"Philosophical rhetoric when not grounded in reality is nowt but sophistry of the most facile variety." - DeeDee Ramona
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The NMC are currently running a review of pre-registration nursing education.
Questions include:
should nurses be prepared to diploma or degree level? what proportion of a pre-registration programme should be spent learning in practice? should shared learning be a requirement? should there be generalist and/or branch programmes, and if so, what should the branches be?
The petition is currently sitting at 216 signatures, which means we will get a response from the appropriate government department!
Phase one is now complete. Yay!
However, more names are still welcome. Keep the support coming.
The deadline isn’t until 6 October, so still plenty of time to accumulate more names.
Incase you haven’t already signed, the petition is here
If you require more infomation, visit the FAQ
Our campaign for the government to set statutory minimum nurse: patient ratios now has a Facebook group, courtesy of one of my nursing cyber-chums who was kind enough to set it up.
For the government to set a statutory minimum ratio of nurses to patients on hospital wards, with penalties for NHS trusts who fail to achieve these ratios.
Why?
Put simply, if a hospital ward is short-staffed, patients can die. A growing body of research shows a direct link between levels of nurse staffing on a ward and rates of patient mortality. Patients on understaffed wards are more likely to develop hospital-acquired infections, more likely to become undernourished or dehydrated, and more likely to develop pressure ulcers.
In addition, understaffed wards make nurses more likely to become demoralised and “burnt out”, causing the quality of their work to deteriorate, or for them to leave nursing altogether. Either of these outcomes harm patients indirectly.
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I’ve given each of them a nickname, and I’ll set up a poll on the right-hand side bar so you can decide which one you want to vote for as the logo we should use.
Vote wisely.
We’ve already highlighted some of the peer-reviewed research evidence that links nurse-patient ratios to patient safety. What I think we also need is some personal testimonials, to give the thing a more human edge.
So, to the nurses on here, have you ever been in a situation where patient care was compromised due to understaffing? If you’re not a nurse, have you or a relative’s care ever been compromised because there weren’t enough nurses on the ward?
Thanks to Beakie for collating some of the research papers linking nurse patient ratios to patient safety and nurse burnout. I’ve decided to create a post here so that the list of papers is online and link-to-able. If anyone comes across any additional papers that aren’t listed here, feel free to suggest them and I’ll add them to the list.
What I’m planning is to create a petition on the PM petitions website, and then try to spread the word across the blogs. Hopefully this will encourage people not only to sign the petition, but also to talk about the issue on their own blogs, thus sparking debate and greater awareness.
I’ll write up a FAQ on the subject over the next couple of days.
I’ve been trying to create a graphic for people to put on their blogs (similar to the ones people have for other blog campaigns such as this one). Sadly my image-creating kung fu is weak, and what I’ve done looks a bit naff. Is there anyone here who’s better at these things than me?
Click on the “read more” tag to see the attempt I made. What we need is something that uses a similar slogan and image, just done so it’s a bit more easy on the eye.
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The post caused a few interesting reactions when it was entered on the Britmeds. A nurse commenting on there gave a nice example of the real reason why too many patients leave NHS hospitals under-nourished and covered in pressure ulcers.
Standards in nursing care are declining because of one simple thing: appalling nurse patient ratios. Managers are intentionally short staffing the wards.
The patients on a general medical/surgical ward in today’s hospitals were ITU patients ten years ago.
Patients are sicker and more complex now and managers don’t want to staff the wards based on acuity. They don’t want to staff the wards at all. There are no jobs, nurses are losing their jobs….and we currently have 13 high dependency patients to one RN on my ward (general medical, yeah right!). These people are on 5-6 IV drips each, blood, insulin drips, telemetry, all of them are immobile, incontinant, unable to feed themselves, confused….and their relatives demand one to one care.
Elsewhere in the thread, the same nurse also says:
Just wanted to add that yesterday I worked on my lovely general med ward with 13 fucking high acuity patients. Not only was there multiple IV meds, assesments etc but 8 of my patients needed to be fed as they were unable to do it themselves and 10 -12 of them were constantly incontinant. I was on my own and asked the managers to send me some help…anything…basically I got told “tough shit, deal with it” because they don’t want to pay for staffing. I worked 15 hours with no break at all and kept all of my patients safe and well. Every single one of them complained that I wasn’t giving them enough one to one time and “ignoring them”.
One single RN to 13 high-dependency patients. That’s simply an impossible job even for the best nurse. This nurse doesn’t need Hattie Jacques breathing down his/her neck. He/she needs help.
In response to this, I’d like to propose that we at Mental Nurse start a bit of e-campaigning via the blogosphere:
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