AS New Year messages go, it is definitely on the tough side. In the year to come, says the chief nurse Fiona McQueen, there must be no skipping off for breaks when relatives want to speak to a nurse; there must be no rudeness or grudging behavior towards visitors; and there must be no disrespectful language used in front of their patients. The watch word at all times, says the professor, should be professionalism. It is her hope for 2016; her one wish for a better NHS.

However, the message, which was circulated to all staff in NHS Ayrshire and Arran, has not gone down well with everyone who received it. Indeed, the local chair of the union Unison, Gordon McKay, has demanded an apology. Mr McKay says his experience is the opposite of the professor’s and that nurses work way beyond their contracted hours rather than “nipping off for breaks”. He also says that they speak to patients with great respect and kindness.

It would seem from what he says that Mr McKay has interpreted the professor’s blog as a personal attack on all his members, and certainly some of the phrasing in Professor McQueen’s message could be seen as intemperate (after another tiring Christmas period for medical staff, the timing could also have been better). But the professor also talks in her new year message about the outstanding nurses and midwives she has encountered; it is also clear from the message, and from the professor’s previous comments on the subject, that her aim is not to undermine nurses but to work towards excellence in the profession at all times.

However, the intention of the professor’s blog remains clear – to flush out unprofessional behavior by drawing attention to some of the worst examples and she has every right to do it. Indeed, one of the problems with the debate about the National Health Service in Scotland has been a seeming unwillingness of ministers to acknowledge the problems in the service and talk openly about them. The health minister Shona Robison keeps talking about an honest conversation about the NHS, but when exactly is it going to start?

The hope is that the professor’s message to nurses will now help get the conversation going at last. As the latest planning report on the financial difficulties at Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board made clear last week, all is not well within the Scottish NHS. Principally, this is an issue of resources and the fact that the Scottish Government is not spending enough on the service, but there is also a problem with the attitude of some staff. We could pretend they do not exist, but it would be much better to take the advice of Professor June Andrews, the director of the Dementia Services Development Centre and a registered nurse herself, that nurses with bad attitudes should be outed, not protected.

As part of the conversation about the NHS, ways of driving out bad practices should be also be discussed and Professor McQueen’s idea of report cards that would record patients’ view of the service and display them in wards for all to see is one worth pursuing. But as the professor says in her blog, nurses must also be allowed to play their part in the conversation. Scotland’s chief nurse has been pretty tough on her colleagues at the start of 2016 and many of them may be feeling a little sore about what she had to say. But as well as the criticism, there is another more positive message in what she has to say – everyone in nursing needs to work together to get rid of bad practice.