Medication or dignity

Hi Janet,

I think you have to make sure you get the medication right - but if you are so under-staffed as to make things potentially dangerous, I think that issue has also got to be raised (ideally by all of the nurses as a group).

Hope someone can give you some useful advice,

Best wishes, Mike

When as a nurse you state you sometimes are interrupted when
giving out medications so making medications late, I work in a
hospital as a HCA and nurses who are giving out medications wear a red tabbard which states 'do not disturb, nurse undertaking drug round'. The nurse is then not disturbed as
visitors know she is doing an important job and nobody disturbs her. The hca and other staff see to patients and the nurse will
answer any questions when drug round is completed, hope this helps

Hi Janet and Julie,

This one:

'as nurses we often have to choose daily to give care or not, due to not enough staff on the wards to give basic care'

repeatedly crops up on the Nursing Times website, whenever media reports about 'nurses no longer care' are being discussed. The problems of inadequate staffing numbers, need to be highlighted - and 'you need to prioritise and organise your work better' only stretches so far: at some point, you reach 'we are working at about 100% efficiency, and there simply are not enough of us to do a decent job !'.

The red tabbard is a good idea - but good ideas are only helpful, and everything falls down if there really are not enough staff available.