Hospital crisis: Severe shortage of nurses

THERE is a nursing crisis in the Island’s hospitals as a result of staff shortages and poor pay levels.
Nurses are working ‘horrendously’ long hours and many are breaking down in tears because they cannot give patients the care they need. Latest figures released by the Royal College of Nursing showed 64 vacancies in general and acute nursing personnel as well as 19 in mental health services.
The nursing unions say that not only have patients being turned away from elective surgery but others have been discharged early when they should not have been. This has led to readmissions and in one case the patient was rushed into the intensive care unit.
Health Minister Jim Perchard has acknowledged the crisis and said that it is going to have to be addressed by his colleagues on the Council of Ministers. However, he said the staffing situation within the hospitals was particularly severe right now as a respiratory bug has led to increased admissions and also meant that many staff were off sick. (from thisisjersey)

Is this not self-inflicted, perhaps with the economic climate like it is, it might be time to train more locals for the nursing profession...

I am with you 100% GD . I know of a few ex-nurses who loved the job but just could not afford to stay , so if they train or re-train staff who are already here the money they spend on packages and subsidised housing on off island staff could be utilised as pay increases to nurses.

For various reasons, Jersey’s Health & Social Services department is in the news; lack of beds, too many redundant beds, not enough money, too much money, inability to recruit and retain nursing staff, failures of clinical governance – and, of course – all of the gross failings of the social services and child protection aspects of the department’s responsibilities.

And health & social care issues are clearly of some interest to commenters on this forum.

Coinciding with this state of affairs, the present H & SS Minister, Jimmy Perchard, was afforded a typically vast propaganda spread in Saturday’s edition of The Rag. In the interview he makes a number of assertions – which, let’s face it, are of so little substance as to be scarcely worth considering.

However, he made this assertion:

“There is no new money in the pot. I will be bringing forward funding proposals. No one has had the courage to do it in the past.”

Now, Jimmy, you see, just isn’t terribly bright – and can be extremely forgetful. He has plainly “forgotten” that when Ben Shenton and he took over at H & SS – I furnished them with a 10 page critique I had written of the early draft of the long-overdue new strategy for health & social care – known as “New Directions”.

And in that critique, I addressed the issues of funding – head-on – several times over.

And it fell to me to do this – because the “expert” senior managers in Health & Social Services – those who wrote the draft New Directions document - had utterly failed to.

And I was terribly diplomatic in doing so. As, indeed, I was throughout the whole document.

Which, frankly – required a near superhuman effort on my part.

You see, having waited impatiently several years – for a group of very highly paid, supposed experts in health & social care – at a combined cost that probably ran into several millions of pounds – to produce this new, strategic document – I eventually received a draft.

And was rendered speechless at just what a defective, inadequate, unfinished, incompetent, ignorant and wretched steaming pile of horse-dung the document was.

Just a few of the multitude of defects:

Not costed – even in general terms.

Little meaningful reference to cost-containment.

No meaningful identification or discussion of future funding streams or sources.

No detailed description of just how the oft-stated aim of “integrating health care” was actually to be achieved.

No detailed commitment to rigorous external inspection or investigation.

No discussion of how health-care spend be transparently and externally monitored, to ensure efficiency and value for money.

Not withstanding several years of discussions – absolutely zero detail on how the proposed social insurance scheme for continuing care for the elderly would be structured.

No meaningful solutions proffered to the stated problem of junior doctors and the European Working Time Directive.

No chapter on staff – an utterly astonishing omission – given that health & social care – more so than any other field of public sector activity – depends upon its staff.

Even more astonishingly – the complete omission of any chapter on mental health care.

It gets worse –

The draft had no chapter on Social Services.

And even more staggeringly – no chapter on the children’s services and child protection.

The draft document was so startlingly, appallingly bad as to be beyond parody.

And you – Dear Tax Payer – fork out many, many hundreds of thousands of pounds each year to employ these un-sackable clowns.

Stuart Syvret wrote:And you – Dear Tax Payer – fork out many, many hundreds of thousands of pounds each year to employ these un-sackable clowns.

Why is that the case then? If there is such a fundamental flaw perpetrated by quote "un-sackable clowns" unquote, as you state, as a politician, what are you to do about it?

I am genuinely intrigued and we should all be concerned if this is the case.

Stuart Syvret wrote:

And you – Dear Tax Payer – fork out many, many hundreds of thousands of pounds each year to employ these un-sackable clowns.

I agree with Dell on this, you say in your own blogg that you wrote a Document in March 2007 and now state that the states employ un-sackable clowns.

How can you as a leading politician state this surely if they were that bad you should of got them either dismissed or moved on. How can someone be unsackable?

Your comments are beyond me...

Thank you Pegasus, appreciate that I am not a lone voice here.........

I repeat, what are you doing about it Mr Syvret?

What am I doing about it?

Battling an ingrained culture of self-interest and invulnerability amongst the civil service.

Unfortunately - no politician - whoever they are and whatever their views - can win such a battle alone.

The fact is 90% of our politicians are simply terrified of the senior civil service.

In many cases this will be because they're simply too thick and weak to stand up to the clowns.

But in many other cases - the senior civil service have our "glorious leaders" over a barrel - because they know where the bodies are buried - metaphorically speaking.

How many "successful businessmen States members" are seriously going to challenge the civil service - when those civil servants are all aware of the various corruptions and crookery engaged in by many of our political clowns?

But setting all that aside - I think you need only consider what happened to me when I did exactly what you suggest - what no other States member - before or since - has done - and told the senior civil service they had failed catastrophically to provide professional standards of child protection.

I got the bullet - at the hands of the dopey herd of States members - because I was - supposedly - "undermining staff moral".

Tragically - we shall see during the next few days just who was right about the very expensive clowns in charge of H & SS.

Stuart

For example -

Oh hell my worst fears are coming true - the 'civil' servants are the tail that's wagging the dog.......please try not to let it happen Stuart.....I'm on your side

Thank you Stuart for your response.

I am somewhat perturbed that your reply appears to be very generic and 'bitter' against the system and Jersey senior civil servants. I am sure that you have examples but are unable to cite them for fear of civil litagation - but it is very worrying non-the-less!

Over in Guernsey we do not hear of anyone else speaking out about perceived failures and inept civil servants in Jersey. Are you a lone voice on a personal crusade due to personal reasons, or are there real problems in Jersey as you indicate?

Do we have the same issues in Guernsey, or are they confined to Jersey? I am sure that other members will have thoughts on this issue.