# Hospital mismanagement?



## TDG (May 26, 2009)

Jane was taken to theatre at 14.30 today for an operation.
I have just phoned the hospital, again, and she's still not back on the ward. The Staff Nurse says it was a big op and so she is probably being held in Recovery for quite a while :wink: 
However, by another route, I have found out there are no beds in the ward to come back to :!:
It's a bit much when you get wheeled off to theatre and someone pinches your bed :roll: :roll:
Hot bedding in the Navy is the norm....... but in hospital :?: :?: 
Could this account for the high infection rate figures :?: :lol:


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## Jented (Jan 12, 2010)

Hi TDG.
I do hope the OP. was a success,and is followed by a swift recovery,however,i would be only to happy for anyone close to me,to be held in a recovery area,as i would think they may be more closely monitored. Stay well,stay lucky,the both of you.
Ted.


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## teemyob (Nov 22, 2005)

*hospital*

UTTERLY DISGRACEFUL

TM


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## TDG (May 26, 2009)

Have just heard that she got back to the ward at about quarter to midnight - fortunately she was zonked out until then so as far as she was concerned she could have been anywhere :!:


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## locovan (Oct 17, 2007)

I think that the other route gave the wrong info and I would listen to the Staff Nurse as she was probably right and Jane was being well looked after.
So pleased the op went well and hope she makes a quick recovery as thats all that matters now xx


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## TDG (May 26, 2009)

locovan said:


> I think that the other route gave the wrong info and I would listen to the Staff Nurse as she was probably right and Jane was being well looked after.


Thank's for that Mavis.
No, actually I've just been told this morning that there really were no beds *and* they were having difficulty keeping Recovery fully staffed :x 
Anyway I've had a few moments on the phone to her this morning and she sounded sort of ok but zonked up to the eyeballs which I'm sure is the best way to be just now :wink:


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## locovan (Oct 17, 2007)

And that want to Cut Services :roll: 
They should be expanding.


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## TDG (May 26, 2009)

locovan said:


> And that want to Cut Services :roll:
> They should be expanding.


And I know that yesterday one person on the list, and all prepared, had their op. cancelled at the very last moment. 
From conversations I overheard on the ward in the morning it was because there were not going to have enough time as Jane's was going to be more complex than expected :roll: 
That is rubbish - she was always going to be a bit complex but no more so than when it was all planned about 3 weeks ago :roll: :roll: :roll:
Mismanagement :?: - case proven :!:


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## rosalan (Aug 24, 2009)

I am glad she is on the mend now and you can look forward to her eventually leaving the hospital. 
After any operation to someone close to us our level of concern is of course hightened and it is understandable that you want everything to run smoothly in the hospital.
Hospitals are strange organisations that have to be run with a certain element of uncertainty, for nobody knows when a life threatening emergency is going crop up. This may cause beds to be suddenly unavailable, or if an anticipated patients departure is held up by a deterioration in their recovery.
The bottom line from the hospitals side is that your wife was looked after as she should be, rather than have too much concern about which bed she was in.
My wife is a nurse and I get to hear the other side of the problem, but unless you have wards of empty beds awaiting an emergency and spare staff sitting around, I am not sure that throwing more money is the only answer. I am however confident that cutting staff will not help.
Alan


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## TDG (May 26, 2009)

Alan, you should have declared an interest - I see your location is Beds :lol: 


rosalan said:


> .. I am not sure that throwing more money is the only answer......Alan


Too right it's not :roll: It need some decent management thrown at it :wink: 
I fully understand the validity of what you say about spare capacity but over the last year we have had a lot of experience at an number of hospitals and have seen the good, the bad and the unspeakable. One classic was to be told arriving on the ward as instructed at 11am...... yes as you can see I have plenty of staff and a number of beds available but the Bed Manager will not allow them to be used. Net result .... patient in so much pain and could not sit had to return home to her own bed!
As far as I have observed the staff are generally great but the management is fairly hopeless.
In Jane's case the problem originated in December 2009 and the policy was to try a number of "easy fixes" that "might work" but none did and ended up making the situation much worse. 
So here we are 16 months down the line after lots of hospital visits, two wrecked holidays and a lot of stress, now having to have a major operation which wouldn't originally have been necessary but is costing the NHS (that's you & me) a lot of money. 
And me? I have just had to turn down a big job abroad because I'm going to be on nursing duty for a good number of weeks when Jane is discharged :x


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## Invicta (Feb 9, 2006)

The days of spare capacity in our hospitals have long since gone. Today we have trusts running as businesses. Empty beds mean loss of income. This is why 'hot bedding' takes place and where staff are expected to do more and more with less and less.

Wait till Richard Branson or Tesco's buy up GP practices as they surely will if this government's plans for the future of the NHS are allowed to be implemented. Already we have Polyclinics providing services that were previously the prerogative of the hospitals. Nearby to where Mavis lives I have been told there is a notice on the side of the major road that is advertising a local 'NHS polyclinic'. What is wrong with this one may ask? Well just imagine what will happen to NHS hospitals if services they previously provided are taken away from them and allowed to blossom in Polyclinics provided by the likes of Branson and Tesco's. Destabilisation of our hospitals, that's what will happen!

With 'privatisation' creeping into the NHS who would want to take on the 'Cinderella services' such as mental health and learning disabilities? There is little profit if any to be made from these.

I have just returned from the RCN Congress in Liverpool where the Secretary of State for Health could not face the entire gathering of over 2000 nurses. Instead he only agreed to come and meet with 50 of the delegates. Coward!

And in case anyone reading this understood from some of the media reports that nurses at Liverpool voted to strike, this was not so. The vote that resulted in 99% support was to ballot the members whether or not they would want to take industrial action if the government failed to pay the incremental points in addition to the already agreed pay freeze. 'Industrial action' by the way does not necessarily mean all out strike.

Never before in its 63 years has the NHS been in such a dire situation.


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## Biglol (Jul 16, 2007)

I can only speak as I find and I have only praise for the way I have been looked after in the last few months. I spent 10 days in hospital having a cancer removed from my gullet and 3 of those days were in a ICU. Had I spent thousands of pounds on this operation, I wouldn't have been looked after any better. Well done and THANK YOU to Derriford and the team on "Crownhill Ward".


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## MEES (Apr 20, 2006)

Hope jane gets better soon and your lives return to nor  mal


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## beachcaster (Nov 13, 2010)

*Huge improvements all round needed*

Firstly all my best wishes to the OP and his wife..hope all proceeds well.

it is not the done thing to have a go at nurses ....and I can only speak from my own experience.

my father............my sister in law and others have been in hospital over the last few months so I have visited and heard their complaints
and see things with my own eyes.

Many Nurses dont seem to care any more yes they are there hanging around the ward desk.........but rarely come into the wards.

its seems they are so highly qualified they deem it below themselves to 
walk around and ask the patients if they are ok ..or want anything.

But they have time to waste chatting at the central desk.

my poor old dad was almost in tears he just wanted a drink and someone to comb his hair...................fat chance.

Its time many nurses adopted older values and started to care about thier patients.

I have seen this in nearly all the wards and hospitals I have been in during thye last year.

Having said this It cannot apply to all nurses.......A& E seem run off thier feet
and work so hard as do many others.but there is a change happening and 
in many cases and its not good

barry


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## TDG (May 26, 2009)

*Re: Huge improvements all round needed*



beachcaster said:


> ....it is not the done thing to have a go at nurses ....and I can only speak from my own experience.....barry


We have some extensive experience at 4 hospitals during the last 12 month and I can't think of anything adverse to say about the front line nursing staff at any of them  
However, with the exception of the Royal Devon & Exeter, the _management_ has been clearly seen to be wanting (aka, incompetent :!: ) in too many areas 8O


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## ardgour (Mar 22, 2008)

*Re: Huge improvements all round needed*



beachcaster said:


> Firstly all my best wishes to the OP and his wife..hope all proceeds well.
> 
> it is not the done thing to have a go at nurses ....and I can only speak from my own experience.
> 
> ...


As an 'old fashioned nurse' with more than 30 years in the profession sadly I have to agree with you. There are excellent hard working and very caring nurses out there but there are also others like the ones you mention who give us all a bad name.
I was speaking to a friend who is a nurse tutor earlier in the week and we both felt that the change came when nurse education was taken over by the universities - there is now a greater emphasis on academic merit rather than caring skills. perhaps it is time to go back to nurse training being an 'apprenticeship' as it was in the past with the higher academic bits coming after qualification for those who wish to follow that path. That is essentially what I did.
However there is no excuse for poor nursing care, we used to be a proud and respected profession but times are changing and those of us with old fashioned values are increasingly just walking away from the NHS in disgust. And before anyone blames it on too few staff and too much work, we used to have 4 nurses on a ward of 30 mainly bed bound patients but they were all properly cared for - sister would have killed us if not


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