That spelled badly, contravesial thread about NA's...

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Hmmmm, thinking hat on now...

Factoids (being poorly contructed facts)

-Nursing = what nurses do = The provision of care

-Care requirements have difrent componencts (say IVI's and bed baths) both important care requirments but the backgroud education required to perform them is significantly difrent

-RN's are performing tasks that NA's do on many wards.

-The performace of NA's in some fascets of care is better than RN's can provide (partialy beacuse of time factors, partialy other reasons)

questioniod (questions I cant answer beacuse im not entirely sure what the question actualy is...)

-Why cant we accept that the invisable task (NA's) are nurses in their own right? Not trained with 3 years academdic knowledge and advanced skills.

But,

for lack of a better definition than the above one, 'nurses nurse', 'provide nursing care', 'we are nursing'

Therefore nurses (not RNs or NAa, but 'Nurses') are still providing nursing care, those core nursing activities that we vaunt so very much....

So why are we worried about the transmition of tasks to NA's?

Tribalism maybe.....

dont flame me, I dont think I even belive the above points but I'm just tring to bounce ideas around in my own head and though outside assisstance might help resolve the question....

I reported it to the ward manager, the practice placement co-ordinator and my link clininician... yeah, was kinda disturbing, also happened to be the first corpse I performed last offices on.

I do value Cadicies (or is it Cardex's? (ist a brand name Ibelive...)) and care plan and intigrated care plans and medical notes and keeping accurate rocords, and have seen numerous occasions upon which they have proved their use, and am distubed when members of the staff just see them as extranious to the care of the patient, but please forgive me if Im a little lax off shift...

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Sorry to disappoint you at present nurse is not a title protected in law, although there is rumours that it will be soon. The title Registered Nurse is however. At present any one can call themself nurse but only those that are registered on the NMC register can call themselves Registered Nurse.

The controversity not only relates to 'auxillary nurses' but also to dental nurses and vetinary nurses, but again the rumour is that the NMC will create a part of the register for them to register and be allowed to use the term nurse.

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Tony,presumably they will then have to adhere to the code of conduct,and also meet the requirements of reregistering every 3 years?

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They will have to, but will probably develop their own code of conduct that is relevant to thier part of the profession.

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Specializes in midwifery, ophthalmics, general practice.

oops sorry- thought it was the term nurse- had forgotten it was registered nurse!

British student- sorry, dont mean to get at you so much.......just that as a nurse practitioner I live in fear of being sued and record keeping is such an important part of what we do. I am lucky that where I work we are paper free- so had to learn computer skills instead and my spelling has improved dramatically! I am dyslexic with numbers- was always my dread that I would make a drug error - particulary when working in special baby care- so you have my sympathy but you are going to have to work at it!!

I also think that students today get a bit of a raw deal. when I trained - if you had a really horrible day, you went back to the nurses home and found someone to get drunk with. think its called clinical supervision now!! you sound like you are feeling unsupported both at work and here- so sorry. will try and be more supportive in future!

hell- I sound old!!!!!!!!!!!

Karen

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I do not like to see peolpe referred to as Nurses when they clearly are not. I spent, as most of you did, a number of years attaining a number of qualifications to enable me to be called a Nurse. A nurse is a nurse is total c**p. There are nursing assistants ( and I have worked with many excellent ones) and Registered Nurses who supervise them.

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I work agency shifts as a health care assistant and sometimes wonder what the trained staff are about. Some RN's think it beneath them to do a bed bath or empty a catheter no matter how manic the ward is. On an Orthopeadic ward the other week I had 4 post op pts and 2 all care medical pts cos the hospital was so full and not one of the 3 RN's assisted.

At one point I was doing 15 min obs, one of the all cares needed a full change cos of the mess he was in and a post ops catheter bag was looking like a football!!

I asked for a hand with the all care bed change and you would have thought I was asking them to do brain surgery.

I have no objection to being busy but I hope I remember how important care basics are and how to treat NA's when I register.

It's all very well griping on about NA's taking over nursing jobs but if registered nurses don't do the basic care jobs who is going to 'care' for the patients.

NA's aren't trained to a nursing diploma/degree standard and don't always notice things which may be medically important. (The smell from a dodgy catheter gets me dipping every time)

If you want to talk about nursing care british nurse perhaps we need to look at the CARE part of that.

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Originally posted by silvermoon

I work agency shifts as a health care assistant and sometimes wonder what the trained staff are about. Some RN's think it beneath them to do a bed bath or empty a catheter no matter how manic the ward is. On an Orthopeadic ward the other week I had 4 post op pts and 2 all care medical pts cos the hospital was so full and not one of the 3 RN's assisted.

At one point I was doing 15 min obs, one of the all cares needed a full change cos of the mess he was in and a post ops catheter bag was looking like a football!!

I asked for a hand with the all care bed change and you would have thought I was asking them to do brain surgery.

I have no objection to being busy but I hope I remember how important care basics are and how to treat NA's when I register.

It's all very well griping on about NA's taking over nursing jobs but if registered nurses don't do the basic care jobs who is going to 'care' for the patients.

NA's aren't trained to a nursing diploma/degree standard and don't always notice things which may be medically important. (The smell from a dodgy catheter gets me dipping every time)

If you want to talk about nursing care british nurse perhaps we need to look at the CARE part of that.

I really worry about some of the anti registered nurses posts on this board.

I'm really sorry you had such a bad shift,and am glad you felt able to vent about it here,it's part of what this board is all about.

I wonder though if you have stopped to consider what the trained nurses were so busy doing that they felt they didn't have time to help you.Drug rounds?I.V.I's?Bolshy relatives about to put in an official complaint?Doctors rounds?A&E yelling down the phone because there are no beds?Discharging patients?Big dressings?

These things are part of my role, in addition to the basic care that we all know is so important.

So you'll have to excuse me, if I don't have time to take on your role,(what did you think you would be doing when you signed your NA contract?answering the phone and arranging flowers??!)because sometimes,I'm just a little busy with my own,ok?

Maybe the trained nurses you were working with were a lazy bunch,in which case you have my sympathy,but we all have stories of lazy Health Care Support Workers too.There are lazy people in every walk of life.

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I'm not Anti-RN, I'm training to be one for goodnes sake, but every time I walk onto the wards I seem to hit on bad ward culture at every turn....

-RN's opinons of NA's

-St/N's treatment as NA's

-The usage of Roper-Logan-Tireny as an excuse to justify task allocation nursing in the 21 century...

-the Hiariacical (sp?) nature of british ranks....

I think one of my questions might be, will NA's be allowed to call themselves nurses if the term gets protected? if so why? (are they really nurses?) if not, Why?(Tribalism?)

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Wow

Feel I need to put my 2p in here NOW!!!!!!!!!!!

British Student I am sorry you have had crappy placements BUT I can assure you that not all Qualified staff have such a low opinion of Students or NA's

Let me dispell a few myths.............. ward working involves team work!

I could not do my job without NA's and NA's could not do their job without me. We work as a team with the Qualified directing the show. However that is not always the case....... as a deputy ward manager i am often called away to deal with some important issue AND I can assure you that my NA's are worth their weight in gold ..........they are able to deal with any care needed and give appropriate feed back if there is something amiss

As for students..................... my personal attitude is that if you can not give 100% to your student Do not moan if your new Qualified is not able to take up an active role. After all, student of today could be my shift patner tomorrow.

As for Roper etal as an excuse for task orientated work........ RUBBISH!!!!!!!

Reasons for task orientated work are-

Increased workload with same number of staff

Increased use of bank and agency

Lack of sufficient numbers of experienced staff

Tired nurses of all grades with low moral

The list could be endless but certainly not due to a Nursing Model of Care

However after all is said

If you are having problems and would like someone to discuss them with please do not hesitate to PM me

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I don't work on wards and in A&E our non-trained staff play a valuable role in providing care and support to our patients. They are often in a better position to sit with relatives while resusicitation is in progress. Because a lot of them have been in the dept for a long while they are to explian better than alot of my junior staff what is actually happening. This also frees my junior staff to be able to learn about what is happening so when the time comes for them to have to deal with relatives they have the practical knowledge to back up what they are saying.

Saying this I know that there alot bad non-trained staff around those that don't know what is happening and see it as they are always being dumped on to do the most menial of tasks, those that they qualified staff do not want to do. These are the non-trained staff who do not open their eyes to see what it is the trained members are actually doing and seeing that maybe the getting and preparing of IVI's and drugs is more important than removing someone's bed pan.

Also at the end of the day the trained members of staff need to be aware of everything that is happening in their areas because they are the ones whose head will roll if the s*** hits the fan.

It not tribalism that makes RN want the term nurse to be protected, it about demonstrating to the public that a nurse is someone who has achieved a certain standard and is capable of mataining that standard and if thing do go wrong their a recognisable body people their that will take the wrong doer to task. Whereas with the 'NAs' at the moment there is no such body and if they do something wrong they often only get slap on the wrist, (occassionally they will lose their job), whereas the RN might not only lose their job but their whole career.

Nursing is about caring for patients and having the guts to undertake a qualification that states that you not only will care for a patient but are prepared to take full professional responsiblity for that person whilst they are in your care. 'NAs' have no underataking, most are only to do their job and leave.

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I am a rgn and I worked as a healthcare assistant before and during my training. I can confirm that there are trained nurses out there who behave in the manner that Silvermoon has described. Ayemmeff perhaps if you did not take Silvermooon's commments personally you might be able to realise we would be able to provide better care if we all worked together. Also your comments could be interpreted as being insulting.

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