nurses get blame abuse any docs out there

I posted this in the UK forum because many of you know the situation with targets, short staffing, recruitment freezes etc. The Americans might not realise that medicine and surgery are so divided here. They have a lot of "med-surg" there it seems.

My hospital is doing some really bad things. They have combined a medical ward and a surgical ward onto a very large ward that has many beds. They are getting rid of nurses and we are working very very short. This restructuring has resulted in nurses taking dangerously high patients loads in a specialty they are unfamiliar with and lots of bad things have happened. The management of the floor is a joke. None of us have had any cross training.

Fo example..they only had surgical nurses on duty one day and they were overwhelmed and something happened with a medical patient and they didn't pick it up...the medical nurses may have. This resulted in them getting abuse by the medical docs.

They once had one nurse to 24 medical and surgical patients on a weekday. When she asked (begged in tears) for additional help she was told "tough" and "deal with it"

We had a medical nurse left alone with surgical patients with epidurals and she had never nursed patients with epidurals before. She had a total of 13 patients which is dangerous anyway. She asked for help. She filled an incident form in. A screw up happened and she took the heat.

Letters have been written to management begging for help over the last few months and they have been ignored. Daily incident forms are ignored. The situation is getting worse. We usually have 2 or 3 nurses and one HCA to nearly 40 patients. It is a fast paced unit with lots of admits and discharges and many many EMI patients to boot. I'd say 2/3 of our patients are total care with dementia.

There are no jobs anywhere else and the powers that be know that we are trapped.

Sometimes all the beds are full and they are so desperate to get acute admits and surgical cases in (thanks to government targets) that they send them up to the ward to be admitted and we are told to get other patients "out". They tried to send one of my medical patients home without her being officially discharged. They tried to do this behind my back while I was busy with a poorly patient. They (bed logistics) had her packed up and in a chair. I refused to dishcharge her so they did. She was readmitted a few days later. This is always happening. The nurses are always taking the heat.

I was put onto the specialty I was unfamiliar with and had 13 very unwell patients..most of them total care as well as 2 complicated discharges. There were 4 admits due to come in so they were sent to me and I was told to "make room and admit them" They were for theatre that day...list to start in an hour. At this point I was drowning with my other patients. I told them that I couldn't do this and I needed help...was blown off....did fill in an incident report. The other nurse I was working with was drowning on her side.

I managed to take care of my patients and get the new ones admitted and ready and did find beds for them. I was so proud of myself. Then i get a phone call. One of the patients I sent to theatre (specialty I am not familiar with) was supposed to have a piece of equipment ordered by the nurse and sent with the patient to theatre so that they could use it there. This thing was supposed to be ordered from pharmacy by myself and sent with the patient to theatre. Getting it from pharmacy would have meant legging it down there myself.

A. I was run off my feet

B.I was not orientated to this specialty despite begging for it because I knew I would have to take these kinds of patients.

c. The bloody surgeons had NOT even prescribed the damn thing or written orders for it anywhere BUT I would not have realized that I needed to physically get the thing and send it with her to theatre anyway even if they had.

D. I had 20 minutes from the minute until she got into a bed until the minute she had to go to theatre and had many othe patients and admits.

I am totally grateful that nothing worse happened.

Guess what. The surgeons went ballistic at me. Absolutely ballistic. I have been reported to everyone and there brother over it because their precious list was held up for 20 minutes over it. Apparantly I should have called them and reminded them to order it and then retrieved it from pharmacy. Our pharmacy is so <snip> at the minute they take hours to dispense anything.

I can take responsibility for my actions but this is like some kind of joke.


We have made multiple courageous attempts at trying to get someone to listen and help us but it falls on deaf ears. We have no option to leave unless I want to take a lower paying job and get my house foreclosed on.

I am so ****** off.

Then the next day at work these surgeons from this specialty were all glaring at me. The other nurses I work with backed me up big time and tried to tell them where to go. Couldn't get a word in edgewise and just looked like we were deflecting blame.



I am off now but I am still angry. I have been off for awhile now and I am not going back. This was the straw. I am sick of feeling guilty all the time. Usually I get over it after a few days but I am just still so mad!! Everyone is so beat down. No matter where we turn to report this no one cares. If anyone is going to suggest the unions, the NMC, and the health commision and the RCN all I can say is bought the t-shirt already months ago.

It's not a bad mistake at all considering some of the stuff that is happening on our ward. I'm not losing sleep over it really.

I am just so sick of the doctors and their attitudes. It's like they live in a cave or something and just crawl out to abuse nurses. Everyone knows the wards are like this yet it is open season on the nurses.

They have no idea of the battles we have to fight in an impossible situation in order to carry out their orders and take care of the patients. They get so angry when a screw up occurs yet never address the multiple systems errors...they just crap on the few nurses left.

I was supposed to be out of there months ago but our house buyers pulled out of the sale so I am stuck until we get another buyer. I have been looking at waitressing in the meantime but if it takes time to sell the house we are screwed.

At least I can rant away on the net.

Does anyone else think that doctors are totally on another planet?

Our managers have refused to come to the ward and speak with us. We have been making frequent requests for months. The only message that has come down from them is this "tough" "deal with it" and "any nurse who tries to refuse admissions because she claims she is overwhelmed will be disciplined" and "you must take your lunch breaks". Breaks are not possible without hurting patients. One of our nurses was the only RN to nearly 40 patients and she refused admits and she was punished. While she was in the office getting yelled at by bed logistics they put the new admits in the bed and left them there for her to find at some point.

Our sisters have written letters to them and the newspapers and a group of doctors (the ones who are not abusive) have done the same. This is been going on for 8 months. Then all of the senior nurses at the hospital wrote another letter.