Letters: Nurses reply to Mary Dejevsky, and Iggy Pop’s sherry habit

Nursing standards

Sir: I share Mary Dejevsky’s concern regarding the impact of tired, overworked nurses on the quality of patient care (‘Short shrift for long shifts’, 6 October). However, it is unwarranted to blame nurses for detrimental work cultures when the contributing factors are complex. Nurses generally do not have a choice about the length of shifts they work. Shift lengths must be determined by patient needs and safety, and 12-hour shifts can be an essential part of their job, but hours of unpaid overtime where they cannot deliver care effectively and safely leave nurses burnt out and demoralised.

The Royal College of Nursing’s research showed that nurses are dealing with increasing workloads, lack of support from managers and, crucially, the inability to deliver the kind of care they would like. Over 80 per cent of nurses surveyed said that they had gone to work despite feeling too ill to do so because of their commitment to patients and overworked colleagues. Without the correct staff-patient ratios, longer working hours will continue and patient outcomes will suffer, as cited by Robert Francis’s report and findings from Sir Bruce Keogh and Professor Don Berwick. The RCN wants to see nursing staff able to deliver high quality care to patients and supports the implementation of the Francis report’s recommendations to help make this happen.
Dr Peter Carter
Chief Executive and General Secretary,
Royal College of Nursing, London W1

Persecution in the UK

Sir: John L. Allen’s excellent article on the plight of Christians (‘The new persecution’, 5 October) highlights an ignored and important subject, but it one respect it overlooks something very worrying. He writes that ‘the truth is that in the West, a threat to religious freedom means someone night get sued; in many other parts of the world, it means someone might get shot, and surely the latter is the more dramatic scenario’.