This work is now done by assorted auxiliaries who have been taken away from the routine cleaning duties they used to perform so that they can act up to do jobs for which they are not trained. Jobs that used to be done by the nurses. The auxiliaries do not do the jobs well, just as the nurses who have left nursing for more important matters do not do whatever it is they now purport to do very well.
and…
I’m sure they were dirty and I’m sure they did talk over him about innappropriate topics: this is standard in much of the NHS today.
However, he was wrong about one key thing. They were not nurses. He was almost certainly descibing ‘Health Care Assistants’ - what we used to call Auxilliary nurses. They used to provide support care under the direction of ward nurses. Now, of course, they do all the nursing while the real nurses are chained to their desks filling out forms.
This seems to be an emerging trend on the health blogosphere. HCA-bashing is turning into the new nurse-bashing (not that the old nurse-bashing has gone anywhere). So, I’m going to put in a bit of balance by saying a few words in their defence. Here’s a homage to the Poor Bloody Infantry of the NHS: underpaid, understaffed and under a big pile of poo…the healthcare assistants.
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