A new week

It has been a while since I felt even remotely like writing and i know that if I don't push myself to do so that I will stop doing it altogether. I blame it on having a cold of course; one of the fringe benefits of having people to stay for a weekend. I think that my extended isolation tends to lower the efficacy of my immune system and so whenever i am exposed to viruses they see me as virgin territory and move in with relish. I should have the flu jab and the one for swine flu but I probably won't. That would mean going to the medical centre and queueing up with lots of sick people and having someone stick a needle into me. I confess that i am scared of injections - a real hangup from my childhood and one of so many.

It would seem that the government is keen to make nursing an all graduate profession, as they did with teachers a number of years back. The aim is to ensure that the quality of nursing increases and that patients will receive a better deal when they go to hospitals. I am not sure that it will help. What it might help them to do is to fill in paperwork more accurately and free up time for them to generate more.
A spell in hospital was never much fun but it has become a challenge to anyone these days. Speaking from the point of view of a fairly frequent user, I have to say that the quality of nursing care has declined massively in recent years. Side wards mean that patients can lie unattended for long periods of time without being checked on by anyone, and we frequently hear of patients who have quietly bled to death in a hospital bed. I experienced copious bleeding after my last operation and when i struggled out of bed to report it to the two nurses sitting behind a desk, all they did was to change my pillow while i was in the toilet. Nobody even looked to see where the blood was coming from - the paperwork was more important.
I am sure that there are plenty of good nurses who know how to care for patients and many who are not good at paperwork. We should be employing more of the former and allowing them to get on with the job that their profession was meant to do. Government targets are a hindrance to us all and there are walks of life where they really should be ignored. Education and medicine are not businesses and should not be treated as such.

On a different note I did promise to post the hairy thing under my nose as it develops so here we go.