Sir, - While reading Dr Noel Browne's excellent autobiography Against the Tide, I came across a part which I thought might be of some interest to your readers. Dr Browne was writing about his time in Dr Steevens Hospital in the 1940s:
"The nurse were compelled to work through the night in short-sleeved uniforms, and became more and more perished with cold as the night wore on. I shared their belief that this was unreasonable and that a sweater, cardigan or pullover should be permitted. At that time, the overall leadership of the nursing profession was particularly obsequious and deferential to the members of the medical profession, especially to the consultants. They successfully promoted the idea that nurses belonged to an angelic sector of society who must dedicate themselves entirely to the sick, as though they had a religious vocation. Nurses were led to believe that membership of a trade union or preoccupation with terms of employment and living conditions in hospital was improper and certainly not to be considered as subject for public protest. They accepted with awesome docility the discrepancies between the doctors' income and their own in their separate vocations.
"I agreed to approach the matron on their behalf to win more reasonable treatment for their grievances. It was agreed that I would act as spokesman for the group and that they too would come with me to the matron's office. We assembled in the TB ward at the top of the hospital, about 12 to 15 nurses to start with, and I led the way down the long winding stairs. There were desertions on every floor. The sad end to the story is that by the time I arrived at the matron's office and pressed the bell on her door, not a single nurse was left with me. Lamely I made the case, which was listened to with obvious impatience by the matron. Nothing was done to change the harsh conditions of the nurses."
Things have changed somewhat since then. - Yours, etc.,
Michael McGuire, Speenogue, Burt, Co Donegal.