LETTERS Nursing grievances
Sir: Seldom have I read such a nasty and inaccurate piece of invective as your lead- ing article of 28 May, and can only hope that some balance will be struck by allow- ing a nurse to present some counter views.
Briefly, the 'nursing process' is the means whereby the needs of an individual are assessed, care is planned in conjunction with each patient, such plans are im- plemented and evaluated. Far from being new, this method of thinking will be familiar to Socratic scholars.
Nurse educators are perhaps more famil- iar in the guise of the Sister Tutor; the nurse who after further education is also a qualified teacher. Those with degrees from institutions of higher education have usual- ly studied in their own time and at their own expense for such qualification and thus subsidise the NHS to an extent un- known in any other area of public service.
The RCN is indeed both a professional body and trade union. Just like the BMA it had to register as such in 1974.
While nursing is an amalgamation of the application of practical skills, each ward sister requires the intellect to organise all the care prescribed by the myriad people who are involved in the diagnosis and treatment of a patient. Those with uncom- plicated illness are just as entitled to be looked after by an intelligent nurse as those in 'the farthest and most specialised reaches'. From the tone of the article I assume it to have been written by a member of the medical profession. It certainly demonstrates the attitudes that drive so many out of nursing and into work where intelligence is valued.
Having worked as a nurse and now teacher in the NHS since 1965, I have many reasons to find fault with prevailing systems but I can only welcome the demise of the 'hand-maiden' who was expected to pay more attention to the needs of the doctor than those of the patient, and this may be the crux of the writer's complaint.
Far from making common sense arcane we are striving to ensure that by education, nurses understand why people become ill and no longer indulge in the rituals that label a person 'the gallbladder in the corner'. It also means of course that the nurse will no longer blindly follow orders nor be a convenient scapegoat to be sacrificed in the law courts when patients sue, and if nursing records are more complete and more accurate than those of the doctor the remedy is in other hands. In a journal of your usual high standard I hope never again to find such distortion and untruth.
Aileen K. Bates
Broompark , Clockston Road, Galston, Ayrshire
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