District Nursing in crisis?

[skylark, BSN, RN]

So the QNI says District Nursing is in crisis, with, staff numbers falling by half in the last decade, and funding in crisis.

That is not the whole picture.

I was a DN, and in the 90s is was a great job. I had caseloads from seven GPs, and I had their respect and support.

Fast forward a decade, after working in other cities and other clinical areas, I returned to the same job in 2008.

Completely different job. I was now responsible for the caseloads of 23 GPs, and they were dumping every home visit request on me, and expecting miracles. They flat refused to do home visits, and would instead send a vague referral, along the lines of "go see what she wants".

The final straw was being disciplined for poor clinical management of a patient I had never even seen. There were so many patients on the books that even though I tried to meet at least a dozen each day, there were some that at the end of my third week I still had not met. There are only so many hours in a day, and I think I was rocking it doing that number of new patient visits per day. But it wasn't enough.

They disciplined me for problems with a patient I had not yet met, and made life so difficult that I quit.

I never signed up to be a scapegoat. DNs are burning out, they get everyone and everything dumped on them, in the same way that A&Es do because of failings in primary care.

If DNs were treated more fairly, and did not have to work 12 hours days (paid for 8), doing unnecessary visits, then it would be a great profession once again.

But as long as its a dumping ground for lazy GPs who ignore requests for home visits, and caseloads spiral out of control due to cutbacks and mergers, its never going to work.