Nurses held back

sir – Mike Adams, the Royal College of Nursing’s England director, is reported (January 2) as saying that a shortage of nurses will prevent the operation of Nightingale hospitals to cope with surging Covid cases.

It is more than a little strange that the Royal College of Nursing and the Nursing and Midwifery Council have stopped the 20,108 student nurses volunteering to be seconded into the front-line salaried NHS workforce, and also blocked any deployment of the 90,000 nursing students into NHS employment.

Perhaps the Department of Health and Social Care might care to intervene and overrule this blockage.

Dr Tim Bradshaw

Uxbridge, Middlesex