"Not enough nurses and no visible management on…"

It’s obvious that all of the regular staff try their best with the resources they have. It’s such a shame that the nurses have to stay in the office doing paperwork for entire shifts. Purposeful engagement should be offered daily, but we don’t even know who our named nurses are. It feels like there are too many patients for the amount of allocated nurses, it would be nice to see nurses able to spend time interacting with patients and therefore improving patient recovery time by getting to know the individual they are then discussing in MDT’s, professional meetings, ward rounds and hand overs. There is a lot of agency HCA’s which makes it difficult to develop any trust as the regular nurses are rarely free for conversation.

There is sometimes a glimpse of the ward manager, who seems to be able to be involved in decisions about people she’s never had a conversation with. It would certainly improve the ward if the management were more visible and able to help out when the ward is short staffed or struggling due to incidents etc.

I struggle to believe that people became nurses to then just sit behind a desk and not interact with patients unless it’s extremely brief.

This is not meant as a negative review as I do believe the regular staff are trying their hardest. I just think that maybe SABP should rethink job roles and work out ways to engage more frequently with patients. Look at what worked at other hospitals and learn from each other. It would be good for the senior matron to make herself more visible and give opportunities to meet with patients about what does and doesn’t work.