Grumble grumble
So this is how stuffed the health care system is right now: Apparently, our hospital just got some funding to do more elective surgery so that the waiting list starts to shorten.... Yes, I hear you say, what's wrong with that? Well I'll tell you right now! This is what happened today:
1. There are 2 girls in maternity who do up to 5 home visits each day. One of them called in sick today and the other staff member can't just take all 10 visits, therefore, they were short staffed, and needed someone to fill in but there was no one...
2. The postnatal ward was already full to the brim, and there were new mothers waiting to go to the ward but had to stay in the birthing unit as there were no staff to look after them on the ward... Lucky for birthing unit today, no one else came in to have a baby...
3. Despite the ridiculousness of how busy the maternity ward was already and how shortstaffed they already were, they wanted to also give the postnatal ward 4 general surgical patients, ie. people who just had their gall bladder removed, etc. plus, they expected one of those staff members to look after their own patient load AND do some home visits!!!!!! which, of course, is not humanly possible!!!
So what happened in the end? Well, being the versatile woman that I am, I started my day in the birthing unit admitting a lady who was having an elective caesarean section, then my manager asked me to do some of those home visits. When I got back from the home visits, I was then asked to take care of all the surgical patients coming back from their operations. I ended up leaving work really late. No wonder I'm wasted. Everyone in the department's wondering why someone upstairs in admin is brainless enough to OK the go-ahead of all this surgery, when there's not enough nursing staff to look after these patients after it all! Can everyone else see anything wrong with this picture?
< /grumble >
So this is how stuffed the health care system is right now: Apparently, our hospital just got some funding to do more elective surgery so that the waiting list starts to shorten.... Yes, I hear you say, what's wrong with that? Well I'll tell you right now! This is what happened today:
1. There are 2 girls in maternity who do up to 5 home visits each day. One of them called in sick today and the other staff member can't just take all 10 visits, therefore, they were short staffed, and needed someone to fill in but there was no one...
2. The postnatal ward was already full to the brim, and there were new mothers waiting to go to the ward but had to stay in the birthing unit as there were no staff to look after them on the ward... Lucky for birthing unit today, no one else came in to have a baby...
3. Despite the ridiculousness of how busy the maternity ward was already and how shortstaffed they already were, they wanted to also give the postnatal ward 4 general surgical patients, ie. people who just had their gall bladder removed, etc. plus, they expected one of those staff members to look after their own patient load AND do some home visits!!!!!! which, of course, is not humanly possible!!!
So what happened in the end? Well, being the versatile woman that I am, I started my day in the birthing unit admitting a lady who was having an elective caesarean section, then my manager asked me to do some of those home visits. When I got back from the home visits, I was then asked to take care of all the surgical patients coming back from their operations. I ended up leaving work really late. No wonder I'm wasted. Everyone in the department's wondering why someone upstairs in admin is brainless enough to OK the go-ahead of all this surgery, when there's not enough nursing staff to look after these patients after it all! Can everyone else see anything wrong with this picture?
< /grumble >
