Nursing profession must adapt to change

Dame Christine Beasley, Chief Nursing Officer, Department of Health, recently discussed the role and future development of nursing at the AfPP Annual Congress, held in Harrogate. She warned of tough times ahead for the health service, but assured delegates that plans to focus on quality will not be “shelved”. While significant progress has been achieved, the NHS will be required to “reduce waste in the system” in the wake of the financial crisis and nurses will have a valuable contribution to delivering efficiency gains. “We have come through some troubled times in the NHS, but, through my visits around the country, I see many examples of excellent practice. We have a come a long way in the past 10 years, especially when you consider how long people used to wait for operations and how quickly and efficiently surgery happens today. Patients say they are amazed at how streamlined services are now, compared to their experiences of the NHS 20 years ago,” she commented.

Tackling variation

However, she added that there is still unacceptable variation in the health service and said that there is much work to be done to raise quality uniformly across the NHS. Christine Beasley pointed out that when services go well for patients, they say they feel “lucky”. “They do not feel confident that the service will be like that for them every time,” she explained. “Here lies the challenge for us. Nurses are often the touchstone by which people evaluate the quality of the services they receive as they are usually present 24/7 during a patient’s care – other healthcare professionals tend to come and go throughout their interaction with the health service. We need to consider how we can get to the point where, if things go wrong, patients are actually surprised, because they expect their experience to be excellent every time.” Christine Beasley said that she had experienced variations in quality for herself when she recently visited a friend being treated in hospital. Her friend had been admitted as an inpatient and she had spent most nights by her side. “Over the course of a month you start to notice aspects of the service that you would not normally be aware of. What was particularly noticeable was the difference in the standard of care that you witnessed depending on who was in charge. There were two or three people that stood out and made you feel relieved that they were on duty because they made you feel more confident, safe and listened to. You could tell the difference when they were in charge.”