BMJ 1994;308:1105 (23 April)

Letters

Practice nursing Free nurses from taking blood

EDITOR, - I agree with David Jewell and Pat Turton that practice nurses should be encouraged towards greater professionalism.1 However, their assessment of the practice nurse's present role was a glossy representation of the York census,2 and they failed to suggest radical enough solutions to the problems of how to create and fund this change.

At present practice nurses spend much of their time performing predominantly simple tasks; grade F or G nurses are overtrained to do these tasks. Their expensive time is a resource which should be being used to run health promotion and chronic disease management programmes. The York survey found out what nurses were doing, but it did not inquire how much of practice nurses' time was spent in which activity. Our practice nurse spends 38% of her time taking blood samples, for instance. The practice nurse needs to be freed of her simplistic, task based activities, . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Practice nursing
J Woodman
BMJ 1994 309: 477. [Extract] [Full Text]

What's happening to practice nursing?
D Jewell and P Turton
BMJ 1994 308: 735-736. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Woodman, J (1994). Practice nursing. BMJ 309: 477c-477 [Full text]  
  • Bhopal, R (1994). Skill mix in primary care. BMJ 309: 195b-196 [Full text]  
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ