Trainee Nurses To Look After Patients On Wards

[Gromit]

// Nurses will spend a year on wards feeding and washing patients before they can qualify, under plans to be announced on Tuesday to ensure compassion in hospitals.

Ministers believe that a return to basic nursing is crucial following the Mid Staffordshire scandal and criticism that some graduate nurses are “too posh to wash”.

In future, trainees will have to pass a year as a health care assistant, looking after patients’ basic needs, rather than medical treatment.
On Monday night, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said: “Frontline, hands-on caring experience and values need to be equal with academic training. //

The Mid-Staff Scandal was caused by chasing targets and 'qualified' nurses not having time to 'care'.

I am sure that the answer to the poor quality of care at Mid Staffs is not to replace nurses with unqualified students.

Call me cynical, but this looks like just an opportunity to get some cheap labour into hospitals (i am assuming the students will not get the same pay as a proper nurse). Will there be extra money to train them? I doubt it. A cynical way of saving money and not addressing the real scandal of the hundreds of premature deaths of patients badly cared for.

Anyone think this is a good idea?

[pizza]

I have worked in the care sector for over 16 years,the best nurses I have come across have been carers who have gone on to do nurse training.
These are the ones who fully understand and promote good patient care and are happy to muck in with the unposh !! jobs.

[askyourgran]

At least some of the frail elderly patients who cannot wash, feed themselves or reach a glass of water will be attended to. I thought that was what nursing was all about, looking after their patients comes first and foremost, or has that slipped down the cracks. They also need daily ward cleaners. Students need to know how to deal with patients, not just on paper.

[cupotee]

I have several friends in Nursing across several age brackets/qualifications.

Non are interested in patients...don't want to work on wards..they don't even want a job that entails wearing the uniform. All seem to talk about their positions within management from social care or whatever.

I've had many stays in hospitals going over the last 10 years. I have seen nurses chatting and laughing when bells have been ringing during the day and night!
After having major surgery I needed a bedpan pretty urgently during the night and rang the bell. It was 20 mins later the pan arrived. The nurse was more interested in chatting to the young male agency nurse than helping me off the bedpan. Consequently a little spilt on the sheet.
I got told she didn't have time to change it so I lay in a wet bed for the rest of the night.
That's not what nursing is a bout. When training starts it should start at the bottom to pick out the genuine applicants who really do want to be a nurse.

[Svejk]

Gromit///
Anyone think this is a good idea? ///

No. Everybody thinks it a good idea.Never seen people so united.
Has it changed your mind?

[Gromit]

No,

I still don't see how changing to untrained students is an improvement in care.

[emmie]

it's not a change, it's the start of their nursing, instead of getting a degree and walking into a hospital with no experience of actual nursing, now they can do it from the ground up, which is how it worked before.

[grumpy01]

Although it's not quite the same thing I have had both my cataracts removed in the last three months. Care was brilliant and the nurses were more than happy to get you a cup of tea and a biscuit at conclusion of surgery.