I have been tossing up whether to vent or not about this, but I'm sick of having it go round and round in my head so here goes...
A friend and colleague recently underwent major knee surgery in a private hospital. her post surgery care was absolutely atrocious and very concerning.
No PCA post op and due to persistent vomiting did not receive any relief from oral meds day 1 post op until 10pm that night when she was finally given one shot of s/c Morph. at one point she was so desperate she truly consdered asking for her vomit bowel back so she could retrieve the meds.
she was left for 3 days with out a wash and her husband had to change her vomit stained gown after >24 hours. the only time a washer came near her was when her husband was there to do it- and once when she insisted they wash her back when the badpan overflowed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Other colleagues and I have encouraged her to write a letter of complaint but she is now so "over it" she just wants to put this humiliating experience behind her.
I i wish I could say this was an isolated incident but my mother was a patient in the same hospital and was left on a commode, day 1 post major hip surgery, without access to either toilet paper or a buzzer for more than an hour. After calling out for attention she tried to get herself back to bed, upsetting the commode in the process. Being of "that generation" she did write a letter of complaint, but given my firends recent experience, it didn't make much of an impact.
What is going on? What has happened to basic nursing care? What about respecting the patients dignity, comfort? I am distraught!
for those of you of my generation you may remember a "film" we watched during our training... "Mrs Jones wants a Nurse". Whilst this was in many ways a parody of the demanding patient, the values and practices that it encouaged us to embrace will always be valid, as patients are still, most of them anyway, human beings with the same fundemental needs!
Are we now in a situation where all Nurses have to go through an operation themselves whilst training. ala William Hurt in The Doctor, to understand the importance of good nursing care and value the importance of the basics like mouthcare, post op washes and adequate pain relief? What has happened to empathy and compassion? Is this symptomatic of the "academisation"(is there such a word?) of nursing. Enough of Nursing theory and a little bit more of the Practice. Something I have alwys kept in the back of my mind is how would I feel and what would make me feel better?
How would you go about making sure that this does not happen again?
