One of the reasons I left nursing...

...is the many, largely unnecessary, courses nurses were suddenly  required  to go on. I think one of the things that finally finished me off was the so-called "reflective exercise". You "reflect" on a particular task, think about how it went, and then - wait for it - WRITE about it! Below is a summary of this wonderful innovation, which is, sadly, still alive and well. And downright ridiculous.

Identifying your feelings;

Evaluating the experience;

Analysing the experience;

Drawing conclusions, including alternative actions, that you could have taken;

Drawing up an action plan for the future.

 This, dear reader, is what used to be known as learning from experience. When my son B was a toddler, he put his fingers in a hot cup of tea (I know. My fault, but that's another story). He cried. Whenever I mentioned the word "hot" for the next few days, he cried again. He had learnt that tea is hot. Did he go away and think about it, and then write about it? No. Astonishingly, he didn't. He didn't need to. He had learnt. And he wasn't yet two years old. He's now a father of two himself, and he still doesn't put his fingers in hot cups of tea. Astonishing, isn't it?

But I, at forty-something, was expected to do go away and write about things I'd been doing for years, and reflect on them. And then write about them. I had four children, an overworked husband,  a job, and was also a Relate consellor and writer. I didn't have time to faff around doing this ridiculous thing I'd been told to do.

This has been brought to my mind because my daughter  is a practice nurse. She does a lot of cervical smears. She's been doing them for years. But - wait for it - she's now required to take a selection of these "experiences" and write about them.

Well, she's not going to do it. Neither would I. To use an expression beloved of of my eldest son (who doesn't put his fingers in hot cups of tea, either): I'd rather have bowel surgery in the woods with a stick. Really.

The current state of nursing

The recent publicity around the care of the elderly in care homes and hospitals has highlighted a growing problem in the health service: quite simply, nurses are no longer nurses.

I have had a bee in my bonnet about this for years as I have watched nursing move from a practical, hands-on profession to an all-graduate one, with disastrous results. Who hasn't heard tales of nurses chatting round the nurses' station while patients lie in their own excrement, or can't reach a glass of water? I have seen this for myself. It is not a lack of funds, or even a lack of staff (when I nursed back in the dark ages, we were often short of staff, but no patient ever went hungry or dirty) that is at the root of the problem. It is the lack of the right training and the right candidates. People who would make excellent nurses are deterred by lack of qualifications or the willingness to take a degree, and thus we are losing many caring young people who would make excellent nurses.

Once, I was proud to say that I was a nurse. Now, I feel a deep sense of shame that a profession which was once so great has fallen to such depths.

Ask yourself this. If you were in an aeroplane, would you rather be flown by a pilot who had a degree, or one who had learnt his skills in the cockpit? Flying aeroplanes is also a profession. A practical profession. I know which I'd choose.