IN response to your article "Nurses get a blasting over care standards," (LET, December 27), I would be interested to know who leaked the story to the Press.

I have heard good and bad reports about the medical profession and if malpractice does occur, it needs to be exposed.

But I cannot help wondering about the purpose of publicising the points raised in your article.

I imagine the outcome will be to further demoralise the overworked and underpaid nursing staff of all wards of Blackburn Infirmary, not only Ward 5, who work continuously in difficult circumstances.

Surely, staff should have the right to the loyalty and support from the management in ensuring that reports like this one should remain confidential, and the support of patients, past and present, who might wish to write in support of the hard-pressed nurses in gratitude for the care and treatment they have received.

MRS C A HAWORTH, Ottawa Close, Blackburn.

The information is contained in minutes of a meeting between Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley Trust and the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley CHC. These were public documents - Editor.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.