If it were a novel, it would be War and Peace.
If it were an item of furniture, it would be a door-stop.
The RCN have been polling their members, invited views, experiences and comments on ‘corridor care’.
The result is a tome. ‘On the frontline of the
UK’s corridor care crisis‘ – 460 pages and…
… the College has lobbed this brick of a report, straight from the corridors of the NHS, into the corridors of Whitehall.
The NHS daily bed-count typically refers to the number of occupied or available inpatient beds within hospitals. Beds that are formally allocated for patients staying overnight or longer in wards.
It does not usually include patients on trolleys in corridors or other makeshift spaces.
Ask our great leader, how many people are on trolleys and he won’t be able to give you an accurate answer.
It was this lack of official data and oversight, that prompted the RCN to ask its members to respond to a short survey at the end of December. Although they don’t say it, I suspect they have been overwhelmed by the response.
It is a comprehensive account of life at the sharp end. Tortured working conditions. Insanitary, inappropriate and in-yer-face.
Care given in; viewing rooms, the back of police vans, store rooms, reception areas, cupboards, staff changing rooms and offices. Anywhere and everywhere it’s possible to put a bed or a chair.
Twenty-odd pages of explanations and graphs and four hundred and thirty pages of testimony.
First-hand experiences of the risks, the indignities, the deaths and the images that nurses take home, try to sleep with and come back the next day, to witness over and over again.
I suspect you might be saying, ‘we know all this’. I must confess, I did. What can the RCN tell us that the papers and the telly haven’t already? What is the point?
I’ll tell you.
In 1914 the world went to war. For four years the slaughter raged across Europe. It occupied column inches in the papers. People thought they knew how bad it was.
My Grandfather, a boy soldier, was gassed in the trenches. As a result, coughed and wheezed his way through life and died gasping for breath. He knew what it was like but Mum said, he’d never speak of it.
It wasn’t until 1929 that a book called ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ was published, written by Erich Remarque, that the world really knew.
It was a harrowing and deeply personal account of the war from the perspective of a young German soldier. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest works of anti-war literature.
We didn’t know what the First World War was like until we read ‘Western Front’. The first hand testament from someone who was there. How they felt. What war did to them.
We are not at war. At least, not here. Not yet. But there is a battle and the NHS is caught in the crossfire. A political battle of blame shifting… the NHS is broken and the Tories broke it. Labour have no plan to fix it. It serves no purpose.
Wes Streeting, so ebullient and pugnacious during the election campaign, full of himself and ready to blame has become… Where’s Streeting? He is discovering running things is so much more difficult that running things down.
In his statement to the House yesterday he admitted there is nothing he can do to fix the solution this year and hinted, probably not next year, either.
The testimony of these nurses isn’t telling us what we know. We can’t know what they know. Like we couldn’t know what life was like in the trenches of 1916. We cannot know what it is like to work caring for people next to a lavatory or in a decontamination room.
We should know. We need to know what it’s like to be told;
‘… stroke patients are blocking the Resus … see them in the ambulance bay’.
What it’s like to discuss end-of-life care with a family, above the hubbub in a waiting area.
The toll it takes. The fingerprint it leaves on the very soul of the people involved.
That is why this is such an important chronicle.
To read it is to feel the anger igniting the page, the tears of anguish splashing every word. What it is like to be overwhelmed, powerless and vulnerable doing a job that you love, in circumstances you hate.
We should know…
-oOo-
Have the best weekend you can.
News and Comment from Roy Lilley
Contact Roy – please use this e-address roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Roy Lilley.
Discover more from The Training Network
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
