My sister, a nurse at a busy inner-city hospital in South London, has e-mailed me the following comments to add to Dr Crippen's earlier post:
"He's right. The auxiliary staff working in NHS hospitals who describe themselves as 'nurses' really should not be doing so. 'Auxiliary nurses' - or 'healthcare assistants' to give them their correct title - often have no healthcare qualifications and receive no formal training.
"I can recall cases when auxiliary 'nurses' have been placed on wards whilst unable to even take a patient's blood pressure - one of the most basic elements of medical training.
"In one particular hospital in South West London, an auxiliary 'nurse' was asked to take a set of observations on a post-operative patient and as a result of her lack of medical training she failed to spot a major deterioration in a patient’s condition which ultimately resulted in them suffering a cardiac arrest.
"Yes, real nurses should go back to nursing and healthcare assistants should not be relied on unless they have successfully passed through a formally-assessed training programme to ensure they are fully competent before placing them in wards"
Clearly, it's more nurses we need, not a government whose policies place potentially dangerously unqualified staff on our hospital wards.
