I read with interest the item last week about a Nurse being disciplined by the Nursing & Midwifery Council for failing to ensure a patient was adequately hydrated.
I also noted that this had been reported by a relative who was a Nursing Lecturer.
It seems every week we see failures in the most basic care being mentioned in newspapers or on television news programmes.
Many factors are identified as the cause of this, one of the main being shortages of staff.
I have always argued that it’s not the number of staff that matters, it is their quality that counts.
As a former semi–retired Nursing Lecturer myself I have applied for numerous middle management posts that I am more than qualified and experienced to do, yet I can’t even get short listed.
Maybe some people don’t want a former lecturer padding about their nursing home or ward critically scrutinising all that happens?
Personally I’d welcome it if I was a home manager and wanted good standards of care.
Yet the other day I saw an advert for a deputy manager role in a nursing home in Yorkshire that didn’t even require applicants to be a Registered Nurse but a Senior Care Assistant, who will not have been trained in management.
Beats me, really.
R Kimble, Leeds
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