Letter: Children need specialist nurses

WILL THE conviction of Beverly Allitt (or, more likely, the impending legal action by the deprived parents) bring health boards to their senses?

As long ago as 1959 the Platt Committee recommended that all those caring for children in hospital should have a child nursing qualification. I doubt that in 1993 there is a children's hospital (or an inappropriately placed children's ward in an adult one) where all staff have such a qualification. There will even be those, throughout the country, and certainly in Scotland, where no one is so certified.

To employ underqualified or non-qualified staff certainly saves money. The losers are the patients. At Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, their loss was total.

I am never surprised at the mentality and politics of health board members. I am always puzzled, however, as to why the medical and nursing professional bodies and trades unions have tolerated it.

Jim Brunton

Glasgow