Letters
We welcome all readers’ letters, but reserve the right to edit them or withhold names and addresses. Please email: [email protected]
Please keep letters to a maximum of 150 words, and include your full name, address and a daytime telephone number
Shape of Caring review is a chance to ingrain compassion into training Scandalous failings in patient care and our perceived lack of compassion are harming the image of nursing. The fact that we nurses appear to have fallen off our pedestal may even have contributed to the recent slap on the wrists over pay. There has been no great outcry over the government’s withholding of the measly rise recommended by the NHS Pay Review Body. I therefore welcome the Shape of Caring review (News May 14), especially if compassion will be centre stage and ingrained in all aspects of the training of nurses and healthcare assistants. I would also like to see a drive to recruit into nursing many more older workers with more life experience. We need more people from all walks of life – and ethnicities – in nursing. We also need more return to nursing courses and opportunities for healthcare assistants and care workers to advance their careers and become registered nurses. All these initiatives are long overdue. I am encouraged that Liberal Democrat peer Lord Willis of Knaresborough will be leading the review. He is a safe pair of hands and is well respected by the government. Perhaps we will get back on track, after all. Hugh Lancaster, by email
WHY ARE WALES, SCOTLAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND CAST ADRIFT? I am pleased to read that Lord Willis’s Shape of Caring review will ‘build on, rather than replicate, recent reports’ (News May 14). We don’t want the review members to be reinventing the wheel. The training of nurses and support workers needs to be improved, and not just in England. It is a sign of how far down the devolution road health care 34 may 28 :: vol 28 no 39 :: 2014
has gone that the review will make recommendations only for England. Why are Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland being cast adrift? I believe that better training leads to better basic care. Trained nurses are compassionate nurses. Compassion comes with an understanding of the patient experience and self-reflection and experience. The review will not be able to impose compassion throughout the NHS. But improving the training of nurses will certainly go some way towards embedding compassion in the care of all our patients. In particular, we need to improve the care of frail and vulnerable older people who are let down in so many ways by our health and social care services. Nursing can never be just another job. For many, it will always be a vocation. But the caring, vocational element always needs to be underpinned by the highest professional standards, as well as the best training.
DON’T FORGET THE TRAINING NEEDS OF RESIDENTIAL CARE HOME STAFF I hope that the Shape of Caring review (News May 14) will look at the training needs of nurses and support staff in residential care homes, and not just those of hospital nurses and healthcare assistants. When times are hard or there are empty beds, care home proprietors cut back on staff, particularly at night times and at weekends. The remaining nurses and staff are asked to look after too many patients. They do not have the training, experience, confidence or union support to do much about it. They do not have time to care, let alone do the drug rounds on time or assist properly with toileting, bathing and dressing. I found working in care homes too stressful for words and had to leave. I have worked in a busy GP practice for a number of years. But I still feel guilty for the care home residents I left behind.
Sally Harding, by email
Name and address supplied
NURSING STANDARD
Downloaded from RCNi.com by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 22, 2015. For personal use only. No other uses without permission. Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved.
We welcome all readers’ letters, but reserve the right to edit them or withhold names and addresses. Please email: [email protected]
Please keep letters to a maximum of 150 words, and include your full name, address and a daytime telephone number
Shape of Caring review is a chance to ingrain compassion into training Scandalous failings in patient care and our perceived lack of compassion are harming the image of nursing. The fact that we nurses appear to have fallen off our pedestal may even have contributed to the recent slap on the wrists over pay. There has been no great outcry over the government’s withholding of the measly rise recommended by the NHS Pay Review Body. I therefore welcome the Shape of Caring review (News May 14), especially if compassion will be centre stage and ingrained in all aspects of the training of nurses and healthcare assistants. I would also like to see a drive to recruit into nursing many more older workers with more life experience. We need more people from all walks of life – and ethnicities – in nursing. We also need more return to nursing courses and opportunities for healthcare assistants and care workers to advance their careers and become registered nurses. All these initiatives are long overdue. I am encouraged that Liberal Democrat peer Lord Willis of Knaresborough will be leading the review. He is a safe pair of hands and is well respected by the government. Perhaps we will get back on track, after all. Hugh Lancaster, by email
WHY ARE WALES, SCOTLAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND CAST ADRIFT? I am pleased to read that Lord Willis’s Shape of Caring review will ‘build on, rather than replicate, recent reports’ (News May 14). We don’t want the review members to be reinventing the wheel. The training of nurses and support workers needs to be improved, and not just in England. It is a sign of how far down the devolution road health care 34 may 28 :: vol 28 no 39 :: 2014
has gone that the review will make recommendations only for England. Why are Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland being cast adrift? I believe that better training leads to better basic care. Trained nurses are compassionate nurses. Compassion comes with an understanding of the patient experience and self-reflection and experience. The review will not be able to impose compassion throughout the NHS. But improving the training of nurses will certainly go some way towards embedding compassion in the care of all our patients. In particular, we need to improve the care of frail and vulnerable older people who are let down in so many ways by our health and social care services. Nursing can never be just another job. For many, it will always be a vocation. But the caring, vocational element always needs to be underpinned by the highest professional standards, as well as the best training.
DON’T FORGET THE TRAINING NEEDS OF RESIDENTIAL CARE HOME STAFF I hope that the Shape of Caring review (News May 14) will look at the training needs of nurses and support staff in residential care homes, and not just those of hospital nurses and healthcare assistants. When times are hard or there are empty beds, care home proprietors cut back on staff, particularly at night times and at weekends. The remaining nurses and staff are asked to look after too many patients. They do not have the training, experience, confidence or union support to do much about it. They do not have time to care, let alone do the drug rounds on time or assist properly with toileting, bathing and dressing. I found working in care homes too stressful for words and had to leave. I have worked in a busy GP practice for a number of years. But I still feel guilty for the care home residents I left behind.
Sally Harding, by email
Name and address supplied
NURSING STANDARD
Downloaded from RCNi.com by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 22, 2015. For personal use only. No other uses without permission. Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved.
