title: Just desserts.
abstract: I have been in the nursing profession for 22 years, starting as a 16 year old cadet nurse. I have been employed in my present post as an enrolled nurse on night duty for the past 13 years, regularly in charge of a high dependency surgical ward. After attending my recent interview for clinical grading and accompanying one of my fellow enrolled nurses as an observer, I find it hard to describe how I felt on leaving the interviews: disappointed, angry and disgusted with the profession. Am I to consider myself lucky and be eternally grateful if I am given a D grade when I have done the same job as a staff nurse for the past 13 years? Having super-. vised trained and untrained I staff and taught trained and untrained junior and senior staff, imagine my dismay. At my interview, I was informed that I have been supervised for all these years, that supervision being a night sister at the end of a telephone via a bleep. I may add that the night sister is covering for up to six wards. When the clinical grading structure was announced, I, like many enrolled nurses, thought at last we were going to be rewarded for the job we do, not what management would like us to do. But now as the euphoria dies and the real nightmare emerges, it would seem that we are going to be downtrodden again. Experi- ence, service and loyalty count for nothing. I fail to see how the answers to 16 questions only can give a fair and equal account of the job you do and the responsibilities involved in the post you hold.
authors.affiliation: RCN Steward, Liverpool.
authors.forename: S C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Gloria