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By Mental Nurse, on August 30th, 2010
Hate, hate, hate them and their cutting ways. Currently it is easy and only getting easier to find cuts even the NHS Trusts are having difficulty claiming as efficiency savings. Here is one example that popped up.
Unanimous plea to save Avondale
Politicians have called for regulators to step in and review the decision-making process which led to the planned closure of a Preston mental health unit.
A series of impassioned pleas from Preston councillors ended with a unanimous vote in favour of supporting the campaign to save the Avondale Unit, based at the Royal Preston Hospital.
After writing about NIMBY politicians recently it is nice to see some of them trying to do the right thing.
For some time it is going to be very, very easy to find things like this and decry them. Sadly we know it is likely to make any difference. Public oncsultations only exist to tell us what has been decided and if things are bad this year they are only going to get worse next year.
So what do we do?
Continue reading Cutters!
By Mental Nurse, on July 20th, 2010
I was trying to search the newspaper sites for rubbish about mental health and complementary therapies we could all take the fun out of. Sadly the terribly awful newspaper search engines are giving me a headache and taking all the fun out of it. Then I remembered reading something about the great idea by David Cameron. So here it is:
Your Freedom.
This website is designed to allow as many people in the UK as possible to put forward their ideas on what laws and regulations we should do away with. Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, along with the rest of the Coalition Government, invite you to collaborate on ideas for freedom and change.
This will form an important part of our commitment to cutting red tape, repealing unnecessary laws and supporting civil liberties. Your ideas will inform initiatives such as the proposed Freedom Bill and the streamlining of regulation, particularly for businesses and other organisations.
Fighting the urge to suggest something involving the alien menace amongst us (1) I thought I better type in mental health and possibly later nursing.
Continue reading Your Freedom To Say What You Want
By beakie, on June 21st, 2010
Georgie-boy Osborne gets up tomorrow in front of the House and indicates from which part of the national body he is going to rip his pounds of flesh. Coalitionomics requires us to feel the pain now in hopes of a better, fitter, leaner future.
Well, actually only some of us are going to feel the pain. Millionaires like Osborne and Cameron may feel a small flutter in the wallet, but generally life will be as peachy for them as it’s always been. It’s the rich wot gets the gravy etc. Enough of that before someone accuses me of the politics of envy.
But what does this all mean for the NHS? When the hustings were in full swing, CallMeDave promised to “cut the deficit not the NHS”, and several noises have been made about the need to protect front-line services . Now, I don’t pretend even to begin to understand finance at this level – one glance at my bank balance would be enough to convince you that when it comes to cash, mine have not always been a safe pair of hands. In my callow youth, I’d see something shiny and I’d buy it, worrying about little things like food and clothes at a later date. But I do know a thing or two about pre-registration nursing education, and it’s here, I think that the promise that cuts won’t impact on front-line services looks decidedly dodgy.
Continue reading Be afraid, be very afraid
By Mental Nurse, on May 7th, 2010
While we are waiting to see what happens here is a quick CamCapComp to keep us busy. If anyone has particularly good images of other party leaders feel free to let us know and we can hopefully add them to this post. [Brown Added, Nick Added]
 David Cameron and the Nurses Rules as per normal.
Continue reading Caption Competition – David Cameron
By Mental Nurse, on April 7th, 2010
I believe an election has been announced and though we should acknowledge this in some way. So here is the official Mental Nurse 2010 Election thread. Any views on the main and fringe parties? Do any of them actually have reasonable policies on mental health issues? Are any of them going to leave the paid mentalists with a job at the end of the next term?
Do we really know our politicians?
Continue reading Coming Out Party Politics
By Mental Nurse, on April 1st, 2010
In my ongoing attempts to make Mental Nurse more personal, to connect, I have been sharing snippets of the msuic I have been listening to. So here is the link as the Sisters of Mercy say are you living for love?
Here I would like to share a terribly amusing story about the time I was a Stranger in a Strange Land (or also) and put a personal ad in the local paper. The listened to the phoned in responses. I laughed for the first three.
Continue reading Mental Nurse WLTM
By Mental Nurse, on March 18th, 2010
Hello again. I shall try to keep this brief.
Previous posts have discussed intelligence and how nurses may respond to it. This time I will look at why many of your ‘personality traits’ matter very little once you get sucked into the system. Quote marks used as I do not believe in personality traits.
Before reading this you might want to check out On Being Sane In Insane Places. An experiment which might have been repeated more recently.
For those that are interested I am about to listen to ‘This Kiss‘ by Faith Hill.
Continue reading Mental Nurse vs Reality
By Mental Nurse, on February 27th, 2010
My turn to delve into the delights of world of blogs. As part of my continuing attempt to be awesomely Cool for Cats ™ I intend to make little Tweet like comments describing the minutiae of my life as I compile That Was The Week That Was This Week In Mentalists. (TWTWTWTWIM).
I am listening to Hazey Jane II by Nick Drake.
This song contains the lyrics;
And what will happen in the morning when the world it gets so crowded that you can’t look out the
window in the morning?
Answers at the bottom please. Right now to the Blogs of Wrath! Ho!
Continue reading This Week In Mentalists (120): The Made With Extra Special Sauce Edition
By Mental Nurse, on February 26th, 2010
Thanks Lorna for summarising my earlier post into a pithy one liner.
“… failure to recognise that correctly identifying the problem does not make it magically go away …”
It is just this kind of thing that really annoys nurses you know! You take something we have lovingly created, slaved over, researched thoroughly *cough* cast your eyes over it then summarise and improve (improvarise?) in one fell swoop.
Now I intend to waffle a bit more about intelligence, some of my pet hates, bizzarophobias, delusions I have held and maybe put in a picture of a cat doing something amusing at the end.
With me?
Continue reading Mental Nurse vs Intelligence vs Unreason
By Mental Nurse, on February 18th, 2010
Came very close to calling this one ‘Why nurses hate their patients’ but felt that would be an overstatement. Sometimes, as I may have suggested before, nurses are not full of unconditional positive regard towards their patients.
Their are many reasons nurses often feel negative towards their patients; being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, not being unwell enough, talking too much, not talking enough, talking back, being non compliant, vomiting down the back of a nurses jumper and of course being too clever for their own good.
Sometimes we really really hate smart patients.
Continue reading Mental Nurse vs Intelligence
By Mental Nurse, on February 8th, 2010
I can not find the link but I am sure I posted about this before but the NMC, those hard working fellows, have moved on to the second stage of their consultation on standards for pre-registration nursing education. Here is the blurb:
This consultation seeks your views on new standards for pre-registration nursing education programmes. These standards set out what nursing students must demonstrate to be fit for practice at the point of registration.
Woo.
If you are not a nurse this will be of virtually no interest. If you are a nurse it is still probably of no interest. I was initially intending to write a post called How To Speak To Mad People, but it is still gestating in my head while I try to make it even more offensive.
Continue reading The NMC Hard At Work Spending My Money
By Mental Nurse, on January 20th, 2010
Came across this at Nursingtimes.net (a far funnier site than I remember it being last time I looked at it properly):
Student nurses should quit smoking as part of training
Student nurses who smoke should be encouraged to quite as part of their training, say researchers.
They found nursing students were twice as likely to smoke as the general public and, as a result, say smoking cessation should be incorporated into nurse training courses.
Sadly the research was Italian so I have no idea if the figures are the same for the UK. The should probably just fail students that smoke, that will teach them a lesson. (1)
Continue reading Smoking. Again. Followed by a cheap shot at Crippen
By Mental Nurse, on November 23rd, 2009
Really I have no idea what I am about to write. I was intending to do a whole what is mental illness type post, then thought frankly life is too short. So I am going to discuss a couple of things I came across recently and try to link them together for no good reason.
The first is this little snippet, from Canadamerica.
Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos
A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave is fighting to have her benefits reinstated after her employer’s insurance company cut them, she says, because of photos posted on Facebook.
If she had been on Myspace or Bebo I am sure she would have been fine. The insurance company did have this to say.
Manulife wouldn’t comment on Blanchard’s case, but in a written statement sent to CBC News, the insurer said: “We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook.” It confirmed that it uses the popular social networking site to investigate clients.
After the break my desperate link.
Continue reading Empty of Inspiration
By Mental Nurse, on September 30th, 2009
As always I am gutted that html does not have a satire tag. I have been very lucky in that I have met very few patients that I could call Slapheads; yes that includes people with a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. Their families on the other hand …
All the following should be read with tongue firmly in cheek.
Druggy Dave
Dave is a gentleman who uses the services fairly heavily. A regular ward denizen. Despite the simple equation of heavy drug taking occurring suspiciously regularly before admission he believes there is no connection (1). Often oddly herbal smells can be detected in his vicinity. Oddly enough the herbal smell becomes contagious when Dave is on the ward. Dave often prefers a ground level room with a window that open far enough to allow small packages to be passed through.
Continue reading Slapheads: Patients
By cellar_door, on September 22nd, 2009
Sunday, I had one of those odd conversations that only ever happen at 4am on a night shift. I thought I’d share the result.
If you have ever wondered whereabouts in the pecking order your job role sits, there’s a fairly easy game you can play to figure it out. It’s called ‘how many [...]
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