I WAS appalled to read the article about getting medical staff from New Zealand and Australia, with the “financial carrots” costing mega bucks.

Why can’t we grow our own?

I did my general nurse training here at the old Radcliffe in the 1950s.

We had an initial three-month preliminary training, where we were taught how to do the basic skills of bed making and how to change the sheets with someone in the bed, how to take temperatures and pulses, and about giving medication safely, etc.

We also had lectures on basic nursing care.

Lectures continued for the next three years, but we were learning all the time on the wards, being instructed by the senior staff as we cared for our patients and by the time our final exams came, we had a well-rounded practical knowledge which we could then impart to others.

This all changed when it was decided to make nursing a degree course.

This is fine for academics and should be something that could perhaps be good for those who have done the basic three-year course of “hands-on nursing” if they wish to go on to management or senior training staff.

However, I know for a fact that some really good caring girls who really wish to become nurses find the degree course far above their heads as it is almost junior doctors level, and they give up even before the first year is up. They are lost to us.

Out of a course of 30 who started, half had left like this when my grandson’s wife wanted to become a nurse. (She eventually went on to become an excellent primary school teacher instead.) People who wish to have a basic nursing career should be able to access a course here and be paid a basic salary while they are working on the wards. This would be better for patients, who would benefit, and less costly to the NHS.

ALISON PARKINSON
Headington
Oxford