Letter on: There is no such thing as a child receiving 'a good smack'

Nurses who work with children and their families have indicated that they are promoting and upholding the fundamental principles of the 1989 United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (Fulton, 1996; Doyle and Maslin-Prothero, 1999). These include involving children in decision making at a variety of levels and respecting their rights to autonomy, privacy and dignity in healthcare settings. What is less clear, however, is the degree to which nurses are embracing article 19 of the Convention, which calls for the child’s fundamental right to protection from physical violence. Indeed, mention ‘corporal punishment’ to groups of nurses and the response tends to be either embarrassed silence or vigorous defence