SIR, I don't know why Janet Macpherson thinks I assume
nurses have the power to admit mothers to hospital or keep them out. When I wrote, 'One nurse, thinking otherwise, can keep you out,' I was of course referring to a particular occasion (the child coming round from the anaesthetic), when,•in spite of what the Platt Report advises, a nurse can (and in my case did) do her best to keep you away. About general procedure, naturally there are hos- pital rules, but the points I was trying to make were, first, that these rules vary so much from hospital to hospital that it's a matter of luck and district whether your child is treated well or abomin- ably; and second, that whatever the rules, nurses may in practice get round them to suit their own notions (as in the hospital I stayed at our ward sister interpreted the rule of 'free visiting' as about two hours in the afternoon). What I find hard to understand is why the Ministry of Health, having accepted the enlightened recommendations of the Platt Report, doesn't tell the hospitals to apply them, instead of suggesting they should, as it did two years ago, and hoping for the best, which hasn't happened. Meantime children like mine (and other parents have written to me about it sinte my article appeared) keep suffering for it.--Yours faithfully,
ISABEL QUIGLY
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