Letters
We welcome all readers’ letters, but reserve the right to edit them or withhold names and addresses. Please email: [email protected]
Please keep letters to a maximum of 150 words, and include your full name, address and a daytime telephone number
Health care of future generations lies in the hands of today’s nurses Well done, RCN general secretary Peter Carter and Zeba Arif, deputy chair of the RCN forensic nursing forum, for providing us with some much-needed leadership on the matter of the removal of our NHS by stealth (Reflections May 7). I have been a nurse for 33 years and have never before thought of striking. I was a nursing student during the 1980s and saw the effect of strikes on patients and nurses. But what is happening to today’s NHS is making me think again. Seventy per cent of NHS contracts are going to private companies, which satisfies the World Health Organization definition of privatisation. Staff are being made redundant, emergency departments and hospital wards are being closed, and vacancies left unfilled. We live in momentous times. The Health and Social Care Act has changed things fundamentally by removing the government’s duty to provide health care to everyone, effectively abolishing one of the founding principles of the NHS. It is now up to nurses and healthcare professionals to fight for the NHS and for nursing, and, most importantly, for patients. Before now, I have never supported a strike. But sometimes there is a greater good at stake and we nurses need to take bold, decisive action for our patients. The RCN has shown admirable leadership, but this is only the first step. Future generations depend on us. Karen Chilver, by email
VULNERABLE STUDENTS DESERVE BETTER MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT Nursing student Julie Sheen writes of a young female patient on an adult inpatient mental health ward who had been admitted after a psychiatric assessment (Reflections May 14).
The patient had only started university a few months earlier. She had told her lecturers and friends that she had been experiencing a low mood for some time and had begun to self-harm. Their advice had been to ‘pull yourself together’ or consider giving up the course. When she eventually asked for support from the student welfare office, she was told there was a long waiting list. She was let down all along the way and only began to receive professional support after cutting her wrists and being admitted to an emergency department. This is a terrible indictment of our mental health system and student services. It is well understood that individuals with no previous history of mental health may become affected if their circumstances change. This is particularly true for students leaving home for the first time and finding themselves adrift from their family and friends, and in an unfamiliar environment they may perceive as hostile.
We need to do a great deal more to support vulnerable students. Bridget Ryan, by email
HEADWAY REPORT HIGHLIGHTS THE CUTS TO BRAIN INJURY SERVICES In ‘Rehabilitation care for a close friend proved to be abysmal’ (Letters April 30), an anonymous correspondent writes of the substandard post-acute rehabilitation provided to a friend after an aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage. Sadly, the experience outlined in this letter is not unique. A lack of joined-up care, poor and inconsistent access to rehabilitation services, and complaints that individuals and families affected by brain injury are being left to cope alone, are all regularly reported to Headway – the brain injury association. While these complaints are not new, a report published this month by us highlights the increasing difficulties local authorities are having in meeting the rehabilitation needs of brain injury survivors. The report, A Ticking Time Bomb: The False Economy of Cuts to Brain
32 may 21 :: vol 28 no 38 :: 2014 NURSING STANDARD Downloaded from RCNi.com by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 23, 2015. For personal use only. No other uses without permission. Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved.
We welcome all readers’ letters, but reserve the right to edit them or withhold names and addresses. Please email: [email protected]
Please keep letters to a maximum of 150 words, and include your full name, address and a daytime telephone number
Health care of future generations lies in the hands of today’s nurses Well done, RCN general secretary Peter Carter and Zeba Arif, deputy chair of the RCN forensic nursing forum, for providing us with some much-needed leadership on the matter of the removal of our NHS by stealth (Reflections May 7). I have been a nurse for 33 years and have never before thought of striking. I was a nursing student during the 1980s and saw the effect of strikes on patients and nurses. But what is happening to today’s NHS is making me think again. Seventy per cent of NHS contracts are going to private companies, which satisfies the World Health Organization definition of privatisation. Staff are being made redundant, emergency departments and hospital wards are being closed, and vacancies left unfilled. We live in momentous times. The Health and Social Care Act has changed things fundamentally by removing the government’s duty to provide health care to everyone, effectively abolishing one of the founding principles of the NHS. It is now up to nurses and healthcare professionals to fight for the NHS and for nursing, and, most importantly, for patients. Before now, I have never supported a strike. But sometimes there is a greater good at stake and we nurses need to take bold, decisive action for our patients. The RCN has shown admirable leadership, but this is only the first step. Future generations depend on us. Karen Chilver, by email
VULNERABLE STUDENTS DESERVE BETTER MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT Nursing student Julie Sheen writes of a young female patient on an adult inpatient mental health ward who had been admitted after a psychiatric assessment (Reflections May 14).
The patient had only started university a few months earlier. She had told her lecturers and friends that she had been experiencing a low mood for some time and had begun to self-harm. Their advice had been to ‘pull yourself together’ or consider giving up the course. When she eventually asked for support from the student welfare office, she was told there was a long waiting list. She was let down all along the way and only began to receive professional support after cutting her wrists and being admitted to an emergency department. This is a terrible indictment of our mental health system and student services. It is well understood that individuals with no previous history of mental health may become affected if their circumstances change. This is particularly true for students leaving home for the first time and finding themselves adrift from their family and friends, and in an unfamiliar environment they may perceive as hostile.
We need to do a great deal more to support vulnerable students. Bridget Ryan, by email
HEADWAY REPORT HIGHLIGHTS THE CUTS TO BRAIN INJURY SERVICES In ‘Rehabilitation care for a close friend proved to be abysmal’ (Letters April 30), an anonymous correspondent writes of the substandard post-acute rehabilitation provided to a friend after an aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage. Sadly, the experience outlined in this letter is not unique. A lack of joined-up care, poor and inconsistent access to rehabilitation services, and complaints that individuals and families affected by brain injury are being left to cope alone, are all regularly reported to Headway – the brain injury association. While these complaints are not new, a report published this month by us highlights the increasing difficulties local authorities are having in meeting the rehabilitation needs of brain injury survivors. The report, A Ticking Time Bomb: The False Economy of Cuts to Brain
32 may 21 :: vol 28 no 38 :: 2014 NURSING STANDARD Downloaded from RCNi.com by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 23, 2015. For personal use only. No other uses without permission. Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved.
