I am grateful for the compliment offered to me by nursing educator Charlie Roe (TES letters, February 24) regarding my article about teachers and self-esteem. Charlie takes me to task for suggesting that nurses do not get personally involved with their clients in the same way that teachers do.
I take the point entirely: the moment I realised I might have been wrong was when, the day after the piece appeared, I was visiting my mother, who is very seriously ill in a Yorkshire hospital.
Catching sight of the ward sister, my mother called her and asked for a cuddle, which was forthcoming in very generous and sincere measure. This, my mother tells me, is entirely typical of the way the team on her ward works. I did notice that the nurse in charge wears a badge which proclaims her to be “Ward Manager”. But we know all about that sort of thing in education, too.
GERALD HAIGH 13 Derwent Road Bedworth, Nuneaton.
