I'm not going to make a career our to of responding to Lizzie, but as someone who is proud to work alongside as caring, compassionate and empathic a group of nurses as you could wish to meet, I do feel obliged to respond to some of her opinions.

1. Nurses who have 20 years experience should be better at the job than nurses who are newly qualified. That is because they have had the opportunity to put their skills into practise for all those years. This is also why the more senior nursing staff tend to be more experienced. It certainly isn't an argument against a high standard of training for new nurses. You're not comparing like with like. However, you'll also find that many of the best of the experienced nurses have also made the most of continuing professional development, have been eager to accept training and wiling to embrace new ideas and developments in their field.

2. I have also had the misfortune to meet nurses with years of experience who I wouldn't employ if they were the last nurse on earth: resistant to change, don't think they need to learn anything, doing the bare minimum to retain employment, always cutting corners etc etc. Every profession has them and, frankly, if it was up to me I'd have them deregistered if they weren't prepared to do the job properly.

3. As Tim said, the main impetus for nurse training to change from a two year diploma to a three year degree has come from nurses themselves and the professional bodies that represent them.

4. If you want to talk about "kowtowing", Lizzie, you should look back to the bad old days when nurses were seen as little more than handmaidens to the all-important doctors, rather than skilled, highly trained and caring professionals in their own right.

5. Could I also suggest that the reason your friend has no degree is that nursing degrees weren't an option for most nurses twenty years ago? The job has changed and the training has changed to reflect that. I'd imagine your friend will be cool with that. If not, I'd want to know why not (especially if I was her boss!).

6. Also, you can't take the science out of nursing unless you take all human biology, medication management, operation of specialised medical equipment, monitoring, assessment and supervision of often seriously ill people and so on out of nursing. If nurses didn't do this, who would?

7. Most nurses wouldn't recognise their professional role in your wishlist about what their job should be about, Lizzie. It's a far more complex and demanding role than you seem to realise.

8. Good nurses combine knowledge and skills with compassion and empathy. Older nurses do not have the monopoly on this. To suggest that a three year as opposed to a two year course somehow drains new nurses of their capacity for empathy and compassion is deeply insulting to those nurses, not based on any kind of evidence and, frankly, absurd. You should also remember that every experienced nurse was once a newly qualified nurse. The whole point of extending and improving nurse training is to give new nurses the best possible start in their professional role.

I'm not going to add much more to this thread. I said what I wanted to say in my first post. Thankfully, it is mainly the nursing profession itself, and not the views of ill-informed members of the public that shapes and will continue to shape nursing.