It’s time to root out the nurses who don’t care

thIs week an investigation was launched into avoidable deaths, this time at shrewsbury and telford hospital Nhs trust.

the investigation is into at least seven babies who died after mothers said midwives ‘couldn’t be bothered’ to fulfil basic monitoring tasks which would have warned that the babies were unwell. When I hear stories like this, I wonder what’s going on with our caring professions?

It reminds me of an incident when I was a junior doctor. I was in the office when I heard a strange noise. Before I got to the patients’ bay I saw a nurse sitting at a desk reading a magazine. she shrugged when I asked her if she’d heard anything.

I walked round the corner and there, lying on the floor, was an old lady who had fallen out of bed. there were two other patients in the bay, one of whom said she had pressed the alarm — but no one had come. I went for help.

‘I’m on my break,’ replied the nurse. the more I protested, the more she refused to move. Eventually, a visitor arrived and we helped the woman back into bed.

I noticed that she had soiled herself, so I told the nurse, who by now was sitting filling out a form. ‘I’ll do it when I’ve finished this,’ she replied without looking up. Unable to tolerate this callous behaviour, I changed the patient myself.

What has happened when someone fails not just in their job, but in their human response to another’s suffering?

I have great respect for nurses, so I despair at the few who bring the profession into disrepute. It is true that there are negligent, rude and incompetent doctors. I make no apology for them, and in my opinion, they have no place in the Nhs. Equally, the vast majority of nurses are compassionate and committed to the welfare of their patients.

But there are, without doubt, nurses who should not be nursing and, as they provide the day-to-day care for patients in a way doctors do not, when they fail in their duties, they have a greater impact on patients’ welfare. Nurses are often the sole providers of comfort for scared and lonely patients, in pain and at the mercy of those mandated to care for them, so when things fail at this level, it sends shockwaves to the core of the Nhs.

In recent years, the role of nurses has changed, and the brightest graduates can now expect to soon leave the ward to take on senior roles. they can now prescribe drugs and discharge patients. But an indirect result of this is that the type of nursing which involves caring for patients day-to-day has been stripped of value.

It is now a professional failing to remain at this level for too long and, as cohorts of top nurses have moved up the hierarchy, a vacuum has been created at the bottom which has been filled with people who simply shouldn’t be nursing.

I know all the explanations for this — poor pay, inadequate training, burn out and so on. But there comes a point when I think: enough with the excuses. the failure to respond to another human being’s suffering is a personal failure. and people like that have no place in the Nhs.