Poll reveals more than a quarter of UK hospital nurses have seen patients cared for in ‘inappropriate’ settings
Patients are being treated in the wrong places in UK hospitals, such as corridors and waiting areas, leaving them at risk of poor care, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) warns today.
Hospitals are so overstretched and understaffed that patients are ending up being looked after in clinically “inappropriate” settings, where personnel may not have the right skills.
Continue reading...British Medical Association says move will put patients and healthcare workers in England at significant risk
Scrapping special Covid leave for NHS staff is “completely unacceptable” and will put patients and healthcare workers at significant risk, the British Medical Association has warned.
From 7 July the government plans to withdraw the special paid leave for Covid-related sickness and isolation for NHS staff in England, meaning they will revert to normal contractual sick pay arrangements.
Continue reading...Research by Royal College of Nursing suggests racism is ‘endemic’ in health and care
White nurses are twice as likely as black and Asian colleagues to be promoted in the NHS, with minority ethnic staff overlooked due to structural racism, according to research.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said its study suggests racism is “endemic” in health and care. A survey of almost 10,000 nursing staff found that those who are white or of a mixed ethnic background are more likely than black and Asian colleagues to have received at least one promotion since the start of their career.
Continue reading...Only a quarter of shifts have the planned number of registered nurses on duty, according to Royal College of Nursing report
Only a quarter of nursing shifts have the planned number of registered nurses on duty, a survey of more than 20,000 frontline staff has suggested.
According to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), most nurses warn that staffing levels on their last shift were not sufficient to meet the needs of patients, and that some are now quitting their jobs.
The RCN said the findings shone a light on the impact of the UK’s nursing staff shortage, warning that nurses were being “driven out” of their profession.
British anaesthetist pleads for doctors and nurses to be allowed naps and limited night shifts, as in other critical workplaces
About half of all hospital doctors and nurses have had accidents or experienced near misses while driving home after a night shift.
The risks they pose to themselves and other road users have been calculated as the same as those posed by drivers who are over the legal alcohol limit, delegates at a European medical conference were told last week.
Continue reading...International nurses working for NHS trusts are being trapped in their jobs by clauses in their contracts that require them to pay thousands of pounds if they try to leave. Shanti Das reports
Nurses are the backbone of the NHS. For the past two years as Covid-19 gripped the country, people lauded NHS staff as heroes. Many nurses join the NHS from abroad, attracted by the stability of the work, the ethos and a chance for a new life in the UK. But joining the NHS from abroad comes with strings attached.
The Observer’s Shanti Das tells Nosheen Iqbal that some nurses working for NHS trusts and private care homes are being trapped in their jobs by clauses in their contracts that require them to pay thousands of pounds if they try to leave. In extreme cases, nurses are tied to their roles for up to five years and face fees as steep as £14,000 if they want to change jobs or need to return home early.
More nurses leave NHS than at any time since Covid struck, many reporting stress as their main reason
More than 27,000 nurses and midwives quit the NHS last year, with many blaming job pressures, the Covid pandemic and poor patient care for their decision.
The rise in staff leaving their posts across the UK – the first in four years – has prompted concern that frontline workers are under too much strain, especially with the NHS-wide shortage of nurses.
Continue reading...Union pushing for proposal to create board to oversee industry in wake of pandemic that has decimated staffing
Jesus Figueroa Cacho, a certified nursing assistant of the Sacramento, California area, has worked in the nursing home industry for about 25 years.
She consistently works 16 hour long shifts, 60 to 80 hours per week, often working through breaks and not getting paid overtime because her employer she works night shifts and overtime accrual resets at 1am every day, in the middle of her shifts. Figueroa Cacho said her facility is severely understaffed, often with just two nurses to care for around 50 patients.
Continue reading...Experts call on ministers to tackle chronic staff shortages, with delays worsened by pandemic
Tens of thousands of patients are still waiting to start cancer treatment in England due to disruption during the pandemic, according to NHS figures, as medical charities called on the government to tackle chronic staff shortages in the health service.
Following a dramatic slump in cancer referrals in 2020, the number of people being investigated for the disease bounced back in the past year, data from NHS England and NHS Improvement show, rising from 2.4 million to a record 2.66 million.
Continue reading...Ukrainian expat raises money to rescue last 12 residents of hospice in Chasiv Yar on frontline of Russian invasion
Elderly residents trapped at a nursing home near the frontline of war in eastern Ukraine are to be evacuated thanks to donations from a fundraiser held thousands of miles away in New Orleans in the US.
Ukrainian-born Katya Chizayeva, who now lives in the Louisiana city, organised the event at a restaurant after reading in the Guardian about the plight of residents at the facility in Chasiv Yar, a Donbas village just kilometres away from the frontline. A total of $8,000 (£6,351) was raised for the nursing home.
Continue reading...Lawyers and unions condemn scandal of international health workers forced to pay out if they quit their jobs early
• Overseas nurses in the UK forced to pay out thousands if they want to quit jobs
When Laura Sanchez was offered a job as a nurse in the NHS, it sounded like the opportunity of a lifetime.
At home in the Philippines, she had seen Facebook ads similar to those on the site today, promising “an attractive relocation package” and inviting her to “Start your UK dream!”
Continue reading...I’ve seen people die without their family. It used to bring me to tears. Now I just feel weary
My therapist says it’s OK that sometimes I feel dead inside.
I’m a critical care nurse. I worked in intensive care for all of 2020 and 2021.
Continue reading...At least six trusts in have issued alerts as fears grow vital care will be compromised by workforce absence
Multiple NHS trusts across England have declared “critical incidents” amid soaring staff absences caused by Covid-19, with health leaders saying many parts of the service are now “in a state of crisis”.
Boris Johnson on Monday ruled out the introduction of new curbs “for now” but said he recognised that the pressure on the NHS and its hospitals, was “going to be considerable in the course of the next couple of weeks, and maybe more”.
Continue reading...Bodies in 28 countries file appeal for waiver of intellectual property agreement and end to ‘grossly unjust’ distribution of jabs
Nursing unions in 28 countries have filed a formal appeal with the United Nations over the refusal of the UK, EU and others to temporarily waive patents for Covid vaccines, saying this has cost huge numbers of lives in developing nations.
The letter, sent on Monday on behalf of unions representing more than 2.5 million healthcare workers, said staff have witnessed at first hand the “staggering numbers of deaths and the immense suffering caused by political inaction”.
Continue reading...Lack of EU staff adding to shortages: ‘There aren’t enough to deliver care we need’
Ministers are being warned of a mounting workforce crisis in England’s hospitals as they struggle to recruit staff for tens of thousands of nursing vacancies, with one in five nursing posts on some wards now unfilled.
Hospital leaders say the nursing shortfall has been worsened by a collapse in the numbers of recruits from Europe, including Spain and Italy.
Continue reading...As an inveterate over-sharer, I learned a lesson this week from a former army nurse. Perhaps airing our worst moments gives them too much space to grow
Sometimes people I speak to on my radio programme say something that will stay with me for a long time. Marguerite Turner, 98, said two such things to me last week. She was talking about her work in the second world war. Her most vivid memory is of a single night in May 1942. As a nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment, she was stationed in the south of England at a large private house being used as a medical facility. Around midnight, she stepped outside to take a break in the blissful scented silence of the garden. Then: “I heard a sort of engine noise from somewhere. There was no light. The noise grew louder and louder, then a whole lot of planes flew over. You couldn’t see them; they were so high up. They went on and on. I knew they must be ours because there was no one shooting at them. I stood listening in that garden. Then they grew fainter and fainter, obviously going somewhere.”
Those planes, it turned out, were among the first of Bomber Harris’s so-called “thousand bomber raids” on German cities. That night the target was Cologne. Nearly 500 Germans were killed outright and 45,000 were made homeless. Forty-three of the aircraft she had heard didn’t return. And there, deep in the darkness a long way down, stood this young nurse, her tranquillity overwhelmed by the deafening din of violence. Seventy-nine years on, the viciously juxtaposed smell and sound are with her as if it was yesterday. As she puts it: “The scent of lilac and a curtain of engines.”
Continue reading...Bad pay and conditions at home and demand for Filipino nursing skills overseas have left the country with a soaring death rate
The Covid Delta variant has swept across south-east Asia over recent months, prompting lockdowns and overwhelming hospitals – from Malaysia to Thailand and Indonesia. Now the impact is being felt in the Philippines, just as the country’s chronic lack of health workers reaches a crisis point.
“The disease has become very aggressive,” said Michael Bilan, who works on a Covid ward in Manila. This time, patients tend to require a higher amount of oxygen, for longer, he said. The number of Covid patients is also at a record high: last week, 277 were receiving treatment. New wards have been opened to meet demand.
Continue reading...Four people who were so ill that they barely remember their time in the ICU meet the doctors and nurses who held their hands
In a light-filled studio in east London, a petite woman in scrubs receives a bouquet of flowers from a tall man, dressed smartly, only faintly out of breath.
The room is thick with emotion. They are strangers, but stare at each other with wonder in their eyes. And then Dr Susan Jain, an intensive care consultant at Homerton university hospital, breaks the silence with a laugh.
Continue reading...Nurses, teachers, GPs and police officers among those to give evidence to cross-party inquiry
More than 450 key workers with long Covid have told a cross-party parliamentary inquiry of their experiences of the condition, including struggles to return to work and lack of financial support, with one in 10 having lost their job.
Nurses, teachers, GPs, police officers and midwives were among those who shared their experience of long Covid, symptoms of which include debilitating fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pains, sleeping difficulties and brain fog.
Continue reading...Nurses, teachers and shopworkers who have lost their health and their jobs talk about their struggle for support
Working seven days a week as a nurse and a fitness instructor, while bringing up two young daughters, Rebecca Logan led an extremely active life – until she contracted Covid-19 while working in the emergency department of a hospital in Northern Ireland.
Over a year after first falling ill, the 40-year-old is still suffering from long Covid. For Logan, that means she can only walk for five minutes before needing to rest, and there is a constant ringing in her ears. Her husband has had to pick up the slack at home, alongside his job as a school principal.
Continue reading...