Sisters are not doing it for themselves

I feel the need to comment briefly on Libby Purves’ column in this morning’s Sunday Telegraph.

The picture of a nurse with thermometer in hand below a caption reading ‘Clean up your act, sisters’ caught my eye as I was browsing the comment and analysis pages towards the back, and usually less interesting, section of the paper.

Libby suggests that the nursing profession’s once-spotless image has been tainted by recent revelations of neglect. She tells the story of one dignified old man who constantly fell out of bed because the nurses wouldn't put safety sides on: they quite erroneously and lazily said it would impair his "human rights". He died, in the end, by slipping down the bed one night and choking because they weren't watching, preoccupied with gossip at the nursing station. Apparently another woman was left bare-bottomed in a mixed ward because the nurses couldn't be bothered to draw the curtain!

Last week's report from the Patients Association – coming after the dreadful evidence earlier this year about the failings of Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust – shows that, despite the majority of good nurses, there is a growing rottenness, a seed of disregard and inhumanity within the profession.

Why I feel the need to comment is because my mother was a nurse all her working life and even when she became a ward sister for the last 15 years of her stint her attitude never changed. She was very much a hands-on carer, often shopping for her patients, but always washing them, lifting them, joking with them and certainly changing beds when accidents occurred beneath the sheets and mopping floors when they occurred on the ward.

Today the domestic staff can be counted on to do many of the jobs previously performed by nursing staff but the truth is you rarely see a ward sister outside the safety of her office and nurses often ignore the ‘beckon buzzers’ if something else takes priority – like a tea break, crossword puzzle, sudoku!!

Yes I am being slightly facetious and making sweeping generalisations against the main body of excellent staff but as Libby states ‘It may represent only 2 per cent. But it's there. And once disregard, inhumanity and carelessness take root, they grow at frightening speed’.

The Government's chief nursing officer, Dame Christine Beasley, said recently on Radio 4 that nurses had a clear duty to report poor practice by their fellows – if they don't, "in my book they're as culpable as the person who did it". Dame Christine admitted that reporting colleagues is hard, "especially more senior ones – but that's no excuse".

So that’s the answer then – please please please report bad practice if you are among the 98 per cent of nursing staff who believe nursing to be a vocation. If you are a victim of bad practice then complain to the trust or health authority. If you are an auxiliary worker on a ward then report bad practice to your superior. You owe it to all those people like my mother who gave their life to a profession that made a difference to people’s lives and gave the nation as a whole a great boost and sense of pride.

I can tell you this – In many countries (and some that we might call third world) they are appalled at our lack of patient care in our hospitals and if you were to be sick in an Indian hospital for instance then you would be attended constantly by various medics until you feel becalmed and relatively happy. Dignity is the most valuable of commodities and the elderly, who are often held in reverence in some countries, are clearly being let down in the original home of democracy and freedom.