Sir, - While agreeing with the main points made in your editorial "The Nursing Profession" (November 28th), I feel I must take issue with your comments on the "less technological and less medically complex branches of the profession". As a psychiatric nurse with 19 years' experience I am offended but not really surprised by the writer's ignorance on the subject of the care of the mentally ill.
To imply that psychiatric nurses have not had to respond to enormous changes and increased responsibility in their professionals roles is to ignore the revolution ink the care of the mentally ill in the last 10 years. Where once all patients were cared for in large Victorian institutions far removed from the community, today patients are treated in acute psychiatric wards attached to general hospitals, in day hospitals or in high support community hostels.
Psychiatric nurses were to the forefront in the development of community care and have seen their work practices change like no other profession. Significantly, we did not seek financial compensation for this, seeing it as part of our professional duty to respond to changing trends in psychiatry.
The changing nature of Irish society has resulted in increased social alienation leading to a rise in depression, suicide, eating disorders, and substance abuse. The drug problem has thrown up a new challenge for those working in psychiatry. Psychiatric nurses have adapted to these changes with the same dedication and professionalism that their general nurse colleagues have shown in their adaptation to new technology.
The leader writer appears to equate technology alone with complexity, dismissing "the less medically complex branch of the profession." Psychiatry, however, involves a far more complex entity than sophisticated computer devices. No two people are the same no two people react in the same way. Each patient receiving psychiatric care presents a completely new set of challenges for the professional caring for him/ her. Your leader's prejudice is indicative of a wider lack of understanding on the part of society of the nature of mental illness and the complexity of the treatment and care of the mentally ill. - Yours, etc.,
Rossbrook, Model Farm Road, Cork.