WRIGHT ANGLE

Stephen Wright’s monthly take on nursing in the news

Nurses of my generation must admit to misdeeds Liberal Democrat veteran Lord Ashdown this month announced the death of the public’s belief in institutions – everything from the NHS and BBC to the police, politicians and priests. Scandals have worn down the public faith in, and deference to, the professional classes and organisations that govern our lives. But in his interview with the Times, Lord Ashdown is wrong in one respect – this is a not a new phenomenon. Known by sociologists as the ‘subjective turn’, the rejection of the authority of the ‘powers that be’ has been accelerating for many decades. Lord Ashdown also joined the chorus of voices claiming that nurses are not as caring as they used to be. He is reported to have said: ‘Nurses were angels but some turn out to be witches.’ Apart from the rampant sexism and stereotyping in such a remark, I need to say again that there is just no evidence that nurses today are any less caring than our predecessors. Some, and this includes nurses, have blamed the rise of failures in care on nursing graduates. This flies in the face of the fact that most of the recent high profile cases have either been committed by nursing assistants or nurses who were trained before graduate programmes got under way. It is insulting to suggest that a nurse with a degree is any less caring than a non-graduate of the ‘old school’.

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It is also a denial of the truth of our history, and it is time more nurses of my generation confessed to the horrors we perpetrated on patients. I remember regularly putting up camp beds without protest down the middle of wards to accommodate extra emergency patients (with no extra staff), giving extra oxygen to breathless patients who then promptly died, slapping all sorts of evidence-less substances on the countless pressure

THERE IS JUST NO EVIDENCE NURSES TODAY ARE ANY LESS CARING THAN IN THE PAST sores we helped create, ‘rubbing’ pressure points, dragging patients up and down and in and out of bed using the ‘lifting’ techniques we were taught. There were many reports of neglect in those times, most notably in the book Sans Everything by Barbara Robb, published in 1967, and Hospitals in Trouble by John P Martin, published in 1984. No, we are no worse than we ever were. It is just that there are systems and methods in place – from the Care Quality Commission to fly-on-the-wall documentaries, from more empowered patients to professional supervision – that mean we cannot keep it all hidden away like we used to. And thank God for that. It is human to care and it is human to fail, and it is time more of the nurses of the older generation dropped our fantasies about the old days and spoke the truth. It would be one way we might show our support for the practising nurses of today.

NURSE CAVELL NOT KITCHENER SHOULD GRACE NEW £2 COIN

In 1914 men from my grandparents’ families went to war and never came back. The ‘war to end all wars’ turned out to be anything but; my dad fought in the next one in 1939. He survived, adamant in his view that wars wasted the lives of ordinary people, forced to fight on behalf of the elite. Writing in the Daily Mail this month, education secretary Michael Gove branded ‘left wing’ views, such as those held by my dad, unpatriotic. Unlike Mr Gove, my dad actually fought in a war. Those who do so tend to see things differently from those for whom it is mere theory. Edith Cavell nursed men from both sides, and was executed for doing so in 1915. First world war militarism will be celebrated by a £2 coin depicting Lord Kitchener. Can we get Edith Cavell on the coin instead? Thousands of people have already signed a petition for it. Go to: tinyurl.com/lzy6hlx

It’s time to legislate on sugar in food This month included national obesity awareness week and with its launch came the revelation that the UK is heading for a public health disaster. Obesity-related diseases such as stroke and diabetes are escalating and increasing evidence points to the addictive qualities of sugar. The National Diet and Nutrition Survey says a typical 15-year-old British boy has a 40kg-a-year sugar habit. With sugar, we are now where we were with tobacco 50 years ago. With the latter we learned that fierce legislation was the answer if we were to improve public health – and governments must now act with equal determination on sugar.

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Nurses of my generation must admit to misdeeds.

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