Abuse

We are such an angry nation us Brits. I see evidence for this every day, and participate in my own grumpy old man sort of way, to the decline of calm serenity that should be a rural middle age existence. Drivers barge past you in the queue for the petrol station. They flick you dirty looks when you wait at the zebra crossing with the dogs as if to say "how dare you disrupt my journey", and sighs abound when you are negotiating the narrow aisles of Sainbury's on a busy Thursday morning. I am as much to blame as other "irritated"members of the human race. I get irrationally angry when my beach walk is spoilt by other dog walkers (How dare they?) on the very public beach. When a car fails to stop when I am stood at the aforementioned crossing, my diastolic blood pressure is way over 200, and if you get an ambling mother with snails-paced stroller in front of me in the street, you couldn't wedge a piece of tissue paper in between my tuts of disapproval.

Generally though I think I am not overtly angry about life in general. Irritated by what I see as bad behaviour,- certainly, but I feel I have most things in some sort of perspective, a statement that most decent living people would probably agree with.

Unfortunately there seems to be a sub class in society that would not agree with this statement. People for one reason or another either cannot or will not control themselves. We as nurses experienced this rather black side of human nature on night shift

Two young men were admitted to intensive care for what was expected to be short term admissions following drug taking. During their "recovery," staff was subjected to a humiliating barrage of abuse,foul language,emotional and physical threats, not only from these patients but by a group of relatives that had accompanied them. Impotent, ill trained security staff were of no use and in the end (and two 999 calls later) two diminutive but very welcomed police women stormed onto the unit to arrest the most vocal protagonist, who was at this stage spitting at any nurse who was trying to help him.

What shocked me, wasn't the behaviour of the patients ( I am far too long in the tooth to be surprised by people suffering drugs or/and alcohol issues) but more the total lack of shame exhibited from these patients' relatives. Watching her son spit in the face of a 23 year old junior nurse, the mother was more interested in yelling about suing the trust for what she perceived as bad care, rather than apologising for her son's disgusting and unacceptable behaviour. And in that I guess lies the crux of the matter. This battling sub class actually does not see that angry exhibitions such as the ones we saw on night shift, are indeed wrong. To them, we are the enemy- Faceless and undeserving uniforms that are out to get them and therefore we get what we deserve in a "get them before they get you type- mentality".

I was glad that one nurse last night, near tears but defiant, turned round to this relative and said quite calmly "How very proud you must be of your son's behaviour". I know it didn't make a jot of difference, but for one brief moment her words stood up in support of doing and saying the right thing.