Essay writing is a necessary skill.

Like your correspondent Julie Archer in the October issue of Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand (p3), I too read Chris Cottingham's article "Essay wha?" published in September (p25) and tend to agree with what he said, both for and against essay writing.

As someone currently travelling the sometimes bumpy road of the bachelor of nursing (BN) programme, I don't always enjoy essay writing. However, I do see the need. Quite a few nurses may aspire toward completing a master's degree or even a PhD at some point in their careers. The writing involved at that level makes the BN 2000-word essay pale into insignificance. Yet the BN essay is the foundation upon which those mighty tomes are built.

I personally feel many people's essay writing ability may not be up to the task. In today's pre-packaged, freeze-dried, throw-away society, if it's not on the computer, it doesn't exist. [ come from the era in which a "spellcheck" was called a dictionary. If you weren't sure how to spell a word, you wrote down all possible spelling options and chose the one that Looked correct. In fact, on my computer, "Yours faithfully"--the correct way to end a formal letter--is not even a pre-programmed option. And the spellcheck usually defaults to American spelling, just like the signage in the new Christchurch Women's Hospital (eg fetal instead of foetal). I myself have not met any of Chris's "ethically timid or intellectually under-performing" nurses or other tutors at my nursing school, indeed, I believe the staff here do extremely well, occasionally under trying conditions, to deliver the best possible nursing training they can. I feel this is reflected in the calibre of such students as the current National Student Unit chair Jennifer Reid who is definitely not ethically timid or under-performing.

While I appreciate Chris is entitled to his opinions, one thing students are taught is never to make generalisations or assumptions about others, be they patients/clients/consumers or colleagues.

Steve McBrearty, student,

Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology