Carry on nurse

Is it only me.........but shouldn't nurses be doing this already?

I see that in their latest flurry of we-have-to-be-seen-to-be-doing-something activity, the Two Caesars have decreed that our nurses must now to stop and chat with us at least once an hour. Seemingly it is all about improving patient care in our hospitals.

I suppose that it will still be ok for nurses to keep food out of reach of elderly patients until it gets cold, fail to move them until they get pressure sores or even make them a cup of tea or even offer thirsty patients water, so long as they are getting their hourly chat.

It staggers me that our micro-managed society needs to set a standard nurses to have a chat with patients. Do you think they had a Summit before coming up with this wheeze?

I hear a noise off. It is sound of Mary Seacole, Florence Nightingale and Hattie Jacques turning on their graves.

Surely it is part of DNA of being a nurse to care for your patients? Should it not come automatically to nurses to chat with those in their care? If not, why are you a nurse?

Now already those who shop steward the nursing profession (and by the by if you are a profession you shouldn’t need shop stewards) are bleating about lack of resources and the Two Caesars need to allocate more of our money and other such poppycock.

It costs nothing to share a smile and a word of kindness, care and empathy with those in our society needing the most care on an hourly basis or even when it is required. Seacole, Nightingale and Jacques knew this and that is why they are still remembered to this day. They didn’t need to be told what to do. It came naturally to them.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.