Are we turning back to a Victorian Society?

Question

There was an interesting series on the BBC a while ago about hospital life in the Victorian age, are our hospitals regressing instead of progressing?

Views ta very much.

Answer 1

No, i'm a nurse, hospitals are not regressing, what a foolish comment.

Answer 2

What seems to have happened in the NHS is an emphasis has been place on meeting targets, passing exams and not looking after patients.

Nursing is a vocation and not a profession.

In my opinion there seem to be far too many people, esp. here in UK, who look back with nostalgia to a time before, such as the Victorian era, when UK was at the top of the heap.

For the Common People there was very little good about the Victorian era - most people did not even have a vote, in spite of what people may think today.

Here is a Victorian statistic - in Victorian London, the average life expectancy of a London Docker was 26 years.

I'm a cleaner and know from experience that my local hospitial is filthy.  Why?  When I was last in there visiting a friend, two women were busy mopping the floor with Kentucky mops.  They were trailing black filth across the ward floor.

Also, since I have a lot of experience at cleaning PC keyboards, I have to report that the PC keyboards in the A&E (accident and emergency) (ER - American) are covered in hairy filth.

The doctors and nurses in the A&E all wear green disposable gloves.  They wear these gloves to type at their PCs.  Wearing the same gloves they then go and touch the patients, then to back to the keyboards and then go and touch another patient.  

Disease is thus spread around the hospital.

Let me be absolutely clear about this - the PC keyboard has more bugs and germs on it than the average lavatory seat.

The problem of the spread of disease (MRSA etc) in our hospitals is due to lack of propertly supervised cleaning methods.

The UK.gov says it is going to start immediate surface cleans of all wards.  When?  Now is too late, yesterday was too late.

What needs to be done about the cleaning regime in our hospitals, is a complete change of attitude - get rid of the private cleaning companies and return to the carbolic soap and scrubbing brush methods of the past with in-house cleaning staff directly on the payroll of every hospital in the land.

Do it now.

We have a situation here in UK where no one wants to go into hospital for fear of dying from MRSA or worse.

Many thousands die each year of diseases which they have caught in hospital and not from their original illness.

Time to cut the c**p and get on with it.

Answer 3

Have to agree with Stormy on this one. Matrons were Matrons and woe betide any slap happy nurses ! They did the best with what they had and we do the worst with the best we have. I am not a trained nurse but I have nursed patients with MRSA that have come to us from a general hospital and we have done a better job according to some doctors. Maybe because we have more time to take with patients. It seems to be more about reaching targets than actually having the time to do the caring part that nurses are good at.

Answer 4

Depends on the country. it all comes down to economic strength.

Answer 5

The BBC likes to act as the propaganda mouthpiece of the Labour party

Labour would like nothing more than to condemn the NHS like this so it can sell them off

Be wary of believing the BBC

I would not be alive today if it was not for the NHS and neither would many others here. The idea that its standards are poor is ridiculous. people are not lying in the corridors on stretchers for days like they are in even Ireland, a country at the moment even more wealthy than we are

Answer 6

No,....  If we were, there wouldn't be as much murder and mayhem on the streets - they'd be locked-up.

Kids would know their place, and wouldn't be terrorising the streets, getting drunk, robbing people and knifing each other.

Come to think of it,..............  Bring back some Victorian values.!!

Answer 7

No way LBJ ~ the Victorians actually valued the patients life and employed a nurse to tend to them, a matron to be in charge and a cleaner to do their best with the products available at the time!

Answer 8

hospitals may be, but attitudes to s*x arent

i very much doubt you could get childrens t shirts in victorian times with "future p**n star" printed on them

Answer 9

Two questions here methinks. Victorian society ? probably yes. We have areas of our cities populated by prowling gangs with little or no education, whose sole aim in life is to have an aggressive dog and behave exactly as they wish.

We have employers who try and s***w as much out of there workers as they can and god help you if you are sick or have family commitments. To cap it all, we have a government (I wont use the word Labour as it doesn't seem appropriate) Which believes in Private wealth and public poverty.

As to the hospitals and health care in general, going back to matron is a pointless idea. This mythical cure-all  angel is a thing of the past. Nursing is more than just keeping the workplace clean and sharp crisp sheets they carry out far more important clinical tasks today, many of them  formerly performed by doctors.

It is far better to employ more staff nurses and have in-house NHS cleaning and catering staff who are well paid, valued and accountable to ward management.

Finally, If like in the Victorian era we rely on  private sector money to build our hospitals, as with the private finance initiative we'll be using our future health budgets to pay off the loans.

Well I must close now to remove my starched nurses dress and put on my false mutton-chop whiskers as we're off to wreck some of them new fangled looms.

Answer 10

You know that's quite an interesting viewpoint my friend, and I believe that in many ways yes perhaps we are.