BMJ 2000;321:698 ( 16 September )

Letters

Doctors and nurses

    Let's celebrate the difference between doctors and nurses
    Teamwork is not about everyone trying to do the same job
    Who will do nurses' current tasks?
    Why liberation is necessary
    Intelligence is not in the eye of the beholder
    Sex difference? Is there one?
    Medical profession is no longer patriarch of professions
    Length of consultation is important for patient satisfaction
    Data do not provide conclusions on nurse practitioners
    Author's reply to Brindle and Leman and Terris
    Doctors and nurses need to collaborate
    Doing it together with PAMs

Let's celebrate the difference between doctors and nurses

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITORThe BMJ issue on doctors and nurses does not define or describe nursing but repeatedly talks about nurses doing doctors' jobs.¹ The predominance of the theme of substitution of doctors' work by nurses undermines the ideas of multidisciplinary working, cooperation, and collaboration that also feature in this issue. Unless doctors are clearer about the role of nurses in health care, discussions about their relationships with nurses will appear patronising and uninformed.

The importance of difference emphasised by Davies frames the debate.² This idea should be the foundation of the utility of the relationship between doctors and nurses. But following Davies's paper, every article strives to seek common ground between medicine and nursing, with nurses seen primarily as an economic substitute. This continues until the final personal view by Radcliffe, which, with admirable symmetry, closes the debate opened by Davies.³ But, between their two papers, who is actually celebrating . . . [Full text of this article]

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Rapid Responses:

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A heretics viewpoint

Chris Laing
bmj.com, 16 Sep 2000 [Full text]

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Vasantha Kumar
bmj.com, 20 Sep 2000 [Full text]

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