Yorkshire Post

Nursing must be a vocation, not an academic discipline

- From: Terry Morrell, Prunus Avenue, Willerby.

AN excellent article by Professor Laura Serrant (The Yorkshire

Post, May 12) to coincide with Internatio­nal Nurses Day. What a pity that she emphasised that nursing is a profession when, in reality, it is a vocation. There is a considerab­le difference. In my opinion, that is what is wrong with our current care services.

Of course, we need welleducat­ed leadership and those with the exceptiona­lly necessary skills to operate some of those modern technical and, dare I say ‘ethical’ decisions which regularly crop up, not only in the political and leadership spheres, but increasing­ly in our day-today routine caring role.

However, the vast majority of nursing should be performed by people with dedicated understand­ing of what the patient needs and wants – people whose original and continuing objective is ‘care’.

Unfortunat­ely the General Nursing Council, the Royal College of Nursing and the Department of Health have elected for nursing to be totally academical­ly-oriented. This means that every qualified nurse now needs to have had a university qualificat­ion with only short periods of work experience.

Consequent­ly when nurses appear in the workplace newly qualified, they have virtually no ‘hands-on’ experience and are extremely reluctant to accept the basic role of ‘bedside’ caring necessitie­s.

Faced with the spectre of ‘getting one’s hands dirty’, many newly-qualified nurses opt to get out of the service in favour of using their newly acquired qualificat­ion as a meal ticket into some other related sphere or sign up to an agency where they can work on a ‘pick and choose’ basis, avoiding difficult roles.

Again in my opinion there two possible answers to the problem:

Every person wishing to attempt to become a registered nurse should spend at least six months on the wards in a supervised bedside role where they could discover what the job entails .

The role of ‘state enrolled nurse’ (SEN) should be reinstated, allowing many people to enter nursing without the necessity of high academic qualificat­ions. This would also not only improve the quality of ‘bedside nursing’ but would also remove the likelihood of leaving routine jobs to untrained assistants.

During the course of 40 years I have interviewe­d many people wishing to become nurses. The most important questions I asked were: “What is nursing and how do you see yourself in that role?” The answers were enlighteni­ng.

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