Dispatches...Do Nurses Care?

Interesting question. Paediatrics is very different to adult nursing. I think it's because our patients are little and so evoke a passionate sympathetic response. You don't leave a child hungry, wet, in pain. We don't do that...Well at least my unit doesn't. We are our patients advocates. I have gone for a 12 hour shift without peeing because I was unable to leave the ward. So? Just the life of a kids nurse. I still think I have the best job going. Being able to care for other people's kids and help make them better.
But what's going on in Adult medicine. To be fair, it's not all like dispatches portrays. But there is a high degree of apathy and disillusionment in nursing. Staff shortages, the use of agency staff all the time, and they're only there for the money (most of the time)
I've personally had a few experiences of adult nursing care. It wasn't good. I had a gallbladder removed about 4 years ago. I bled heavily afterwards. I told them but they didn't respond. After a few hours I walked to the day room to phone the kids. There was blood all down my nightdress. I only had one left and wasn't willing to change until they changed my dressing and stop the oozing blood.
When I got back to my bed, a male health care assistant approached me and said that the Ward Sister asked him to tell me to change my nightie as it was unsightly for the other patients. What a cheek!
That is only one story of many I could tell. Did I complain? Nah. What's the point. Besides as a nurse you know the awfulness of having a complaint made against you.
Dispatches is now talking about cleanliness of wards and equipment. TBH I do not consider cleaning to be a trained staff's job...Come on they should be hands on with the patients. But it's someone's job. Since the government put the cleaning jobs out to tender it's all gone pear shaped.
Incidentally.... in Paediatric nursing...We do clean. As all you parents out there know, kids are dirt magnets. They put stuff in their mouths, get on the floor and get food all over their sheets. And we clean it up. On Friday a child's cannula dislodged and he dripped blood through the corridor. Did we argue about who cleaned it up? No way! our pregnant registrar (senior doctor) got down and cleaned it.
I'm not trying to portray us as angels. And there is a certain amount of my OCD that maintains that the place HAS to be clean when I'm around. But wow that dispatches programme was horrific. I couldn't work there. I'd never be able to go home.
Lastly, I do agree that the way nurses are trained now...Being college orientated is part of the problem. They don't see themselves as hands on people. Task orientated nursing that was the norm years ago still isn't the answer. We need some sort of mix...and hey guys there are some really fantastic nurses out there. The dispatches programme is highly edited to show the worse. But still the worse shouldn't have happened.
Hope Tony Blair was watching.