Poetry corner: A nurse’s lament

A question on the 50th anniversary, October 1961 Radcliffe Infirmary set

Cast your mind back to the past,

And ponder this,

If you were asked,

(and please dont kid)

Would you do now

what we once did?

Would you, for greater recompense

A life of nursing re-commence?

Oh yes! Oh yes!, I hear you say!

For things are very good today!

The modern nurse, a slave no more

Has risen from the sluice-room floor!

She need no longer wipe and clean

And rarely is she ever seen

Giving bedpans on the dot

Or handing out a sputum pot-

No need to smooth a fevered head

Or feed a patient by the bed,

No need to give a vital drink

or comfort someone on the brink.

Of course no need to keep folk washed

All that frippery’s been quashed!

Bedsores! Hunger! Dehydration!

Dont complain- ungrateful nation!

For every nurse – a BSc

Fresh from university

Is trained with patient plans in mind

All on paper – think you’ll find –

So press the buzzer till you’re blue

They’ll never, never come to you!

And when you’ve cried and cried- then soiled

They’ll whine their breaktme has been spoiled!

Oh! Cynic,cynic,cynic me!

Where is that previous quality

That we could offer years ago

For half the kudos, half the dough?

But pause –

Should we really blame THEM,

These victims of poor teaching

Of politicians folly

And status over-reaching –

My question – could we nurse now?

What do you think you’d say?

Oh yes, I know, I thought so-

Thank you – NOT TODAY!

Written by Fran Deacon, 2011. Retired nurse, trained at Oxford’s Radcliffe Infirmary in 1961