title: Editorial.
abstract: I have never seen an angrier nurse audience in my career. It was at the RCN's Congress this year. The anger was not, as might be imagined, expressed over one of the more contentious motions for debate. It occurred in a side room off the main corridor of the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, a setting sufficiently obscure for Agatha Christie to have hidden there for several weeks when there was a national search for her! The event was a meeting of senior nurses all involved with care in nursing homes. These are not happy times for such nurses. The money available for nursing home care is being ever further constrained by central government and many nursing homes are closing down, as their owners can no longer afford to subsidise public sector healthcare provision. But this was not the cause of the angst.