News >> Browse Articles >> Fun

-2

British Nurses Forced to Restrict All Conversations to 140 Characters Long

British Nurses Forced to Restrict All Conversations to 140 Characters Long

Nurses were almost speechless about the new cost cutting measures

ProNurse

June 05, 2009

The latest cost cutting measures for the NHS has been announced by Weconu, the famous consultancy firm and nurses will be hardest hit.

The latest ‘genius brainwave’ takes inspiration from the popular social network Twitter, where all conversations have to be 140 characters or less.

SVP of Weconu, I Conu proudly announced the new rational at a glittering 10 course banquet in London this morning.

“With this move we are hitting the ground running and pushing the envelope by using blue sky thinking to avoid re-inventing the wheel,” he breezed, clutching a glass of bubbly in one hand. “We benchmarked and re-monetised the success of Twitter and hypothesised that as nurses spend most of their day gossiping about which doctor they would like to marry, the biggest cost-effective savings could come from making sweeping cuts to their word budget.”

“They will now be docked £100 for every letter or character over the 140 limit for each conversation they have. It is a win-win deal for the NHS as they either create massive time savings or experience a serious reduction in their monthly wages bill. Quite frankly, we think it is the most exciting advance in management consultancy since our last ridiculous plan. These savings alone should pay for our fees within 10 years.”

However, nurses were understandably furious about the plan.

Alice is a Ward Sister from Scunthorpe, “It’s completely outrageous! How can we possibly do our job and have meaningful conversations with our patients when we can’t even finish a sente…”

Theatre Nurse Bethany was even more vocal in her disapproval. “I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous! You know what they can do with their conversation cutting measures! They can stick them up their ar…”

Further controversy threatened working relations when a hospital trust in the West Country decided to include punctuation in the character count.

Mental health nurse Sally was furious. “How can I be expected to remember to count the speech marks? I’m speaking, not writing. And we have to allow for the … if we run out of…”

Downing Street were not getting involved in the uproar and quite frankly made a hopeless attempt to see the issue from the nurse’s perspective. Their response only ran to 13 characters, including punctuation.

“No comment.”

Please note that this article has been completely made up by ProNurse. Please do not try this in your local Trust.

You can however follow our Twitter feed and do please send us your 140 character comments (or write them in the comments section below). Just remember to keep them clean!

-2

General Nursing IQ Test

Nurse_clipboard_black_background_cropped
  • 1.

    Where is the popliteal pulse?

More Quizzes

Have you Played The Game?

In the medical world, what do the initials ENT stand for?

Add a Question