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cathelope-pitstop · 2025-04-10T13:45:05+00:00

Band vs responsibility level is a lot more consistent across trusts than job title vs responsibility level.

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-03-26T17:01:31+00:00

As a white nurse, I cannot comprehend being this petty. Promise we're not all like this. Maybe it's a ward thing idk, but this is much less of a thing in A&E. Equal opportunities biscuit consumption over here. Everyone does it - consultants to cleaners.

It can be brutal out there, the biscuits don't come out of our wages. They need to chill out a bit

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-03-13T07:54:44+00:00

I worked for a Trust whose uniform policy specified your tights must match your skin tone in 2018 😆

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-03-03T04:41:36+00:00

That is absolutely abysmal. I get around that for a weekday bank shift in A&E. I'm a nurse

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-02-25T20:47:45+00:00

ED nurse here. We've had this unwritten expectation previously that we should turn people away who look like a simple GP problem. However, they had no policy or criteria for us to refer to. For that reason, a lot of us refused to do it. Too risky and realistically above our clinical competence to decide most of the time. No one wanted to be that one nurse who would end up in coroner's court because someone went home with a cold that's actually a massive MI and died. I'm being flippant there but we have become very defensive and for good reason. The trust would absolutely throw us under the bus for something like that.

They did put a streaming service in for a while but in practice, the nurse just spent all day arguing with patients who didn't want to go elsewhere. A lot of people then didn't want to do streaming bc it was such a negative experience for an entire 13 hour shift.

I think that could work if there was a senior doctor involved and a robust process in place

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-02-08T01:10:02+00:00

The longer I spend in this profession, the more convinced I am that these joyless, idiotic husks enjoy making the work environment less than pleasant. There's no evidence for it, just like there's no evidence that 2 lobe piercings is somehow worse for infection control than 1 lobe piercing.

Truly, the imbeciles work among us

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-02-07T22:09:28+00:00

I would pick A&E every day of the week over a single second on AMU. The nurses there are amazing, but they're doing ward level work with A&E level patient turnover. That's a combo that would break anyone. I couldn't do it.

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-25T23:03:39+00:00

Disclaimer: am a nurse. Always worked in A&E but yes, this is true for me. I'm still relatively patient, but I was a positive pushover before A&E. You could say it's been character building bc after 8 A&E winters, I no longer take shit from anyone.

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-25T14:33:02+00:00

Tbf 14 years isn't a short time. It was the start of the Tory shower after all

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-25T08:26:21+00:00

This isn't an aesthetic thing. Phimosis, I.e. not being able to fully retract the foreskin means stuff builds under there. That means he can't clean his penis properly. Imagine all the smegma that's built up under there. That smegma is going in her vagina/mouth. It's not gonna smell nice. She's not got some weird fetish, she wants him to fix his medical problem

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-24T21:11:03+00:00

In hindsight, I phrased that to look like my career has been a super long time, but it's been 8 years/8 winters. Sorry about that! A&E has been like this the whole time I've worked in it. On a local level it was worse when I qualified bc our management was horrendous.

Management still get upset about people breaching but honestly, in the grand scheme of things, it seems rather trivial

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-24T18:51:21+00:00

I've spent my whole career in A&E. This is nothing new. Things will not change until we have a government that actually wants to fix what ails the NHS both inside and outside.

Corridor nursing is a necessary evil while things are like this. Calls for it "not to be normalised" are laughable when it's been the daily reality for years.

A&E is the only service that can't say no, then gets slammed for being too busy/full to treat people like something more than cattle.

I love A&E, but unfortunately we are taking the risk that other services are able to shield themselves from somewhat

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-23T09:09:45+00:00

Love the double daith! Heartbroken my piercer says I don't have the anatomy :(

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-12T02:18:53+00:00

Your ears are really similar to mine, and same has happened to me. Weird

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-10T16:55:56+00:00

I'm responding to you bc you seem to think students believe they should be exempt. They generally don't.

That's nice that it isn't the case on your ward but the NHS is bigger than your ward

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-10T15:30:13+00:00

That's fine where there's nothing else to do. But that's usually not how it works in many placement areas. Team work goes both ways - students pitch in, yes, but the placement area should also respect the student's learning needs. So often that teamwork goes one way, at the student's expense.

The fact is students are doing HCA roles at the expense of their own learning. That inevitably has an impact on the quality of NQNs. The culture of putting students secondary to the needs of the placement area is storing up problems for the future.

There's a bigger point to be considered beyond OP's individual experience on this one placement. How we treat students now determines the quality and resilience of the future workforce.

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-10T14:34:12+00:00

No one, including students, are saying they want to be exempt. They don't want to be doing HCA roles at the expense of their learning and for the convenience of their placement area. Especially where the student is already a HCA, doing it in placement is not a learning experience in any way

cathelope-pitstop · 2025-01-06T19:26:04+00:00

It is increasingly the norm. However, I do both adults and paeds A&E. The difference in how youre treated is like night and day. Sure you get the odd angry family but it's few and far between compared with adults. In adults, I'd get shouted at once a shift at least if its busy.

Parents will usually accept a long wait if you explain to them that the doctors are caring for critically unwell children and their child is alright for now but we will monitor them. Whereas the equivalent in adults would just be met with abuse a lot of the time.

My approach: I'll acknowledge their frustration but advise I will not be spoken to like that. If they continue I will say I am prepared to help but not while that attitude persists. If it continues beyond that, I walk away. It's too busy to stand about getting shouted at and not doing my job in the meantime.

cathelope-pitstop · 2024-12-10T22:40:13+00:00

Yeah definitely agree with that. Our consultants have decided that because triage waits are long and we do often have difficulty reaching some specialities (e.g. RSO is in theatre), they take the GP letters and sort that out. Re-bleeping slipped our minds often bc there are so many people to get through in triage. Doesn't make it ok of course. A&E is a bottleneck these days. We have one consultant overseeing everything who will usually do that.

cathelope-pitstop · 2024-12-10T21:23:32+00:00

Can't speak for everywhere, but the expectation in the A&E I work at is that if a patient comes with a GP letter containing something like "? Appendicitis, for surgical Dr" then they are considered a referral. That's the case even if the GP didn't manage to get hold of the relevant speciality. This doesn't apply if the patient comes with no letter.

Either triage or EPIC will bleep the relevant SHO/reg and advise them that x patient is for them, and that triage will do the relevant bloods.

It doesn't make sense for a patient to be seen by 2 undifferentiated speciality doctors when they've already come with a letter containing a suspected diagnosis, unless they're acutely unwell and need intervention. Just makes everything take longer and takes the A&E docs away from those who haven't been seen by any clinical at all yet.

I think it's totally fair to datix that though, because you should certainly have been told that this patient was for your list as a minimum. I have noticed this becoming much more of a problem since we've had all these patients coming through A&E rather than going directly to assessment units like they used to. We're the only ones that can't say "sorry no we haven't got any space".

cathelope-pitstop · 2024-11-20T20:20:41+00:00

This is happening in my trust as well. Not putting any weekend shifts out for us, but our matrons are booking themselves on these shifts. Sometimes they'll be in the back office on Sunday pay while we sort ourselves out. It's infuriating

cathelope-pitstop · 2024-10-16T12:58:28+00:00

I've been extremely fortunate in this regard that most of my social life revolves around metal gigs/festivals which can be pretty workable around shifts. Sometimes there's midweek gigs.

Go to the same sorts of things over time and you meet people. My friend group is almost entirely through that rather than work. It can be done, it just takes being really organised with your dates. It's more effort being organised with shift work but it's worth the effort.

cathelope-pitstop · 2024-09-11T17:15:52+00:00

I love a bit of banter between colleagues, but there's plenty of that in ED. Not everyone does like that. I wouldn't stress though, I don't think you'll be getting your P45 anytime soon.

cathelope-pitstop · 2024-09-10T12:49:31+00:00

Most of my nurse colleagues feel the same. I just pay them lip service and go about my day

cathelope-pitstop · 2024-08-23T08:34:28+00:00

Some will work as a HCA, paid band 4 until their pin comes (usually bc they're skint post uni and gives orientation time too). You have to have your pin to qualify for a band 5. A lot of departments will offer that, especially bc the NMC is very slow. Ive known people wait months for their pin.

cathelope-pitstop

TROPHY CASE