What was it like to be an early Nightingale probationer as St. Thomas' hospital in the 1870's? While much has been written about the administration of the Nightingale Training school, this author wanted to examine the actual experience of the probationers themselves - how did it differ from that of the modern nurse? The author used the ward diaries of three sets of probationers, from 1870 — 1890, together with the lecture notes of Mr Croft, the senior surgeon at St. Thomas' who delivered weekly lectures from 1872 onwards, to investigate the hospital routine of these women.

Pulse oximeters are widely used in nursing practice. They are easy to read, need no user calibration and are simple to operate. The ease of use may give rise to the view that nurses have no difficulties using pulse oximetry monitoring in patient care because it is straightforward and only requires the ‘application’ of bioscientific knowledge gained in pre-registration education.

The recent years of poor pay, increasing workload and lack of a proper career structure have led to many staff feeling undervalued and demoralised. More are turning to agency work as a way of 'topping up' wages or even working for agencies as the sole employer to achieve flexibility in working patterns. Balfor Recruitment Group deals with staff with a variety of skills, finding anything from an occasional shift to full time work. I know that this includes some of you. However, I doubt you know much about my side of the work so I have been asked to tell you about it. I look forward to hearing whether you find it interesting and whether you learnt anything new!

The reason for choosing this subject is because it is highly relevant since Trusts are currently in the process of establishing posts in accordance with the National Health Service (NHS) ‘Executive's Health Service Circular 217’ (1999). The political background for setting up these posts stems from the document ‘Making a Difference: Strengthening the nursing, midwifery and health visitor contribution to health and healthcare’ (Department of Health 1999a). It is also relevant in connection with nurses in general, as they are not being recognised nor rewarded for their abilities. This is especially so in PACUs where the nurse's image is low and PACU nursing is not a recognised speciality, such as Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nursing, Coronary Care Unit (CCU) nursing, High Dependency Unit (HDU) nursing and so forth. From personal experience, it has been observed that well qualified and highly experienced staff leave the clinical environment for positions in management, sales or even leave nursing altogether when no further career advancement is possible in the clinical field.

The BMJ has always been recognised as a leading medical journal for a wide range of subjects, and has always been useful for nurses to access for up to date and current medical opinion. Recently the BMJ has diversified to take on a more political nature, with its content reflecting a more proactive approach to influencing health care policy in the United Kingdom by the medical profession. As such the BMJ has become extremely useful for identifying opinions of current ‘hot topics’ for nurses that are headline news such as nurse consultants, hospital administration and central government policy. However, one problem remains, trying to find the original copy in the library will remain difficult. After spending the best part of an hour to suddenly realise that ‘how silly you are for not realising that BMJ March 1997 is filed in the British Journal of Nursing section 1998!!’ is often a frustrating and demoralising experience - particularly if after finding the article you find it has nothing to do with the subject that you are researching. This problem is to be banished forever with the BMJ website. The full BMJ is available free on line. The excellent search engine is particularly useful and is accurate when matching target articles. All articles are available for ‘full text’ downloads free of charge.

Following on from the article in the last journal examining the ethical issues within the operating theatre, this article will examine the legal and ethical conflicts surrounding consent in the child. The scenario of a child refusing surgery, coupled with the desire to help is a problem faced by many practitioners. Legislation was created to clarify the situation, but subsequent legal interpretation has clouded the issue once again.