NEWS

MORE PRACTICE NURSES NEEDED TO STEM GP CRISIS

The RCN is calling for greater investment in practice nurses after research revealed more than 500 GP surgeries in England could close because of a predicted shortage of family doctors. A survey by the Royal College of General Practitioners found that more than 90 per cent of GPs are aged over 60 and, by 2022, 1,000 GPs a year will retire. RCN lead for primary and community care Marina Lupari said: ‘The government must now focus on how it builds a multidisciplinary workforce that supports more care being delivered in the community. ‘It is crucial to remember that general practice is a team involving nurses and healthcare assistants, as well as doctors,’ said Dr Lupari. ‘The RCN wants to see greater investment in more practice nurses, as well as nurses being more involved in the decision making at the practice.’

THE RCN WILL HOLD ALL PARTIES TO THEIR CONFERENCE PLEDGES, SAYS PETER CARTER Prime minister David Cameron’s promise to protect the NHS budget has been welcomed by the RCN – but it warns the health service remains on a ‘knife edge’. In a keynote address at last week’s Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Mr Cameron insisted the NHS budget would be protected if he was re-elected next year. He also promised further investment, but stopped short of specifying how much would be spent and on what services.

Nurse recruitment

While Labour leader Ed Miliband promised to train 20,000 new nurses at his party’s conference two weeks ago, the Tories turned their focus to GPs, pledging that everyone in England will have access to GP services seven days a week by 2020. RCN general secretary Peter Carter said, while he was encouraged by Mr Cameron putting the NHS at the heart of his speech, the college would hold all parties to their conference pledges.

‘The NHS is currently on a knife edge,’ he added. ‘Staff are trying to deliver against a backdrop of tight finances, staff shortages and short-term planning. They will feel some degree of relief that the NHS will have its budget protected under a future Conservative government.

THE NHS WILL HAVE ITS BUDGET PROTECTED – David Cameron

‘However, this merely mirrors the financial situation during this parliament – and the reality on the ground has been of intense pressure, long waiting times, rising demand and undervalued and demoralised staff. ‘NHS patients now need all parties to acknowledge the scale of the demands that will face health and social care over the coming years. It is difficult to overstate how badly a real injection of funding will be needed,’ Dr Carter said.

Lib Dems shore up support for safe staffing levels Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams promoted the case for mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios at an event attended by assembly members last week. Ms Williams chaired the seminar after the consultation on her safe nurse staffing levels (Wales) bill closed. The bill is expected to be presented to the Welsh assembly in December. The audience, which included assembly members and nurses, also heard from Linda Aiken, a world authority on the impact of nursing care on patients. Professor Aiken, director of the Centre for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania, said introducing a 1:4 nurse-to-patient ratio in California had not proved prohibitively expensive.

‘No hospitals or units closed because they could not financially support the ratios or recruit enough nurses, and those hospitals that had better staffing than the minimum required did not then reduce their staffing,’ she said. Ms Williams told the audience at the RCN-hosted event at the National Assembly for Wales that she had chosen to focus her safe staffing legislation on nurses because they are with patients 24 hours a day.

Evidence of benefits

She added that her bill focuses on staffing levels in adult inpatient wards because that is where the strongest evidence of the benefits of ratios exists. Ms Williams said that she was aware of work being undertaken to establish how many nurses were needed for patients in the community.

She is hopeful though that the bill could act as a precedent for safe staffing initiatives with other healthcare worker groups. Ms Williams emphasised that it is important the bill ‘sets a framework’, creating a statutory duty on health boards to have enough nurses to provide safe nursing care and to outline what they must take into account when planning their staffing. RCN Wales director Tina Donnelly said: ‘We can no longer sit by and watch the pressures develop and our nurses reach breaking point. It is time to make sure guidelines are enshrined in law so that mandatory standards exist in order to preserve the current workforce and those of generations to come.’

NURSING :: vol 29without no 6 ::permission. 2014 11 DownloadedSTANDARD from RCNi.com by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 26, 2015. For personal use october only. No 8 other uses Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved.

More practice nurses needed to stem GP crisis.

More practice nurses needed to stem GP crisis. - PDF Download Free
75KB Sizes 0 Downloads 5 Views