to send complaints in to the highest possible person because, until enough people complain, nothing will be done. If you think that staffing is an issue in your complaint, then, say so.

You will be helping us to help you.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Thank you Lettie for justifying my posts.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Originally Posted by polly

Please could some one tell me where all these overworked staff are?

Everytime I go to Outpaitnents there seems to be plenty of nurses chatting and standing around drinking cups of tea!!

Polly, I have been out of the NHS for 6 years, but I can tell you that what Lettie says is true.
Even six years ago i can recall doing long shifts without a break of any description....and I hear things have got worse.
I think I retired at the right time.

[jaysay]

I can't really do with people who slag of doctors and the nursing staff, if you see staff standing around drinking tea then they've bloody well earned it

[polly]

Originally Posted by polly

Please could some one tell me where all these overworked staff are?

Everytime I go to Outpaitnents there seems to be plenty of nurses chatting and standing around drinking cups of tea!!

I don't doubt what you say about the wards but it would appear to me that outpatients is totally different.

I have noticed on a number occassions the same member of staff either drinking tea or taking dirty cups away and there always seems to be plenty of other nursing staff wandering around almost aimlessly. Maybe if some of these staff were on the wards attending to patients?

I have also noticed that now the outpatients admin staff are centralised patients have to wait ages to book in.
Since our new Super Hospital opened I have regularly had to wait up to 30 mins on the corridor, (no seats provided). At one particular appointement I felt like I was going to pass out and I am sure I was not the only one who found the wait unconfortable

[Margaret Pilkington]

Polly, if you have concerns like these then bring them to the attention of the Sister in charge.

As for the staff in clinic being sent to work on the ward...that is not always possible......these staff may be waiting for patients....and the cups they are taking away MAY just have been used BY patients. I used to run the pre-operative clinic for my department and I can assure you that I hardly had time to go for a toilet break...patients were timed at 20 minute intervals.......the whole of the time was taken up in taking a full history, explaining the procedure, taking blood, doing ECG's and Observation of vital signs.

[WillowTheWhisp]

OK so who should I address a complaint to? It isn't the nursing staff's fault. Their job is to nurse, not to clean. It's the cleaner's fault and if as Lettie says you can go for a whole day and not even see one then who is that down to?

The nurses don't deserve to have complaints about cleanliness laid at their door because they have enough to do being nurses without having to be cleaners as well.

[lettie]

I would address a complaint to the chief exec and/or contact PALS, the patient advice and liaison service.

[WillowTheWhisp]

OK, thanks Lettie.

[pussycat]

im not happy with hospital cleanliness at the moment , as some of you know 5weeks ago i had an infection after a mayor op, and i,ve still got the infection , there testin me for M,R,S,A now ,

[Nori Brick]

Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp

This afternoon I visited a friend who is seriously ill in hospital.

There was a spoon under her bed. It was a spoon which she'd had on Friday when eating an icecream dessert and had dropped. She told them on Friday that she'd dropped it. WHY on EARTH was it still there for me to pick up this afternoon? It had traces of dried up icecream and mould and fluff on it.

But worse even than that, under the next bed was one of those things they attach to a needle to take a blood sample. It was lying there on the floor and there were a couple of splatters of what looked like dried blood near it.

Is that bad enough? Well, brace yourself because it gets worse. My friend told me that she'd been to the shower room and someone had used the shower tray as a toilet and the solid waste was there all day. She'd reported it in the morning and it was still there when she went in there in the evening.

Words fail me.

Busman is due to go in for a pre-planned op on Tuesday. How many germs is he going to encounter whilst in there????

I know how you feel willow as you know I have been goin to the same hospital as you an I have seen some not so very nice things the public tolites for one thing on the way to the cafe on the secound floor are not clean as you have seen for your self also anthoer friend of ours as been to the very same hospital and found seringes still full on the floor of the main entrence and someone els has found used seringes in the tolites and they whant to know why there are so meny cases of MRSA?

[WillowTheWhisp]

Yes those toilets were pretty disgusting.

[Nori Brick]

Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp

Yes those toilets were pretty disgusting.

They where more than DISGUSTING, they where RANK, they SMELLT and LOOKED like they HADN'T been CLEANED in DAYS. it was only a couple of days before you that me an my brother whent to use them and ended up waiting till we got to the entrence tolites.

[Neil]

Maybe someone can explain why Nursing staff are allowed to go to work and go home in their uniforms? The hospital likes to say most infections are brought into the hospital by visitors. What about staff wearing their uniforms to/from work (this includes Doctors)?