Introduction

I am currently a nurse on a busy inner London hospital. A hospital that is smack in the centre of a diverse community ranging from Orthodox Jews to  African and Caribbean blacks, a hospital who’s management does not represent its community at all.

I have stories to tell you of racism, white fragility and black rancour .

Stories about staff  mostly black that have been abused and so overwhelmed they act as if they suffer with Stockholm síndrome and all of this going trough a pandemic that killed dozen of their colleagues because there was no PPE for frontline staff  also mostly black.

This is not a story of just racism or abuse , this is a story of an NHS that is crumbling and taking its staff down with it , unless you are senior management and directors .

I will tell you about patients getting substandard care and partner agencies demanding more than we can give .

I will tell you about commissioners asking for more services all while cutting the budget and I will tell you how I get home everyday gasping for a glass of wine in desperate need to swallow all the crap that was shoved down my throat on any  given day.

join me on this ride and buckle up!

Chapter 1

Aurélia is gunning for me.

This chapter is about Aurelia( I have changed all names)

Aurélia is a Band 7 nurse in the  school health service , as a band 7 she leads a mixed skill team of nurses and assistants and manages around 25 registered schools and some 12 independent schools.Aurélia herself discharges the role of safeguarding nurse for 7 schools as well as team leader, practice teacher and safeguarding supervisor . It’s a lot , but it does not all happen at the same time or everyday , you just need to know what hat you are wearing and on each day.

A school nurse is a specialist nurse post registration with the NMC( nurse and midwives council)

she is a specialist public health nurse, or meant to be. Anyway more on that  later.

For some time now I have notice Aurelia is inappropriate in how she speaks to me , how she does not respond to my emails, does not suggest or contribute any ideias in team meetings but is the first one to shut other ideais down repeatedly , specially if they are mine.

Aurelia complained to my manager that I am singling her out, being unfair to her because I allocated her 7 schools and other colleagues only 6 or 5, I am apparently waving of her concerns and issues and she does not know why, now for clarity when allocating schools you take into consideration how many children in each schools have a safeguarding concern, how many staff are you managing, the size of the schools etc. It’s based on data, on numbers and not on how much you like the person. Aurélia could not care about processara-me data , she wants what she wants .

I now feel under attack and as if she is preparing a bullying claim against me , let me not forget to tell you that all of this came out as a scathing attack publicly in a management meeting twice.

Aurelia has it in for me , I know she wants my post , which by the way she discharged as an interim while they recruited me. She did it for over 12 months but still could not succeed while I came in as an external candidate and got the job.

phew I can only imagine her dislike of me.

Anyway Aurelia could not be shut down and it  took my manager 4 attempts at getting her attention and telling her that the  conversation was not happening in the right venue. The allocation of schools was going to be reviewed this half term anyway ( October break) and me and my boss have stated that a thousand times , so we told her that it was going to happen… again .  I made some changes to accommodate madams desires and sent out for review . It came back unsatisfactory , Aurelia does not want the biggest school taken away , the one with the most number of safeguarding children and causes her stress and exhaustion….. but your life revolves around how stressed and unwell and busy you are , and that you can no longer manage your caseload? …. Ok this big school is shared with  her friend , her  friend manages the healthcare needs in the school and together they are the school nurses for the big school.

Fine,  I asked her since she know her team so well she should guide me or make suggestions and change the allocation herself to speed up the process.

in your dreams , she vomited back  an email saying she has made suggestions in the past and just want to confirm that I should not take big school away from her friend as there are many needs there.
I am pulling my hair , what does she want from me ?  She has humiliated me , spoken over me and disrespected my authority.

my boss wants me to have mediation with her and HR.

God help me !

Tell  you more later , I need to top up my glass.