[image error] Come back Florence, all is forgivenThere has been quite a lot of fuss in the news this week about terrible care taking place in hospitals. I was listening to the Health Secretary on the radio and he was saying that poor care from nurses was down to bad leadership. I'm not sure this is the whole of the answer.

When they had a vox pop on the programme a little earlier, the daughter of a badly-cared-for patient was saying that she repeatedly asked for help from nurses to do basic things, but 'they didn't care - they seemed to feel it was beneath them'. And I'd suggest that this is a contributory factor.

Once upon a time, nurses did basic medical checks - but their primary role was nursing. Caring for people. In the last 30 years, their training has become increasingly medicalized (if there is such a word). They are trained to be and to think of themselves more as doctors lite. The inevitable result is that some nurses feel that it really isn't their problem to worry about a patient's basic physical state, they are there to deal with the medical side.

Don't get me wrong. Many, many nurses do a wonderful job. But I would suggest that those who do are managing to do this despite their training, rather than as a result of it, and there should be just as much focus on this as on failings in leadership.

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