i don't know if anyone here works in theatres , i looked on teh OR nursing site but they were all from the USA and Canada and i don't know if they have ODP's (Operating room practiciioners). last week i was in the anaesthetic room and was an ODP administering propofol to a patient. the anaesthetist was there, but i found it unsettling as the ODP's are not qualified nurses and do not have the same training as us. our PIN numbers gives us the license to administer drugs but i dont know if ODP's are the same.
i dont know whether i should query this at work but other nurses have been complaining that ODPs carry the drug keys when they are unlisenced to administer drugs, but i dont want this girl to get into trouble. she has only been an ODP for a year.
i was just wondering if anyone can advise me as it isn't sitting right if you know what i mean.
Specializes in renal,peritoneal dialysis, medicine.
You know I do think you have a obligation to the patient as their advocat to try and sort this out. I suggest the best way to handle it is to organise a teaching session when everybody is targeted as having a refresher, it could be shown as a confirmation that everybody is adhering to hospital policies and protocols. Ie you are all singing out of the same hymn book, then you are not seen as 'picking' on anybody in particular. As an RN you can utilise it as part of your prep or even meeting thresholds.
Remember that the HCSW is not accountable for her actions, you are as the RN. You could really enjoy and get satisfaction out of this little project.
Remember she could have been shown that way by an RN because there are some dodgy ones out there.
that wouldnt be a bad idea but its not my ward this happened on so organising teaching is difficult
have spoken to someone on my ward about it, it sounds like its being sorted out my ward sister is very good, shes the type of manager every ward needs bless her
English nurse I think you are absolutely right to take this further, in fact I would report it to your manager and complete an untoward incident form. As far as I am aware HCAs are not allowed to put up / change / flush infusions and on my unit this would be dealt with very harshly as it is totally inappropriate practice especially as she is putting the patients at risk of infection.
Specializes in Medical and general practice now LTC.
English nurse I think you are absolutely right to take this further, in fact I would report it to your manager and complete an untoward incident form. As far as I am aware HCAs are not allowed to put up / change / flush infusions and on my unit this would be dealt with very harshly as it is totally inappropriate practice especially as she is putting the patients at risk of infection.
Have to agree here, Never expected any HCA's that worked with me to do this and I know that they wouldn't do it, not in their scope of training
I have just been reading this thread and my stomach is turning.
I agree with you fully about the untrained staff. I have seen many students working unsupervised and it really scares me, some ain't got a clue. I am a
3rd year student and I worry about not knowing enough when I qualify.
Just over two weeks ago I got the shock of my life. Our local hospital rang my husband to inform us that my dad had an MI. He was said to be 'stable', in resus!! I know you don't get stable MI's so I rushed to the hospital.
I won't go into lots of detail but my father needed to urinate. A student Nurse(unsupervised) got him a bottle and then helped him out of bed to use it! The additional strain put on his heart was fatal.
My family and I are now paying the price for her not knowing what she was doing, and for her not being supervised. I will always have the memory of watching all what happened just because of inadequate knowledge.:angryfire
Specializes in Medical and general practice now LTC.
I have just been reading this thread and my stomach is turning.
I agree with you fully about the untrained staff. I have seen many students working unsupervised and it really scares me, some ain't got a clue. I am a
3rd year student and I worry about not knowing enough when I qualify.
Just over two weeks ago I got the shock of my life. Our local hospital rang my husband to inform us that my dad had an MI. He was said to be 'stable', in resus!! I know you don't get stable MI's so I rushed to the hospital.
I won't go into lots of detail but my father needed to urinate. A student Nurse(unsupervised) got him a bottle and then helped him out of bed to use it! The additional strain put on his heart was fatal.
My family and I are now paying the price for her not knowing what she was doing, and for her not being supervised. I will always have the memory of watching all what happened just because of inadequate knowledge.:angryfire
I am sorry that this has happened to you.
I really worry that the government will look at using untrained as a way of saving money especially with all the talks on cuts which is happening at the moment. I know I have heard some HCA's compare themselves to the old Enrolled Nurses and I was one and no way does their training compare to mine :angryfire
Thanks for your kind words of sympathy, It is a really difficult time for me.
I was at a Q & A meeting last year and there are plans to implement changes in our uni on how much time students are spending on placement. It is going to be increased without a doubt. This would be a good idea because I really don't think the training is long enough for a lot of people. Some people qualify and are really not safe for practice.
However, with the state of the NHS and the rising debts, I think this will be a bad move. As students, most of us perform illegal proceedures on a daily basis. This is being encouraged with the inadequate levels of staff. People like my dad are dying everyday because of silly mistakes.
Our trust has a massive debt yet, our uni who supply our trust with students are taking on more student nurses than ever. We are sent out on placement usually about 8 weeks into the course. There are no jobs available when we qualify. I can only assume that this very large numbers are to counter balance the staff who are being made redundant. I can't think of any other reason for taking on such large numbers of students. I have on two occasions (one being on my first placement, on a renal medical ward with no experience) been left with one other student running a ward.
With the terrible things I saw happen to my father it has made me decide to push this matter further and I will make it public if need be. I will not rest until I know that patients are not going to be left in the care of unsupervised students or HCA's. At the end of the day we have all paid our taxes and we should expect to be cared for by fully trained staff. Students are there to learn and this is just not happening. I check everything I do and because of my strong will I refuse to do things that I don't understand, but sadly this is not the case with a lot students.
My sympathies are with you on the sad death of your father. Unfortunatly for as long as I can remember we in the Uk have never got our training right. I have been in nursing since the late 80's and then the student nurses did run the ward, almost from their first placement. Then came p2000 which was supposed to help change the way student nurses were trained and hopefully put an end to 'slave labour'. But what happened now was we had nurses who were qualifying with very little hands on experience and needed lots of supervision and training post reg. Initially the P2000 nurses spent 18months in college prior to placements. So this didnt work and they introduced diploma nurses, P2000 a thing of the past. On and on I can go on and on..................................................There will be and always will be nurses who are just natrual and are v good no matter how they trained but nowerdays you can pick them out, and they are few are far between. A lot of students need support, supervision and help through their training and 3/4 of the time the Rn's dont have the time to look after the patients let alone the students.
Now we have the aging population of nurses I forget how many nurses retire in aprox 5 years but it is scary.
If the government spent less money on looking at ways to improve the NHS, and then implementing change every few years and ploughed the money improving what we've already got-we may make a difference. They utilise change when sometimes it is not needed.
Now we have the aging population of nurses I forget how many nurses retire in aprox 5 years but it is scary.
If the government spent less money on looking at ways to improve the NHS, and then implementing change every few years and ploughed the money improving what we've already got-we may make a difference. They utilise change when sometimes it is not needed.
A political hot cake.
Madwife I couldnt agree more but unfortunately the changes to the NHS are made by politicians and managers so far removed from the shop floor they have no idea what impact their changes have on patient care. THe NHS has become more about saving money and less about patient care which brings me back to a point I made earlier, if we keep delegating tasks to unqualified staff we make ourselves and expensive commodity. As nurses we should stand our ground and say no. I remember a time when as a qualified nurse I would wash, dress, feed, hydrate our patients, take and record observations give the medicaitons and have time during handover to complete our documentations. Now it seems that we are swampped with paperwork, haveing different forms to complete to request simple services in the community which takes us further from patient care. I teach recognitioin of a sick patient to HCAs and reguarly argue with them about taking manual pulses, they do not have the training or understanding of the importance of these procedures and yet we delegate the wellbeing of our patients to them. And we are being encouraged to delegate further. Thats not to say there are not some very good HCAs out there but I attend many patients that have deteriorated because simple observations have not been performed.
As nurses we need to defend our profession, stand up and say no to any further delegations and degradation of our role.
Madwife I couldnt agree more but unfortunately the changes to the NHS are made by politicians and managers so far removed from the shop floor they have no idea what impact their changes have on patient care. THe NHS has become more about saving money and less about patient care which brings me back to a point I made earlier, if we keep delegating tasks to unqualified staff we make ourselves and expensive commodity. As nurses we should stand our ground and say no. I remember a time when as a qualified nurse I would wash, dress, feed, hydrate our patients, take and record observations give the medicaitons and have time during handover to complete our documentations. Now it seems that we are swampped with paperwork, haveing different forms to complete to request simple services in the community which takes us further from patient care. I teach recognitioin of a sick patient to HCAs and reguarly argue with them about taking manual pulses, they do not have the training or understanding of the importance of these procedures and yet we delegate the wellbeing of our patients to them. And we are being encouraged to delegate further. Thats not to say there are not some very good HCAs out there but I attend many patients that have deteriorated because simple observations have not been performed.
As nurses we need to defend our profession, stand up and say no to any further delegations and degradation of our role.
I have just been reading this thread and my stomach is turning.
I agree with you fully about the untrained staff. I have seen many students working unsupervised and it really scares me, some ain't got a clue. I am a
3rd year student and I worry about not knowing enough when I qualify.
Just over two weeks ago I got the shock of my life. Our local hospital rang my husband to inform us that my dad had an MI. He was said to be 'stable', in resus!! I know you don't get stable MI's so I rushed to the hospital.
I won't go into lots of detail but my father needed to urinate. A student Nurse(unsupervised) got him a bottle and then helped him out of bed to use it! The additional strain put on his heart was fatal.
My family and I are now paying the price for her not knowing what she was doing, and for her not being supervised. I will always have the memory of watching all what happened just because of inadequate knowledge.:angryfire
hi, i am deeply sorry that that happened to you and yours
we had a situation that could have been as bad with one of our students. this student was on placement in recovery and when their mentor left them them to do some thing they decided that the patient was in pain and was going to administer morphine to this patient down his hickman line!!
with situations like this who do you blame, why did the mentor leave the student with the keys!! and leave the student unsupervised. this was not a first year student but a 3rd year so they should have known better.
more accidents are going to happen whilst we are short staffed and under increasing pressure but it is the poor patients that will suffer.
by the way no action was taken against the student and they have now qualified - scary
Specializes in renal,peritoneal dialysis, medicine.
yeah scary is the word
worked with hca on an admissions ward once (not my ward but moved there in the night due to shortage) we had a patient on sliding scale insulin and gtn infusion, it was really busy.
he said to me, i hope you dont mind but i took mr X bm and it was 14 so i altered the insulin to 4. 'oh right' said i, 'in future i dont mind you taking the bm but would you please let me alter the infusion' i know how to do it he replied.
not so when i got to patient he had altered the gtn!!!
blinking heck!!
incident form written forthwith, anyway saw him a year later in a student uniform, now hes qualified and works in a&e
:uhoh3: 
english_nurse
1,146 Posts
that wouldnt be a bad idea but its not my ward this happened on so organising teaching is difficult
have spoken to someone on my ward about it, it sounds like its being sorted out my ward sister is very good, shes the type of manager every ward needs bless her
thanks for the advice
claire