Management in Nursing

[Odysseus]

How I agree with you malenurse...

But how can the situation be retrieved? Or should the question be - Can the situation be retrieved?

Personally, I have no objection to the airline providing the aeroplanes, but I believe that the pilot should control the aeroplane.  As you so rightly (in my opinion anyway) point out - if the ward matrons, or whatever else they may may be called, have no real authority over critical service provision or service delivery then they are trying to nurse with hands tied behind their backs.

[Charlie Harden]

Ody - I think that the answer lies at the bedside. Thats where the nursing power base is and always was.  Generations of nurses (me included) have sought promotion which, as other posters have noted lead you away from the profession you spent years learning. You only have to look at the doctors to see that they have learnt the simple truth that 'we are what we do'. Yes nursing is different,  we work in teams we manage groups of patients, we coordinate what others do in the care setting but if we want nursing to be a power base we need to focus on the science and practice of nursing and not allow it to be marginalised or diminished by lunatic managers with no insight into care or care processes.

Sorry rant over  ;)

[Odysseus]

Ten out of ten malenurse.  But I am beginning to wonder - can we ever get back to the bedside? I am no longer involved but negative comments I pick up about 'University trained' nurses do not inspire me with confidence. One practising nurse recently related that whilst undertaking a back-to-nursing course, she noted an old lady in her ward who no one visited - and whom the regular nurses seemed to find 'invisible'.

Upon asking the ward manager - a senior nurse - about this lady, and asking if she could sit and chat to her when free, she was basically told OK, but that there was little point really! 

In my early days as a staff nurse I was actually assigned to talk to such a patient - and was then severly rocketed by the visiting assistant matron on her rounds.  When I protested that I had been assigned the task she said "Not for talking to the patient, nurse, - for sitting on the bed"!!

I wonder what the rocket would be for today - talking to the patient? Please tell me that I'm wrong. Have we really forgotten the human being within the 'patient'?

Is it still possible to get back to the bedside?