Lack of respect and understanding of health staff’s vital role

I READ with incredulity Jane Dowle’s article (Yorkshire Post, September 17) entitled “Nurses should be taught a lesson in kindness”. What an onslaught of disparagement to the nursing profession! Her main grievance seems to be based on the experience of her father not being helped with dressing before going home.

Our nurses are skilled people who train for three years to obtain their initial qualifications, followed by seemingly endless courses to update and upgrade the skills learned to keep abreast of all new procedures and developments. A person with such skills is not needed to help an elderly man “struggling to put on his shirt”. May I suggest that this was a job for a Health Care Assistant, or even the patient’s wife, daughter or son.

When my own mother was in hospital some years ago, my sisters and I made it our business to attend the ward whenever possible at mealtimes in order to feed her, help that was greatly appreciated by the staff. Most hospital wards looking after the elderly will recognise any practical help that relatives can give to patients, to enable the experts to concentrate on the more important jobs.

As a journalist, perhaps Ms Dowle might ask if she could shadow a nurse for a day, so that she had a little respect and consideration for the work that is performed. She ends by saying: “The best nurses know that kindness costs nothing at all.”

I cannot disagree with that, but would counter it with a quote from Canadian physician William Osler: “The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.”

From: David F Chambers, Sladeburn Drive, Northallerton.

the ambulance service, beyond almost any other, has developed and improved strikingly over 
the years.

Not so long ago, the word “paramedic” was unknown in this country, whereas today ambulance staff are saving 
lives and providing reassurance and pain relief on a daily 
basis.

Government savings policy proposes massive reorganisation of the service involving the closure of more than 60 ambulance stations in 
Yorkshire. The service as it 
stands is admirable – to mess 
it up will cost lives and 
probably reduce devoted staff 
to despair.

To boast a good NHS demands a great deal of money, as other nations have recognised. I feel there is a need for vigorous protest in the case of the ambulance aervice, but sadly at these times the views of local management, “hands-on” staff and past patients such as myself are first encouraged and then brushed aside, and no doubt the bizarre “money-saving” changes will duly take place.