Using patient’s first name is definitely NOT good manners

CONTRARY to what the HSE might believe, addressing adults by their first name instead of the over familiar ‘dear’ or ‘love’ is questionable.

It is not according to the rules of good manners respectful at all. Adults should be addressed initially as Mr/Mrs/Ms, and thereafter by their first name with permission. This is particularly the case where there is a large gap in age between the patient and the caregiver. Sad to say, I don’t know if we will ever again see proper respect accorded to older people by younger people in our part of the world.

JOAN GRENNAN, Sligo. …I FOUND your article about the HSE training its staff to no longer refer to patients as ‘love’ or ‘dear’ very interesting (Daily Mail, Monday). It is something I have been very annoyed about for a long time. Personally I would not allow a nurse, a doctor or anybody else refer to me as love or any similar term.

They would not refer to a hospital consultant with such a term, so they should not refer to patients like this either.

I have seen cases where young hospital staff have addressed elderly patients as ‘love’ and ‘pet’ and I believe this is very disrespectful.

So it’s good to know I am not the only person who really dislikes these so-called friendly terms.

I totally disagree with Mary Carr from the same day’s paper, who does not have a problem with being addressed in this manner and believes others should not be bothered either. Well done HSE for listening to patients.

JIM MORRISON, by email. …WHAT is happening to our country? Now its an offence to call a patient ‘love’ or ‘dear’!

What else will they come up with? Why not concentrate on the long, long waiting list for surgery and other procedures?

I suppose they will spend a fortune ‘training’ staff to be straightfaced and proper and not to dare show a little bit of kindness and understanding.

What harm can it be to say love or dear to some frightened elderly man or woman?

It just gives them a little bit of human care, not textbook language. Political correctness taken to another level. It beggars belief if this nonsense is the priority of the HSE. MARION FEELEY, by email.

The nuclear option

I FELT compelled to write this after hearing all the debates on how to cut emissions or risk the future of humanity and realising one topic is never mentioned.

I hear the same old platitudes trotted out, from the economically crippling carbon taxes, to the massively inefficient renewables, or the laughable cow flatulence.

But I never hear that the quickest, cheapest and most effective way to stop burning fossil fuels is to build a nuclear reactor.

Of the major industrialised nations, the ones with the lowest emissions, such as France and Japan, are heavily dependent on nuclear power.

But anti-nuclear sentiment has for so long been a sacred cow of the environmentalists that they can’t conceive that it might but part of the solution.

One reason why so many people ignore climate change warnings is that they’ve been listening to dire warnings about nuclear energy from the same people for 60 years. But in that time there has only

What do YOU think?

been one true horror Chernobyl.

If we want to see how safe modern nuclear reactors have become, look at Fukushima, a power plant hit by the biggest earthquake in Japanese history, then by a massive tidal wave. The result? Not a single fatality!

So if anyone out there claims to care about climate change, I urge them to realise that nuclear power might just be the lesser evil. PETER COSGROVE,

Co. Wexford. story,