[Guinness]

Different awarding bodies had differing criteria for awarding the NVQ qualification, for example one body required the candidate to answer multi choice questions whilst another required essays and on the job observations. The optional units completed in the NVQ may not even be relevant units for hospital work. Nobody is going on to do their NVQ3, it's been replaced by the much better and more intense QCF which has appropriate bolt-on units required by the job role.

I know what the role of the healthcare worker is, and yes, you can kinda equate them to the old auxiliary, but as you say they are required to do more than the auxiliary ever did, the lines are being blurred. What is in effect happening is that nurses are becoming low paid doctors and healthcare workers are becoming low paid nurses.

I'm not denigrating healthcare workers, as I said, they are the ones I want looking after me. I'm saying that its they who are the backbone of the NHS not nurses, and when people bang on about nurses being underpaid and doing long hours, its actually the healthcare workers that are bearing the brunt. And, because to them, it's a calling, they just get their heads down and quietly get on with it.

The government is in a win-win situation, they get nursing care on the cheap and then the CQC do their inspections, write damning reports on hospitals and get them closed down or amalgamated, giving them ammunition to push for private health care