The case of Caroline Petrie, the nurse suspended for offering to say a prayer for a patient, discloses something of which most people may not have been aware. To work in the National Health Service, it is officially stated, you ‘must demonstrate a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity’. It is remarkable that there should be a state rule about what you can think (the ‘personal’ commitment) before you can be employed. I also wonder if it is possible to have a commitment to equality and diversity at the same time. For instance, if, as Brighton and Hove Council tried to insist against a Christian care home, you must question your octogenarians every three months about their sexual orientation, what are you supposed to do with the results obtained? If you must treat all people equally, regardless of their sexuality, why do you need to know their sexuality? If you are committed to respect the diversity of religious faith, why should you be punished for expressing your faith? The only form of equality which is essential for nursing is surely the belief that all patients are equally deserving of care. But it is this type of equality which is now most neglected in the NHS. Children, rightly, are still quite well looked after. Old people are frequently left almost literally to rot. Some nurses in the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust hospitals in which C difficile ran rife told them to ‘go in their own beds’. If you Google the Maidstone Trust, you will see that it has a Race Equality Scheme, a Disability Equality Scheme and a Gender Equality Scheme, all required under the Equality Act of 2006. At the time these policies were being formulated, at least 90 of the Trust’s patients died of C difficile.
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