NEWS
Nurse volunteer who contracted Ebola is praised for her bravery @ns_reporter
A British nurse who contracted the Ebola virus while volunteering in Sierra Leone has been praised by the RCN for her courage in travelling to west Africa to help patients there. Pauline Cafferkey, a public health nurse at Blantyre Health Centre in the outskirts of Glasgow, was diagnosed with the virus last week after returning to the UK from Africa, where she had been working for Save the Children. The charity has begun an inquiry into how Ms Cafferkey contracted the disease. This will include an examination of how protective equipment is used. Speaking at the weekend, RCN general secretary Peter Carter said the thoughts of the ‘entire nursing profession’ were with the nurse. ‘It is sad and distressing to hear that Pauline Cafferkey is now in a critical condition,’ he said. ‘The efforts of front line healthcare workers like Pauline have been essential for containing the spread of Ebola, even though it means they themselves face considerable risks. Their bravery and their compassion is inspirational.’ Despite her own concerns that she might have had a fever when she landed at Heathrow on December 29, Ms Cafferkey’s temperature showed
PA
By Katie Osborne
Pauline Cafferkey had been working at the Ebola treatment centre in Kerry Town, Sierra Leone
up as normal seven times during the screening process and she was permitted to fly home to Scotland. But the following day she became unwell and was admitted to hospital in Glasgow before being transferred by the RAF to the specialist isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London. She has received blood plasma from an Ebola survivor but ZMapp, the drug successfully used to treat British nurse William Pooley, is out of stock. The Royal Free announced that
Ms Cafferkey’s condition had deteriorated over the weekend and was critical at time of going to press. Public Health England has issued information to healthcare workers returning from west Africa, which states that once home, they must limit local travel to two hours a day and are banned from seeing patients for 21 days. All returning healthcare workers are provided with a testing kit and a telephone number to use if they become unwell.
RCN WARNS AGAINST OVERUSE OF LANGUAGE AS A MEASURE OF FtP The RCN has indicated it wants to ensure proposed powers to investigate nurses’ fitness to practise on the grounds of a lack of proficiency in the English language will not be invoked unnecessarily. Under Department of Health plans, published for consultation, the Nursing and Midwifery Council will be allowed to take action against nurses if there
are complaints about their standard of English, even if they have not made any clinical errors. The DH plans to give the NMC powers to test European nurses’ English before allowing them to practise in the UK. It also proposes using language as grounds for impaired fitness to practise for all NMC registrants, even native English speakers.
But the college said: ‘The RCN is concerned about what type of evidence would be used for such complaints where there has been no deficient performance in practice. We want to ensure that this provision will not be used excessively, such as in cases where support from employers in relation to colloquialisms is all that is required, rather than action by the regulator.’
NURSING :: vol 29without no 19 ::permission. 2015 9 DownloadedSTANDARD from RCNi.com by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 21, 2015. For personal use january only. No 7 other uses Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved.
Nurse volunteer who contracted Ebola is praised for her bravery @ns_reporter
A British nurse who contracted the Ebola virus while volunteering in Sierra Leone has been praised by the RCN for her courage in travelling to west Africa to help patients there. Pauline Cafferkey, a public health nurse at Blantyre Health Centre in the outskirts of Glasgow, was diagnosed with the virus last week after returning to the UK from Africa, where she had been working for Save the Children. The charity has begun an inquiry into how Ms Cafferkey contracted the disease. This will include an examination of how protective equipment is used. Speaking at the weekend, RCN general secretary Peter Carter said the thoughts of the ‘entire nursing profession’ were with the nurse. ‘It is sad and distressing to hear that Pauline Cafferkey is now in a critical condition,’ he said. ‘The efforts of front line healthcare workers like Pauline have been essential for containing the spread of Ebola, even though it means they themselves face considerable risks. Their bravery and their compassion is inspirational.’ Despite her own concerns that she might have had a fever when she landed at Heathrow on December 29, Ms Cafferkey’s temperature showed
PA
By Katie Osborne
Pauline Cafferkey had been working at the Ebola treatment centre in Kerry Town, Sierra Leone
up as normal seven times during the screening process and she was permitted to fly home to Scotland. But the following day she became unwell and was admitted to hospital in Glasgow before being transferred by the RAF to the specialist isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London. She has received blood plasma from an Ebola survivor but ZMapp, the drug successfully used to treat British nurse William Pooley, is out of stock. The Royal Free announced that
Ms Cafferkey’s condition had deteriorated over the weekend and was critical at time of going to press. Public Health England has issued information to healthcare workers returning from west Africa, which states that once home, they must limit local travel to two hours a day and are banned from seeing patients for 21 days. All returning healthcare workers are provided with a testing kit and a telephone number to use if they become unwell.
RCN WARNS AGAINST OVERUSE OF LANGUAGE AS A MEASURE OF FtP The RCN has indicated it wants to ensure proposed powers to investigate nurses’ fitness to practise on the grounds of a lack of proficiency in the English language will not be invoked unnecessarily. Under Department of Health plans, published for consultation, the Nursing and Midwifery Council will be allowed to take action against nurses if there
are complaints about their standard of English, even if they have not made any clinical errors. The DH plans to give the NMC powers to test European nurses’ English before allowing them to practise in the UK. It also proposes using language as grounds for impaired fitness to practise for all NMC registrants, even native English speakers.
But the college said: ‘The RCN is concerned about what type of evidence would be used for such complaints where there has been no deficient performance in practice. We want to ensure that this provision will not be used excessively, such as in cases where support from employers in relation to colloquialisms is all that is required, rather than action by the regulator.’
NURSING :: vol 29without no 19 ::permission. 2015 9 DownloadedSTANDARD from RCNi.com by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 21, 2015. For personal use january only. No 7 other uses Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved.
