Tea and Toast

Little one sr. is poorly now. Bless him, he is really struggling and can't even hold the calpol down. He is sitting on the big bucket chair at the moment, frowning and chucking out questions like "why does glass break and plastic bend?" and "why can't I use the bleach spray to clean?", he can be a bit leftfield sometimes.
Little one jr. seems very happy to have recovered and is spending lots of time shouting and smiling.
Still haven't got round to planting my new plants, it is raining now and due to the washer still not being fixed I am wearing a mini dress inappropriate for a thursday at home, add poorly child to the mix and doing the gardening is seeming increasingly unlikely.
Back to work in less than two weeks, not sure how I feel about this. Partly some relief at being able to get out a bit more and partly guilt/gut wrench from the kids.
I do like my job, feel lucky to have it but find the system I work in increasingly frustrating. It actually feels like there are systems in place to stop the NHS from working effectively, putting staff in the position where they are squabbling about the boundaries of their own responsibility rather than actually ensuring that the patients receive appropriate and timely treatment.
Currently there is a phrase in use "care in the least restrictive environment", this means "care in the cheapest environment", and is used to encourage you to take "therapeutic risks" which are really just "risks".
I sometimes get the feeling that the job I do should really be done by a doctor, not that the quality of assessment would neccesarily be better (although doctors as a general rule to have a depth and breadth of knowledge that most nurses do not) but because "the management" still have some respect for the medical profession and do not subject them to the same pressure to downplay their assessments. Still despite not always being able to provide a much more than barely adequate service I can still give people in distress tea and thick white buttered toast and that is something that doctors seldom do. Management would probably not approve of the toast, the tea and toast is probably "off message". I keep quiet about the tea and toast.


Oh - and the washer has been condemned....bugger!