One nurse, 30 patients, and too many tears to count
Insider on crushing pressure inflicted by understaffing at NHS flagship hospital
A nurse working in Scotland’s largest hospital, the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, has described being crushed by the stress of staff shortages, writes Janet Boyle.
Claire, not her real name, has nursed in both the NHS and, until this summer, in an overseas public hospital where she looked after four or five patients on a shift.
Her work at the QEUH in Glasgow has seen her working up to five hours on a ward with up to 30 patients.
Arriving for a shift, I just hope there is another nurse on. If there isn’t, I just feel like crying because I want to do everything for my patients and know that will not be remotely possible.
The shortage of staff is taking the joy and care out of the job and that is heartbreaking because we are all here because we want to be good nurses.
Often you only discover that you will be the only nurse on the ward when you arrive to start your shift. It means an exhausting 12 hours knowing I will not be able to give patients the care they need or deserve.
Often the nurse who has already worked that long shift will stay on to help with patients’ medicines. I have worked in an elderly ward in the QEUH where I have been on myself or stayed late to help another nurse who would be on herself if I left at the end of my shift.
That meant a one-to-30 nursepatient ratio for a few hours until a second nurse could be found. Overseas you would never be allowed to nurse more than five patients, and teamwork and conditions are vastly better. When I am on myself I have to seek out a nurse in another ward to countersign a controlled drug. It takes two signatures. These drugs include opiates for pain relief and some of the patients are in a lot of pain.
We are supposed to go on ward rounds with doctors but rarely do now so vital information on patients – about who is at home to look after them if they leave – can be missed.
We are supposed to write up notes twice a day but that does not always happen because there’s simply no time. Then you have to follow up from a ward round and arrange ambulance transport, home care and liaise with occupational therapists.
But we are so short-staffed that the students are helping the auxiliaries with showering or feeding patients so there is no time. There is no time to train people, there is no time for anything but fighting fires.
Some students have left their degree course and others, who are about to start university, abandon it. One auxiliary who got the entry qualifications wanted to leave before she started because the workload and responsibilities terrified her. She was upset about disappointing her parents, who had worked to fund her college studies and were proud she had got into university.
Other full-time nurses have left to work on bank shifts. They have had enough. Facing angry families upset that parents have had to wait in pain for drugs is awful and overpowering. We apologise but can’t reveal how short-staffed we really are.
I have always thought elderly was the most badly staffed but now? It’s every ward, every day.