15 minute interview: Branded

What can doctors learn from nurses?

Everything. I think doctors can learn an awful lot about social skills from nurses. For too long doctors have been aloof, they have been superior, probably a lot of it not intentional. It's just the way they have been brought up—trained to think they are better than anyone else. I think they can learn about race issues for example. We had some brilliant interactions between white middle class doctors and black patients when I worked at the Maudsley. I recall an incident while I was a charge nurse in the emergency clinic. One day a quite psychotic and stoned rasta was brought in by the police on a 136 of the Mental Health Act. A junior registrar got him a room to assess him and this guy kept saying “you bloodclot” and the registrar said …