Ms Claire Mahon:

Nurses' decision-making is often overruled by others and, on occasion, that can be by non-qualified clinical personnel. If one looks at our community settings, one sees that public health nurses in particular have a large amount of documentation to complete on a visit to get services for an elderly person. Often their assessment can be overruled by a non-clinical person purely on a financial basis. We do also have nurses in the hospital setting who will have their judgment questioned and have clinical risk issues sent back to them with a request to downgrade them.