I think from being in this large teaching hospital where the nurses did, I think the first year they did it at university, I felt they were probably taught how to give injections and do blood pressures, but they were not taught that patients are very vulnerable. Everything they say goes straight to your heart so when they say things like, “the cancer's spread”, you get very, very upset, so I think they really should be taught that patients are very vulnerable and they need to be very careful in what they say, and that we need a lot of affection and we need tender loving care almost as much as we need the drugs.
And I think this is something. Instead of the nurses coming and talking; one ward, they were wonderful, they were angels. They would come and talk to us but the last ward I was in when they weren't busy they were all just sitting round at the desk chatting, but they didn't come and talk to us. They didn't treat us as patients. I used to say I'm just bed number six, and they didn't, even the surgeon didn't sit down beside me. If only somebody had sat beside me and explained what was happening or even held my hand. There's no contact at all, there's very little, even eye contact.
A whole group came round the bed and they didn't even say who they were so you had about half a dozen or more, standing round while they discussed you and you were just bed number six, you weren't a person, so I think the human side of medicine is lacking.
Another thing, I think cleanliness is appalling. I got the MRSA, which was... I wasn't at all surprised because they didn't wash their hands very often. They would put rubber gloves on now and again but even the doctors would come and feel my tummy with the MRSA in the wound, they'd go and do the same thing to the next patient. |
