Nurses are more than just substitute surgeons
sir – Under new NHS proposals, nurses are to be trained to carry out operations in order to slash waiting times (report, February 22). Between October and December last year, NHS England recorded 23,503 cancelled operations (up 3,337 on the same period in 2018).
While the Government’s ambition to deal with surgical waiting times should be welcomed, training nurses to perform operations will not help.
The current problem has been caused in part by clinicians’ reluctance to undertake extra work because of changes to the taxation of pension contributions. This has been particularly noticeable in anaesthetics, where shortages in consultant staff had been covered by extra duty payments. The reluctance of anaesthetists to undertake extra work has led to the cancellation of routine (and in some cases cancer) operations. This will continue whether a nurse or doctor is performing the operation until the issues relating to the annual allowance are addressed.
In addition, there has been a failure by the NHS to plan for the recruitment of new theatre staff. This has been compounded by the difficulties in recruiting and retaining nurses.
Training nurses to undertake surgical procedures will further accentuate the shortage of valuable nursing staff by taking them away from challenging areas such as emergency departments and hospital wards. It will also deny surgical trainees vital opportunities to learn and develop.
Mark Davies FRCS Swansea
sir – I served for 22 years in the Royal Navy, the majority of those years as an operating technician/nurse.
Along with others, our role could include “taking” the case, having responsibility for the security of swabs, instruments and suture needles and reporting accordingly to the surgeon. This would sometimes be when the surgeon would be going solo for the first time.
I believe that the new surgeon felt more assured, knowing that they had assistance from someone who had a few of these procedures under their belt – but if things really became problematic, the consultant surgeon would be available.
Philip C Reeves RN (retd) Northampton