Objective. To change mental nursing from a job staff don’t enjoy, feel they were tricked into and can’t wait to escape from into one they do enjoy and intend to stay in because they’re now confident they have the support, freedom and trust to do their jobs properly.
To get from here to there, Britain would need to protect mental nurses better. A lot better. Protection from what though? Here’s a few. Violence. Media savaging, lies and smearing. Witch-hunts by management. Targets, in fact all QA data-gathering bullshit.
One of the essential culls we’ll need will be of QA, commissioning and all the other measuring and data apparatus that provides heaven knows how many parasites with better paid jobs than nurses and junior doctors!
But today I’m talking about protection from patient violence and threat.
The wards are not safe to work on because of a) worsening patient violence combined with b) rules forbidding staff to restrain, sedate and seclude violent patients and steadily stealing away the tools and resources necessary for same. (*a) See post series in categories ‘Restraint & seclusion’, ‘Violence’.
In order to reverse that NHS management, perhaps even the Minister, whoever he-she is this week, would need to cull every drop of those regulations and the power and glee of HR & management to enforce them against us.
But on top of that, a joined up Britain would have to start dismantling the legacy of decades of indulgent, weak, woke NHS and DOJ leadership, policing, prosecuting and sentencing. That is how these huge, unmanageable numbers of entitled, violent, uncontrolled, threatening patients who’ve been taught ‘you can’t do anything, you can’t touch me’ ‘especially if I is black/Muslim/gyppo/neurodivergent’ and so on and on and on. (*b)
One unpleasant and nation-impoverishing side-effect is the parasitical growth industry of legal chambers specialising in suing Trusts for ECHR breaches. A second is the H&S mindset that focuses on ‘safety’ and protection and harm-avoidance instead of behavioural change, growth and maturity.
*a) This is a neat quote summarising the conditions we now work under.
‘…thousands of nurses working in hazardous conditions with few reliable resources at their disposal to prevent and effectively manage violence toward themselves, their coworkers or patients in health care settings.’
From ‘An Evaluation of Four Programs for the Management of Aggression in Psychiatric Settings.’ Eileen F. Morrison and Colleen Carney Love. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing. Volume 17, Issue 4 , August 2003
*b) Not just mental patients, obviously, but locust hordes of entitled ++ criminals who our inexperienced and demoralised police have to manage with both hands tied behind their backs.
Worse, our glorious leaders have incentivised heaven knows how many chambers to specialise in taking legal action against NHS Trusts, using ECHR laws. Maggie’s poorly thought-out legal reforms sicked ambulance chasing solicitors on the NHS. That was in 1990. What we have now is infinitely worse. The threat of expensive legal action leads to Boards endangering staff by over-protecting violent patients. And as for the ECHR de-facto immunising anyone with a protected characteristic against arrest and prosecution, well there’s enough material for a ten-post series of how that works in MHS.
So, for us MHS staff working the wards and community to be able to do our jobs fully and safely, this has to change 180. We need unified, joined up DOJ and DOH protection taking care of us while we are at work. (I know, I know, but after the revolution …) We also need unions staffed and led by leaders and stewards with spines and balls of steel, who’ve been vaccinated against wokery. But for now, I’ll focus on how to reverse the tide of violence.
Continues in ‘How to get there from here 3. Protection Pt 2’
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