"Did the job but......"

Anything else?

Recently had major surgery, after a long wait, and am now, thankfully, recovering. I am a trained nurse myself, although not now working in health care. The care in the high dependency unit was excellent, but I found things were very different on the general ward. Many small aspects of daily care surprised and concerned me. I am fully aware that when I trained, there were many more student nurses on each ward, and we were more fully involved in patient care. However, some of the staff seem to prioritise paperwork over actual patient care, show lack of understanding of individuals' conditions, and endlessly referred to patients by bed number (not even "the patient in bed 6a" but just "6a" for instance). There was much evidence of poor, or even no, communication, and I was truly stunned by some episodes of extremely poor practice in hygiene. I realise that the NHS is very different from when I last worked in it seven years ago, but many of the things I witnessed have no financial implications in their correction. I wonder if it is more an issue with staff morale, and feel really sorry for these hard-pressed individuals.