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Did you ever learn about Mary Seacole? Or Florence Nightingale who worked in Derby Royal Infirmary where I worked as a Senior House Officer?

They were nurses.

Have you ever considered what nurses do, what their job is, what their function is to society?

Nurses don’t get paid an awful lot of money but an awful lot gets asked of them, more and more and more in fact.

I am quite well qualified to talk about this because I have been married to a pediatric oncology nurse for 19 years and I’ve known her for nearly 25 years.

I met my wife before she graduated and have watched her through her career. She gives more to her work emotionally and intellectually than many of the highest paid people I’ve ever met.

So, as we were reading in bed the other night (boring) she turns to me and says “do you think nurses should wear cameras?”

WTF!!!

There’s an article in the RCN News extolling the virtues of putting personal security cameras on nurse’s uniforms in A&E.

Really?

Does Mother Teresa need a camera to stop her being assaulted for giving her life away in the service of others?

Things have gotten so bad in the society we live in that the people who attend A&E at the weekend are prone to threaten the staff who are trying to look after them.

This isn’t a new thing, it’s just worse.

When I was an SHO at Queen’s I was called in the middle of the night to suture up two facial lacerations. The ‘patients’ were in adjacent cubicles and they had been fighting each other with bottles.

I spent my night suturing up one guy while the other guy shouted at him from the cubicle and then moved to the other cubicle to suture up the other.

I thought it was bad enough then but I never, ever felt physically threatened.

My wife has not had a pay rise for nine years but continues to work in the service for very sick and dying children.

Perhaps instead of giving her a pay rise they should give her a camera to make sure the children don’t attack her whilst she’s trying to save their lives.

Blog Post Number: 1716