Hancock ‘has Downton Abbey view of nurses’

MATT HANCOCK, the Health Secretary, has been criticised after saying that nurses still had to stand up when doctors entered the room in some NHS organisations.

In a speech to the Chief Nursing Officer for England’s summit in Birmingham yesterday, Mr Hancock praised the hard work and dedication of nurses and said they “often make better leaders than doctors”.

But he said that in some “antiquated, archaic corners of the NHS” nurses still stand up for doctors and he called for the practice to stop.

Mr Hancock said it was a throwback to the days when his grandmother, Pem Hills, was a nurse at the Pilgrim Hospital in Lincolnshire.

He said: “Nurses often make better leaders than doctors because you understand that caring for your staff is mission-critical for caring for your patients. You know hierarchy can be a hindrance to improvement.

“I find it shocking that, in my grandmother’s day, nurses were expected to stand up when a doctor entered the room. And worse, I find that’s still the case in some antiquated, archaic corners of the NHS. I want it to stop. If anything, it should be doctors standing up for nurses.”

His comments provoked derision on social media. David Oliver, an NHS acute hospital doctor for 30 years, said: “I have never ever seen or heard of such a thing in 30 years as an NHS doc. It isn’t Downton Abbey.”

Pete Deveson, an NHS doctor from Surrey, said: “Don’t want to say Matt Hancock is lying here, but I’ve been an NHS doctor for 19 years and this has literally never happened.”

GP Elisabeth Flett added: “Very much doubt the nurses are sitting down anyway!”

Patricia Marquis, the Royal College of Nursing director for England, said: “A bigger issue for nursing is the huge gap in the workforce – we have almost 40,000 vacant posts in England alone at the moment.”