23. No Nightingale Pledge

CLASSIFIED UN SECURITY COUNCIL FILE

ON LIFE WITHOUT FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Without Florence Nightingale it naturally follows that there would be no Nightingale Pledge, the famous oath all nurses take upon qualifying to care for others.

Nurses around the globe are pledged to the values Miss Nightingale eschewed. Part of the Nightingale Pledge states that a nurse ‘shall abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous’.

That means that without Florence Nightingale nurses would not be tied to that oath so would be at liberty to play practical jokes upon patients and hospitals would become a hotbed for comedy in the UK.

It was with this in mind, that we release our findings into how different hospitals would appear with nurses at liberty to be deleterious. The major conclusion being that departments within hospitals would be renamed to reflect the link between them and great British comedy, as the following examples testify:

• Fawlty Bowels – Gastroenterology Dept.
• The Liver Birds – Liver & Hepatology Dept.
• The Young Ones – Neonatal Dept.
• Are You Being Nerved – Neurology Dept.
• Stubbed Toe & Son – Podiatry Dept.
• Slackbladder – Urology Dept.
• It Ain’t Half Hot Mum – Radiology Dept.
• Only Fools & Horses – Psychiatric Ward.
• The Fall & Rise of Reginald Perrin – Department of Urology/Erectile Dysfunction.
• Alas, Smith & Bones – X-Ray Dept.
• Horrible Hysterectomies – Gynaecology Dept.
• Brush Strokes – Neurosciences Dept.
• Keeping Up Appearances – Plastic Surgery Dept.
• Take It From Here – Phlebotomy Dept.
• Till Death Us Do Part – Organ Donor Dept.
• Rising Cramp – Orthopaedics Dept.
• You’ve Been Zimmer Framed – Physiotherapy Dept.