Be a Nice Nursey and You Get a Chocolate
Leave it to the British to come up with a great solution to nurses who are too tired, too overworked, and too poorly paid to “smile” at their patients. And what is this great solution? Why, you get free cappuccinos and chocolate chip biscuits if give your sick patients a great big toothy smile!
From the London Times:
A NATIONAL Health Service trust is offering nurses free cappuccinos and chocolate chip biscuits to encourage them to smile at patients.
King’s College hospital NHS Trust in London introduced the reward scheme after surveys raised concerns that nurses were not being nice enough to the sick.
One common complaint was that nurses almost ignored the patient and chatted about the person’s condition as if he or she were not present.
In recent years there have been growing concerns about nurses who are “too posh to wash” and prefer to spend their time on administrative and technical tasks rather than basic care.
Two years ago a resolution at the annual congress of the Royal College of Nursing proposed that nurses were now “too clever to care” and suggested that the compassionate part of their job should be delegated to healthcare assistants. The provocative motion was a reference to nurses increasingly concentrating on technical dutie
I guess the administrators in the UK are just as dumb as the ones here, and think that a free chocolate biscuit is going to make up for horrendous working conditions and mega-stress. And of course, buying a few lattes and snacks is a lot cheaper than actually paying the nurses a living wage or hiring new staff.
Have they even thought to ask why their nurses aren’t smiling and making kissy faces? Could it be that they are exhausted and totally fed up, and are getting ready to write their resignations? As in the U.S., many nurses are still working in hospitals simply because it pays better and they need to feed themselves and thier kids. And they haven’t left nursing because of poor economies. Voila, the reason they aren’t smiling is because they are stuck in a miserable job and can’t see a way out at the moment.
Apparently, the nurses don’t agree with this “solution” to the problem.
However, an editorial in Nursing Times magazine said nurses did not need bribes to be helpful and pleasant to patients. It said: “Excessive workloads and paperwork prevent nurses from spending time with their patients and caring for them properly. This is a fundamental problem that can never be rectified with a hot drink and a biscuit, or other such imports from industry.”