Prime Minister, David Cameron has announced plans for new patient and staff satisfaction tests across all NHS services to expose unacceptable standards of care.
A new ‘friends and family’ test – where patients and staff are asked whether they would recommend the service to a loved one – will be introduced into every hospital in England from April 2013 and the Prime Minister wants that to go further, with GP surgeries, district nursing and community hospitals also adopting the measure. The Prime Minister said that compassionate care must be everyone’s business and announced a new package of support for nurses, healthcare assistants and wider NHS staff. The announcement builds on the recently published Compassion in Practice vision for nursing, midwives and care staff, which sets a blueprint for respectful and dignified care. New measures will include:
• Patient satisfaction tests. From April 2013, ‘friends and family’ tests and patientled inspections will be introduced across all hospitals. The test will show hospitals what patients and staff care about most, and will be used to trigger improvements in services and performance.
• Better training. Training and career development opportunities for healthcare assistants to progress through to fully-fledged nursing roles as part of a new £13 m innovation fund. The Care Quality Commission will review induction training for care staff to ensure that nobody can provide unsupervised help without an appropriate level of training. New minimum training standards for care staff will be published.
• Understanding dementia. All NHS and social care staff, from porters to doctors, will have access to new training to make sure people know how to provide support for people with dementia. In addition, every NHS ward will have a ‘dementia champion’ and every NHS organisation a dementia nursing expert. A £50 m incentive scheme will also become available to improve dementia care in 2013/14.
• More nursing rounds. Nine in ten hospitals have now introduced hour by hour care rounds and there will be efforts to ensure the remaining hospitals follow suit within a year.
• Better district nursing. A new ‘vision for district nursing’ will be published so that commissioners of local services put a greater priority on their role in community care and look to strengthen these services, supporting patients to live independently at home and leave hospital quicker.
In addition, nurses and midwives at the beginning of their career will be given the opportunity to become ‘care makers’, a new initiative to use volunteer ambassadors in hospitals and homes to improve care. The initiative builds on the success of the London Olympics 2012 ‘Games Makers’. Commenting on the new measures, NHS Confederation chief executive, Mike Farrar, stressed that the NHS is totally committed to the agenda, but there is a way to go and the NHS must fully embrace the challenge on behalf of the public: “We have got to ensure that a culture of compassion is running through the veins of every place that provides care – no ifs, no buts and no exceptions.” Mr Farrar welcomed the new friends and family test as ‘a step forward’, but added that account must be taken of other measures and to “build a rounded picture of care so organisations and patients are not responding to an unduly simplistic picture.” Commenting on the Prime Minister’s statement, Dr Peter Carter, RCN chief executive and general secretary, said: “Members tell us that they want to focus their energy on the needs of their patients, spending more time at the bedside caring for them and their families. “The Prime Minister is right to acknowledge what an ‘incredible job nurses do – and how much we ask of them’, and we welcome the announcement to provide extra support and training for the nursing profession.” The RCN welcomed the commitment to improved training and development for healthcare assistants, and supported plans to ask patients and staff for their views and recommendations about care settings. “Patients and staff know what good quality, dignified care looks like and this ‘family and friends’ test will be one important piece of the jigsaw that provides an overall picture of quality care,” said Dr Carter. The RCN also welcomed the focus on better district nursing. “Strong community care is crucial in enabling more people to be cared for at home and at the same time easing the strain on hospitals,” added Dr Carter.
