Letter from Don Reeve (From Swindon Advertiser)

Letter from Don Reeve

2:25pm Monday 8th February 2010 in

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COUN Tomlinson uses your letters page to jump on the bandwagon of "Reducing red tape and form filling" to "Free nurses and doctors to prioritise patient care". (Hospital reply SA February 4). Unusually, he believes red tape and form filling are separate issues.

I would like to know what red tape he would discard. The need for nurses to be properly qualified for their modern, complex roles, or their screening to avoid them bringing serious health threats into the workplace, or all this new-fangled business about hand washing between patient contacts or just plain old not being allowed to have a fag on the wards? I think we should be told.

Form filling is of course more straightforward. We might do away with those records which show the incoming shift what the outgoing one has done. Medication administered? Immobile patients turned to prevent bed sores? Let's just ask the patients. All that nonsense about monitoring patients' temperatures, pulse rates and blood pressure and then writing it down. I'm sure the surgeon or consultant on his rounds doesn't want to be bothered with all that.

DON REEVE Okus Road Swindon