What, dear reader, is an SCPHN, and why has this ridiculous title been forced upon us?
I’m beginning to wonder whether you need to be mentally challenged to work for the Nursing and Midwifery Council, ‘cos no-one in their right mind could think this one up. At the start I tried to embrace it, and proudly announced my new title whenever asked, but after seeing so many blank and disinterested faces, I’ve now given up.
Maybe that’s what they wanted – those ‘protectors of the public’. Study the Standards of Proficiency for a SCPHN (available on the web) and you’ll be hard pushed to see any relevance to OH here at all. In fact, it would seem that health visitors, school nurses and ourselves will be able and competent to work happily and effectively side by side in this sunny land of Public Health.
Can you see school nurses getting down and dirty in some sewage plant while ensuring that workers know all about contraception and the morning after pill? I don’t think so.
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The standards are so generalist that OH has been diluted to virtual extinction. Is that in the interest of public safety? You wouldn’t get the midwives putting up with such nonsense, otherwise we’d all be doing a bit of ‘delivery’ on the side. So why is OH picked out for homogenisation into a Public Health cup of neutrality?
And just as you thought things couldn’t get any worse, I’ve heard that our new Secretary of State for Health, Postman Pat (aka Alan Johnson) is considering outsourcing postal deliveries to OH providers, so that we can ‘do the deliveries’ while we’re out and about in our peripatetic roles. Do you think I’m joking?
