Saturday, February 18, 2006

Are Nurses Modern Nazis?

As I mentioned below my friend in hospital has daily run-ins with the nurses.Today he was moved to another ward.At the end of it two people were watching TV and he could hear it loud and clear.They have the facility to use the TV over their bed which is pay per view but to save money they have opted to watch the TV with no headphones.My friend complains.Here's the dialogue more or less verbatim, as he put it:

Well that's how it always was,the nurse says.

Well it is an irritant my friend replies.

No it is not.

Who are you to decide what is an irritant to me?

Well that's how it used to be anyway: TV's on for all to hear.

One of those listening says'I don't want any trouble' and moves to turn it off. The nurse rushes to prevent him and says Don't mind him,he's a troublemaker(referring to my friend)

Was that how you were trained to talk to your patients?

No reply to that.(Of ourse that was not how the nurse was trained and she knows it.)


Then they get in the head nurse.The nurse gives her one sided version of events and my friend is outnumbered and no logic will prevail so he says:Either you have that turned off or I will go and sleep in the corridor.They of course back down and he is moved.

This is a ward for people who are recuperating from a stroke. World War 3 more like it.

Nurses with attitude.He claims every single nurse has the same thing.This sort of contempt for the patient.It is systmeic,endemic,institutionalised. You don't see it in private hospitals.They wouldn't dare.

If you get ill think twice before going to a NHS hospital -it could be the death of you.

7 comments:

Raw Carrot said...

I bet the TV was tuned into something really annoying too - not anything of any interest, but some real tat like "Hotel Babylon".

The sooner the NHS is axed the better.

niconoclast said...

It seems like an anomaly now that they have the TVs with headphones.The friend is also quite relieved that most of the patients in his ward are now mutes due to the strokes-having been in a ward full of people for whom the average conversation goes something like this: 'so your council house is the same size as mine'!

Raw Carrot said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Raw Carrot said...

The last time I visited someone in hospital the people in the next few beds were discussing how many hip and knee replacements they had had as a result of being so fat. Oh, and then their kids arrived - let into the ward by the nurses, and not only were they very loud, but they were let in carrying vast quantities of KFC/McDonalds junk... which the knee/hip replacement women proceeded to consume at hyperspeed.

I imagine they are now back in hospital requiring another knee/hip replacement.

Fucking ridiculous isn't it.

niconoclast said...

Who needs Little Britain?

JK said...

If an overbearing nurse doesn’t kill you by aggrevating you to death (are they imported from former East Germany?), and you even manage to survive a series of medical errors and doses of deadly drugs that are supposed to heal you, then maybe the hospital food will do you in.

A few months ago the Radboud hospital in Nijmegen has been the subject of much controversy due to the high number of heart patients dying there (twice as many as in other hospitals). A heart surgeon commented that if he had a heart condition he would avoid that hospital. It makes you wonder if the hospital staff have completely lost their sense of responsibility.

A friend of mine went to hospital last year and contracted pneumonia while he was there; shortly afterwards the news reported the Dutch queen, aften having been hospitalized, also had contracted pneumonia during her stay in a hospital.

It seems hospitals are best avoided if one’s aim is to recover and be well.

niconoclast said...

And I thought it was only the UK where socialised medicine is bad for your health!