Saturday 8 December 2012

Why nurses have stopped caring

It's a very interesting time to be going into nursing.

Everyone has heard the horror stories over the last few years, and particularly more recently, and there is this huge public perception that nurses just don't care about their patients anymore. And there is a lot of truth behind the stories - in too many situations, the care people are receiving is simply unacceptable. But I find it very difficult to believe that most nurses start their careers without a genuine desire to care for people. Let's be honest, the financial rewards aren't exactly enormous, the hours are long and it's always going to be a stressful job. There has to be something else driving people to take up nursing in the first place, and I believe that the vast majority become nurses because they want to help people. Certainly that's true for me, and for my coursemates, and for many nurses I know.

So how do people with such good intentions end up treating their patients with a total lack of care and compassion? Because the systems grinds them down. Because they spend years overworked and underappreciated, because there is never enough staff and never enough time, because every time something does happen and uproar rightly ensues, the sticking-plaster solution is to bring in more regulation and more paperwork, resulting in even less time for patients. I'm not excusing in any way the behaviour of nurses such as those involved in the failings at Mid-Staffordshire Trust or responsible for the care of Ann Clwyd's husband more recently in the news, but sometimes it's hard to remember that nurses are human too. As humans we all reach a breaking point. And when it's the very nature of the "caring profession" that is causing nurses to lose their compassion and care, then things need to change.

I'm currently on my first placement on a children's ward, and I have to say I am absolutely loving it. I am exhausted and stressed, but I really feel like this is the career for me. But what is to stop someone like me, at the very start of their career and hoping to make a difference to people's lives, turning into a nurse who doesn't care a few years down the line? To be honest, I don't know, and that scares me. Right now, I cannot even imagine myself showing such disregard for my patients wellbeing, but I bet that the nurses involved at Stafford Hospital were enthusiastic and well meaning students once. Vilifying nurses who fall short is not going to change anything. It is the system that needs changing. In a time of ever increasing cuts, and the stretching of funds and people power, nurses are never going to be able to spend the time and attention on patients that they need and deserve. The more cuts that the NHS takes, and there are more to come, the worse the situation is going to get. The government needs to wake up and realise this, before another generation of healthcare workers get disillusioned and stop caring. Because caring is our job, and if we can't do that, then we've failed.