Scene 2—Take 1

South Ockendon subnormality hospital in Essex has had its unfair share of bad publicity recently. An allegation of cruelty by a nurse and the manslaughter of one patient by another led to news reports?some of which have been angled to hurt the staff?and, predictably, morale within the hospital has suffered badly. The outburst of righteous indignation which followed the Ely Hospital Report made both public and politicians briefly aware that all was not well in Britain's subnormality hospitals. The politicians may have known better but the public, unaware of the near-crisis understating and overcrowding in many of the hospitals, have been apt to lay blame on the nurses. Nurses from South Ockendon have had to endure taunts like 'Where are your jack-boots?' when out in the adjoining village. Anyone who knows anything about the sub-normality hospital service knows how unfair this collective condemnation is. On one afternoon when I was at South Ockendon recently there were 34 nurses looking after 10 female wards with 486 patients and 37 male nurses (9 of them were working overtime) looking after 11 men's wards containing 509 patients. This was not an exceptional day?it indicates the resources with which William Searle, head of nursing services, has to juggle all the time. He has a work force of 258 nurses (76 fully trained) to spread over two day shifts and a night shift. The spread is ridiculously thin and the total number is regularly whittled down by holidays, courses and sickness. Because nursing has to be concentrated on the most difficult, disturbed wards some of the other wards are manned?if that is the right word?by one sister with an assistant in training coping with 46 patients. South Ockendon's staffing problems are probably more acute than most because of its geographical position. As the physician superintendent , Dr. Gordon Dutton, said: 'Local industry has the edge on us all along the line.' There is a concentration of industry in the area. Dagenham and Fords are close by, so are Plessey Electronics and innumerable light industries. Industry offers more fringe benefits and as much money for a five-day week as the hospital can for seven-day-a-week shift work. If a man can earn ?27 a week on a bread-round in the area, it is unrealistic to expect him to go on nursing?hov ever much he may be devoted to the job, the' comes a point where, given the …