"This experience made me ashamed to be a nurse"

My friend, for whom I became a carer, was diagnosed with a secondary brain tumour or was it inflammation? No one could give a definitive diagnosis (until post-mortem - and then too late) and thereby lies the problem.

Had the cancer been diagnosed, she could have spent her end days in a hospice instead of the dreadful nursing home: the medics saying that was the only place for her to be. This was the nursing home who failed to hydrate her, who overdosed her with laxatives and she was admitted to hospital in a dreadful state.

We had been unable to visit because of yet another outbreak of Norovirus so we could not see how badly she was dehydrated. She could only access the hospice or the palliative care nurses IF a diagnosis of cancer had been made.

All the months she was shunted from acute hospital to specialist hospital to convalescent hospital, I can count on the fingers of one hand the kind, efficient nurses she encountered. In one place, she was told to wait for her painkillers as the nurse was busy! In another, she was given her painkiller tablets while sitting on the lavatory! My expression of surprise was treated to a raised eyebrow-glare.

In one place, her purse was stolen. This in a ward closed because of infection, but she asked us not to pursue this as she was being given the cold shoulder...what kind of person chooses to do this to a very sick lady?

The only way to resolve all these awful stories is to revise the recruitment and training of the nurses along the lines of care & aptitude and not academic achievements.