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I wish I was.
We are now doing a lot of training for support workers who have now been told their role includes patient observations, but they have not had the clinical training to back this up so it is just numbers to them.

RoJo


Scare stories that happened where I used to work:
Nurses calls up, "Can you have a look at the ECG machine it is not working". Tech gets there. Nurse says "The patient's monitor has stopped working as well". Guess the common factor that had stopped working. The patients heart!

Call to tech, "The sats machine is reading low". Tech puts it on his finger, it reads fine, said to nurse "I think your patient needs oxygen" (their lips were blue). Nurse puts oxygen on to patient sats come up to normal. "Oh it is working OK" says the nurse and takes oxygen off patient and watches the sats fall again.

My opinion is that when nurse training was taken out of hospitals and put in to universities they lost all clinical skills.
PPS I am an ex nurse who saw this at first hand.

Bloody hell has no one in the UK heard of "clinical risk"?

The Oz nursing system has been Uni based for many years (15+) but also includes a large amount of time in associated hospitals under the watchful eyes of the nurse managers. Have to say that in this part of the world it seems to work reasonably well. There would be "hell to pay" if the sort of carry on that you describe occurred and the staff in question would be either undergoing re-education quick smart or find themselves at the dole office just as fast

Sorry folks, just realised that the comment above will bring on another one of Geoff's rants about falling standards, immigration, the good old days, etc, etc.....

My apologies in advance

I think a few extreme examples should not taint a whole profession but as I said my personal feeling is that clinical standards have fallen and it is not the nurses fault, they are not being taught the correct things.
I hear a lot of student nurses complaining that they are taught a lot of theory about interpersonal relationships and similar airy-fairy topics and not practical skills like how to operate a BP machine.

Is it because the universities are business that get paid by numbers and not results and standards? Hence they want to look good by having lots of passes and get more students through rather than aiming for academic achievement?

RoJo

And back to topic:-
Hence the need for a lot of Medcial Device (and other clinical) training

We have here an education department as many of you may have. I asked the question of them 'Who trains the staff on the safe use of equipment', 'not us we only make sure they are up to date' was the answer. Well then who teachs them, 'Reps or themselves was the answer'.
So I have to say why are we paying alot of people to push paper around under the disguise of an education department.

The staff need shown how to operate equipment especially how to plug it in to charge!!!

We have had doctors here trying that Funks, and also blaming a defib for not bringing back to life someone with a flat line. So it isnt just the nurses.

As has been stated we can only train them on how to operate the equipment safely and someone else has to train them on what type of patient the equipment should be used on.

Some of above posts remind me of a nice cartoon that an Egyptian biomed once showed me:-

It was labeled "The Biomed". If you can imagine an "atlas" type figure, down on one knee, back stooped and carrying the whole hospital on his shoulders ... well, no doubt you get the idea.

@Billy: how can that be? Surely the nurses all have degrees now, just like the doctors? But (when all else fails) don't forget:- "Monkey see, monkey do"!

@Dave: Public Sector staff in the UK don't get fired. Instead "lessons get learned", don't you know.

@Dave: yes, many "adjustments" (in plain English:- looking the other way whilst standards of care have fallen) have been made to accommodate the overwhelming numbers of immigrants who have been "welcomed" to these shores. And not only in the healthcare sector. If apologies are due, then surely they should be coming from successive so-called "governments" who have sold us down the river!

But fear not! For the way things are looking just at the moment, they'll need to be bringing back conscription soon. At least that might make a start in sorting the wheat from the chaff, especially if all those with "right to remain" are included (in which case, stand by for a mass exodus)!

As if to support what I'm saying above ... check out the comments here.

Training is as far as I am concerned is a function of management and it is not down to any one individual to award competence. Why is it when there is equipment training to be done it falls to the technician/engineer to come up with the solution and the infernal arguement about who signs who off as competent?!
It is no different within the decontamination/CSSD/dental decon where standards of training are noticeably lacking in some areas.
Quick rant over!!

If there is no device training how do people answer CQC outcome 11c?
RoJo