title: Mixed feelings.
abstract: The first time I went to the RCN A&E Nursing Association Annual Conference about ten years ago, I heard a speaker talk about patients being described as 'pond-life'. Delegates were enraged and there was practically a queue of people wishing to dissociate themselves from what they had heard. What it boiled down to was a discussion on whether or not some patients deserved care while others were less deserving. Despite the howls of outrage a decade ago, I wonder if we have moved on as far as we would like to think.