With many thanks to ChatGPT for the above title and after fellow Hull resident Martin Rispin’s The Fat of the Land article in these pages, I was inspired to reflect on the sheer size of the nursing profession in the UK. I don’t mean the size of the profession as a whole; I mean the size of the actual nurses in the NHS, and many of the nursing students I taught at university.
Obesity amongst nurses is an elephant in the room. Sadly, if you are unlucky enough to end up in the clutches of the NHS there is very often an elephant in the room with you: one of the nurses who has come to look after you. But you dare not comment, even if she (and it usually is ‘she’) is advising you to adopt a healthier lifestyle, get some exercise and lose weight.
I am sure that any adverse comments regarding the corpulence of your caring professional would be considered a micro-aggression. You would likely find yourself at the receiving end of a letter from the Chief Executive about treating their staff with respect and advising you that you may no longer be welcome on the premises.
I am a staunch defender of nurses, and regularly challenge prejudiced stereotypes about the profession – especially ones which say it is all because nurses now study at university. There is no evidence to support that and, in fact, considerable evidence to the contrary.
But I have written in these pages (and in TCW Defending Freedom and The Catholic Herald) about the shocking lack of nursing care when I had the misfortune to end up in casualty earlier this year. It was not only the fact that I lay unattended in a side room and without prescribed pain relief for three hours, it was the appearance of the nurse who attended me.
She almost had to enter my room sideways, such was her bulk. She leant against the doorpost, presumably exhausted by the short walk from the nurses’ station, only to tell me that she was my assigned nurse, but that she was going off shift. She was fat, her hair was some indescribably lurid colour, she had evidence of piercings, and her arms sported a series of grotesque tattoos. I was more relieved than sorry to hear she was leaving the premises.
I really don’t think that her behaviour is typical, and I saw other patients being attended to during my three unattended hours. But sadly, her appearance was typical. I saw plenty of other examples of nurses, mainly female, who would not have looked out of place in Barnum’s circus, stomping up and down the corridors. The temptation to stop them and ask if they have a mirror at home, and whether they think they are conveying a professional appearance was almost overwhelming.
The contrast with the nurses and nursing students, mainly female, that I have just seen in the past two weeks is striking. I have been visiting universities in the North of Italy and in the North of Spain. I am very familiar with both institutions. The general appearance of these nurses is notable, and often remarked on by other visiting staff with me from the UK.
The appearance of nurses in Italy and Spain contrasts markedly from the UK. In decades of coming to these places I have yet to see dyed hair, a facial piercing or tattoos of any kind. Also, there is not an oompa loompa amongst them. They are slim, modesty dressed and, while in both places there is probably more cigarette smoking amongst nurses than we would like, I have yet to see a single student vaping.
On the campus at my last UK university, you could spot the nursing students hundreds of yards away. You could barely miss them because of their size and, moreover, they looked like the Harry Potter train crossing the Glenfinnan viaduct with great plumes of vaped steam emanating from their mouths.
I have independent evidence regarding obesity among nurses. At more than one UK university I have been asked by either a Vice Chancellor or a Pro-Vice Chancellor after a graduation, “why are then nurses so fat?” They are referring to students, but many are already qualified and picking up postgraduate degrees and certificates.
I had no answer then and I have no answer now, but it was excruciating when it came to the point of handing out diplomas to the nurses. You could, literally, feel the platform bouncing as yet another massive apparition crossed the stage to pick up her certificate. And this was in complete contrast to medical and allied health students who all looked like they had just stepped out of the gym.
At my last university we invited the local Territorial Army medical unit along to see if they could entice some of our students to sign up. The recruiting sergeant was not backwards in coming forwards about the levels of obesity. Many would not have been deemed suitably fit for military service.
At one time, and not only based on their mounds of adipose tissue, these nurses would not have got within an inch of a school of nursing. They would have been advised to lose weight or find another job. There were no fat nurses when I trained. But in these days of ‘fat-shaming’ and ‘body positivity’ it would be a brave head of school or senior nurse who tried that on.
The problem is not confined to the UK, the USA has its problems where the levels of obesity amongst nurses is 50% compared with less then 8% among doctors. I was there recently, and I can vouch for it.
Why Mediterranean countries like Italy and Spain should have thinner nurses than in the UK is uncertain. True, there are lower levels of obesity in both countries than in the UK, and some may point to diet and genetics. But if so, how do we account for the lack of other repulsive bodily accoutrements and vapes? As Toyah Wilcox once sang ‘It’s a mystery’. But Mars Bars and Coke may have something to do with it.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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Yep, and whilst it may or may not directly affect the quality of their work, it is perhaps indicative of a general lack of pride in anything about themselves and anything they do. My daughter has had three spinal operations for scoliosis and whilst the immediate aftercare in the ICU was excellent, as soon as she was moved onto a general ward it was near non-existent. My wife had to spend most of every day at the hospital helping her get out of bed to use the toilet and to ensure she was fed edible food on time while the nurses ‘caring’ for her seemed to spend most of their time clustered around the desk bitching about their boyfriends and pretty much everything else or were glued to their phones. When they did put in an appearance, most were overweight, slovenly, and appeared uninterested.
In the run up to the Brexit referendum I participated in quite a few BBC Radio Five Live debates at the BBC’s Salford Quays venue. In one of them, shortly after the result, a pasty faced and acne-afflicted landwhale with green hair told me that I was “personally responsible for the murder of Jo Cox MP” because I’d campaigned for Vote Leave. I had to point out that I had an excellent alibi for said crime, having been in the BBC Radio Leeds studio at the time, doing my weekly ‘Money Guru’ slot with presenter Andrew Edwards. The landwhale was, of course, a nursing student.
I’ve been in Hospital and I was disgusted with the care on the general ward and I fully support your observations. We were also the prats that stood outside of our house and clapped.
Brilliant, and I’m a nurse.
It’s was a societal thing designed to help non-typical people fit in – it’s failed because it’s encouraged more people to become non-typical (of former accepted appearance norms). I blame Dove (and other) advertising for pushing ‘fat is beautiful’ and trace the decline back to when air stewardesses stopped putting on hat and gloves before landing.
The rich seem to have got thinner whilst the poor appear to have got fatter!
It not just nurses that seem to be getting fatter. British men and women on the whole appear to be getting fatter. It is surprising too how many second generation British Chinese youth are far fatter and taller than their parents. Looking back at my school days in the 50s and 60s there may have been one or possibly two fat pupils out of a class of 30. But of course times have changed, children don’t walk to school or have paper rounds/milk rounds to do before school. Looking back most children played football, rugby or/and cricket throughout the year which kept the body honed. Diet has changed tremendously, with many children not longer drinking tea and coffee but high sugar and artificially flavoured drinks. Meat and two veg has often been replaced with factory produced foods laced with a multitude of additives and colourings. Take away foods eaten late at night are commonplace whereas in the past the family meal was often eaten no later than six o clock. Often people graze today rather than have regimented meal times which may also result in weight gain. We should also remember that houses used to be far colder than they are today which meant one burnt more calories.
Whilst being no nutritional expert it seems to me that if calorie intake exceeds calories burnt then weight gain will follow. It seems that this basic rule is better understood and practiced by the rich than the poor.
I am old enough to remember that in the 60s and 70s most women were still ” normal” women.
Then in the 80s anorexia became a sort of epidemic. Then it kind of faded away.
Then in the 90s cutting ( women who use a knife or blade and cut their own skin just enough to bleed and feel pain ) became a smaller epidemic but big enough that it was sometimes part of the story in movies or tv shows.
Then this faded away.
Both of those things were a form of self imposed punishment, self mutilation.
Now females self punish and self mutilate by destroying their appearance, destroying their body with tattoos, piercings and obesity.
I don’t know why females like to self-mutilate more than men do but we cannot deny it is a problem.
So what has changed in roughly the last 50 years ?
Mainly two things
-1- Feminism or women’ lib began aproximately in the 70s, and it has now grown into a frankenstein version of what it was initially. Feminists now say that being 300 pounds is beautiful, to give one example…
-2- Chemicals that end up – intentionally or indirectly – in our food, water that were not there decades ago; they are causing testosterone levels in men to go lower every few years and it seems are making our women acting more and more in self destructive ways. They love mutilating their own body and they love killing babies trough abortion, they will tell you with a big smile they are proud to have had an abortion.
Feminism and chemicals have destroyed our women and those women vote for whomever encourages them to do more of that, and that is leftist politicians. Women vote for those who will give them more access to abortion, who will approve or celebrate tattoos, piercings, obesity and degeneracy.
All of which is destroying our civilization.
With feminism the percentage of women who commit crimes went up.
With feminism the percentage of women who get falling down drunk has gone up.
Need I go on ?
Oh yes there are other factors, the internet, the epidemic of porn, internet sites where women post selfies to be liked by the largest number of people possible, women debasing themselves to be popular, et cetera et cetera…
But feminism and chemicals are the main factors.
They have turned our women into strange self mutilating angry creatures.
If they are not self-mutilating their body they are self-mutilating their mind or self-mutilating their reputation.
I am old enough to remember feminists burning their bras and promising us that if men gave them their women’s lib, women would make this world a MUCH better place.
Here we are 50 years later and Women have made it a MUCH worse place.
‘they love killing babies trough abortiothey love killing babies trough abortion, they will tell you with a big smile they are proud to have had an abortion.
A vile generalisation, and not something I have ever come across. At least not in the UK.
As another writer noted, there do seem to be far more seriously obese women than men, but the other things are equally embraced by men with the added fad of youths/younger men taking steroids to achieve a muscular body (very obvious in every gym) and suffering from body anxiety worries now to the extent that many arrive at the gym already dressed for their workout, increasingly in tracksuits, and then leave without showering or changing.
Let me propose that the root of the problem is some unidentified infection. NHS hospitals are notorious for poor infection control. Plonk some of your lithe Mediterranean nurses in them for a few years and see whether they fatten up. If not you can bin my conjecture.
One advantage of the infection conjecture is that it could explain the fact (if fact it be) that the nations where people are becoming much fatter are also the nations where their pets are getting fatter too.
I also read that the average UK shoe size has increased because carrying weight splays the feet and this has a knock on effect.
When my husband was in hospital in 2016, we noticed that there were indeed quite a proportion of nurses who were overweight. We did think it wasn’t setting a good example in a hospital. All we could imagine was that they were so rushed off their feet that they lived on chocolate bars and fizzy drinks on the run, and didn’t get the chance to sit down to regular more healthy meals.
My husband was a teacher in FE, with female students of 17-18 who would go on to study nursing at Uni. They had to do placements in hospitals as part of their FE course, He always emphasised the importance of personal appearance – ie no makeup, piercings, tattoos, outlandish dress and keeping trim, if they were going to work in a health setting. His girls did OK – but maybe standards have slipped in the past few years.