The scare mongers are out to confuse us!

There are many times when I have had shifts which have been...how can I put this delecatly...crap.

For one reason or another, be it a bad tempered nurse, an angry patient, loosing equipment, or any other situation where the manure hits the midden, there are shifts where you just long to see the night shift arrive, or get to leave early, change, get out the hospital and on one or two really bad shifts, find the nearest pint of Guinnes to nurse rather then a patient.

Things go wrong. That is life. It is not the best thing and should be the situation which is avoided as much as possible though to bury heads in the sand and deny that things go wrong is to my eyes more unprofessional then to think ahead and be kept on your toes. So, I was rather alarmed to read this report on nurses taking drugs to "get them through shifts".

I am inclined to be a bit sceptical: the person making the accusations was already in trouble, and why are there no adequate controls made to examine the levels of medication in the hospital already in place. Nurses do have a busy, physically demanding job (save for the lazy ones who are glued behind the station). If this is true, then there are a number of worrying things to have considered at the hospital, and really should be proved at other sites to ensure that this is not happening elsewhere. You cannot be considered competant to nurse patients if you are off your tits on drugs, or wasted on alcohol.

*Apparently the RCN has sent ballot papers to nurses employed in the NHS regarding the taking of strike action. 74% of nurses support strike action according to figures collected by the Royal College of Nursing*