Prime minister David Cameron has announced a “Nursing Forum” inquiry to address concerns about care standards and patient safety.
Mr Cameron today called for wider uptake of intentional nursing rounds and reduced bureaucracy, and established a nurse review group to address concerns about NHS care standards.
The prime minister praised nurses but said he had concerns about standards of care being provided in some areas. He called for several nursing initiatives to be taken up and extended (see box).
He said: “We need an NHS which ensures that every patient is cared for with compassion and dignity in a clean environment.
“If we want dignity and respect, we need to focus on nurses and the care they deliver. Somewhere in the last decade the health system has conspired to undermine one of this country’s greatest professions. It’s not one problem in particular. It’s the stifling bureaucracy.”
As revealed by HSJ yesterday, Mr Cameron announced the creation of a Nurse Quality Forum group to lead the uptake of good practice and recommend ways of improving care standards.
It will be composed of nurses, nursing leaders and patients and be “charged with taking a national leadership role in promoting excellent care and ensuring good practice is adopted across the NHS”.
A Number 10 statement said: “The prime focus will then be to exhibit national leadership, to stimulate local action by those delivering care to address problems and promote the improvements needed across services.”
It is an extension of the NHS Future Forum, established in the spring to review government NHS policy. It is understood it will be chaired by Sally Brearley, a former nurse, expert on patient involvement and experience, and member of the National Quality Board.
Sources told HSJ that it will consult around the country, using the same model as the Future Forum, but not the same name. The members of the group are yet to be decided, HSJ understands.
The review comes as Robert Francis considers his report on his public inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust scandal, which is due to be published later this year.
Senior sources said the government would want the “Nursing Forum” to help prepare it to respond to the inquiry report.
Mid Staffs and others cases in recent years have sparked serious concern about care standards, with nurses often blamed.
New announcements:
Aim to have all hospitals implementing the NHS Institute ‘time to care’ initiative by April 2013. Focus targeted support on 20 trusts which would most benefit from intensive support, starting this month. It will particularly focus on the delivery of care to older people.
Red tape challenge: Ask the new Nursing Quality Forum to ask frontline nurses to identify which pieces of bureaucracy get in the way of them performing their jobs properly, and help us remove them.
Regular nursing rounds: The Nursing Quality Forum will be encouraging the adoption of this best practice by all hospitals by raising its profile and demonstrating the benefits to frontline nurse leaders. The NHS Institute will look to bring together this programme with the “time to care” initiative.
Nursing Quality Forum to identify good practice and advise on what is best to implement and, where barriers to adoption and spread exist, to advise on what can be done to remove them. For example Energising for Excellence initiative.
Nursing quality Forum to look at how to “secure greater frontline nursing leadership in the future”, “exhibit national leadership, to stimulate local action by those delivering care to address problems and promote the improvements needed across services”.
Local HealthWatch to lead new patient-led inspection regime to replace the old Patient Environment Action Team inspections. Healthwatch England will make sure independent patient views are incorporated in to the design. Inspections to cover consider cleanliness, food, privacy and dignity at a minimum.
New ‘friends and family test’ question in the national surveys – asking “whether patients, carers and staff would recommend their hospital to their families and friends in their hour of need”.
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