Fully agree are the Nurses putting patients first?. 12 hour shifts are a must with the legal allocated breaks given combined with some attitude issues dealt with.

I had an elderly relaitive in hospital for 4 weeks before she died i found the whole experience awful from the truculent poor attitude from SOME staff where in my opinion the fact the patientl was a human being was being ignored.

Greeted by a nurse with "oh god i hate working weekend"s " really well i would imagine most patients hate being in hospital and would much rather be working or with their family instead .

Care in the NHS is not what good medical care one of the worlds best in the world , compassion and understanding from SOME nurses shocking and non existent .

I am a member of staff from PRH who works 12.5 hour shifts. These are far better than the 7.5hrs both for staff and patients. When we did a late finishing at 9.30pm followed by an early there was not time to wind down in between, your sleep was poor and you still felt tired when you came to work at 7am. You felt that although it is a 24 hour service that you had to get all of the jobs done on an early shift so job satisfaction was poor as you could not achieve this. If a patient felt that they did not want a wash in the morning but would have it in the afternoon - this was difficult to accomodate as you would not be there and felt that they might miss out completely. Doing 12.5hrs you can spread and pace your workload better, there is continuity of care and when the relatives visited you know exactly what has gone on that day without having to look through notes which takes time. The patients also know who there nurse is for the whole day. You never work more than 2 days in a row - unless by choice. You only work 3 shifts most weeks with 4 days off. Nurses have been spoken too individually by their managers and everyone I speak to is keen to do these shifts. Where I work , if you asked them to go back to the old system they would refuse, they much prefer the 12.5 hour shifts.

I am getting very confused. It does seem from the above comments that the ward staffs are already working 12 hour shifts so there is no change???

My experience of Shrewsbury when my mother was admitted was that all the staff were fantastic in their efforts to care for mother but the system was against them. A & E the first day, assessment unit the second day, cardiac unit for treatment when she should have been in the stroke but they had no beds. Finally got to the stroke unit two days before discharge. The problem we did experience was that briefing information we gave them was not carried forward in every move so we had to rebrief them continuously. I have no idea of the shift patterns in all of the wards but staffing was not consistent due to the different days they worked. I assume that 12 hour shifts means only three days and therefore there must be at least 3 different nurses twice a day so 6 nurses per week per ward and 3 weeks in 4 wards means at least 12 different nurses had care of mother in two and half weeks.

The fact is that the hospital was bulging at the seems with patients and bed management was the biggest problem. Given the number of moves and nurses which occured the problems in the hospital are not significantly effected by the shift patern. Even if it were it seems that the changes are already in place and did not solve anything.

Utter rubbish! you cannot convince me or the masses that working a 12.5hour shift is good for anyone. After being on duty for 12 hours your reflexes, brain or decision making is completely reduced. Eight hour shifts and you still end your day as good as you started in the brain capacity, you may be tired but you still function correctly. How can anyone state that 12.5 hour shifts is acceptable is completely beyond me, and yes in a different profession i do 12.5 hour shift and im completely whacked at the end of it!

Reference nothings free,so your opinion is to threaten employees or get the sack? what utter garbage you spout, the professions you state have regular downtime, do you think a nurse would?? not only that but it is a backward step, put it this way, if your child was being cared for by someone who had been on their feet for 12 hours and a mistake was made one of the first things to be said would be tiredness. Why is it more of a requirement now anyway??