I AM writing in response to John Hinton's letter regarding "Matron" (You Say, March 17).

I have been a nurse for 22 years now, and have been a senior ward sister, or ward manager as we are referred to nowadays, for seven of those years.

Training has changed dramatically in that time and certainly since the days of a hospital Matron.

Nurses of all grades make beds, do bed baths, participate in manual handling, clean up vomit and blood and so on.

On top of all that, nurses now have an in-depth medical knowledge and are very much a support to the medical staff and not hand maidens to medical staff as they would have been in the "old- fashioned" Matron's day."

The modern Matron's role, or senior nurses as some hospitals call them, is very much a supporting role to the ward managers and senior managers within a trust.

They are there to maintain and improve standards of care and cleanliness within a trust.

It is not necessary to have old-fashioned training in order to be able to up hold high standards of care and cleanliness in any hospital, in fact quite the reverse.

I feel people lose sight of the definition of a nurse. A nurse should nurse, but on top of that, we are expected to be domestics, hairdressers, flower arrangers, IT experts, furniture movers and administrators.

MRS JULIE PAGE,

Newland, Malvern,

Worcestershire.