NEWS WORLD IN BRIEF HIV-positive nurse jailed A Ugandan court has sentenced a nurse to three years in jail after finding her guilty of criminal negligence for potentially infecting a patient with HIV. Rosemary Namubiru had pleaded not guilty, saying she was the victim of stigma and discrimination because of her HIV status. Ms Namubiru said there was no malice involved when she accidentally pricked herself with a needle and then used the same one to give a child an injection. The child was not infected. New York-based advocacy group the Global Access Project said Ms Namubiru should have faced a disciplinary hearing by a professional nurses’ association, not a criminal trial. Maori job crisis Maori nursing graduates are heading to Australia to seek employment because they cannot find jobs in New Zealand. National Council of Maori Nurses president Heimaima Hughes said it was disheartening for Maori graduates not to be able to find jobs in their homeland and that more Maori nurses were needed to improve the health of the indigenous population. Plane thinking Nurses from a hospital in China’s Jiangsu province are wearing air hostess uniforms to care for patients as part of a scheme to improve their customer service skills. Recruitment and training for the voluntary programme started in March and has included instruction with an air hostess from China Eastern Airlines. Twelve ‘air hostess’ nurses are working on one ward in the Lianshui Huaian Hospital of Chinese Medicine. Bu Haijuan, head of the hospital’s nursing unit, said that although nurses are taught technical skills during their nursing training, a good attitude and manners could be overlooked.
NURSING STANDARD
Trust raises numeracy concern Nurses are being turned down for NHS jobs because of poor maths skills, a trust chief executive has warned. Claire Murdoch, chief executive of Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust and a registered nurse, claimed some nurses were ‘unable to do basic drug calculations’. Her trust regularly sees failure rates of 50-80 per cent when testing job applicants’ literacy and numeracy, she added. Ms Murdoch called on Health Education England, the NHS
body responsible for nurse training and education, to be ‘tougher’ on how universities recruit students. But the Council of Deans of Health, which represents 85 university health faculties, dismissed the claims, insisting nursing students enjoy ‘excellent employment prospects’. All prospective pre-registration students are tested for literacy and numeracy before they get to interview and throughout their course, said council chair Ieuan Ellis.
Care home nurses are ‘inadequately’ trained By Katie Osborne Hundreds of nursing home staff in northern England are receiving additional training from the NHS in an attempt to drive up care standards. A pilot scheme is being led by Kay Ford, strategic clinical skills adviser at Health Education Yorkshire and Humber, who told a conference last week that nursing staff do not feel sufficiently skilled to perform tasks such as turning patients to prevent pressure ulcers. Ms Ford, who is responsible for clinical skills training in nursing homes, said thousands of nursing home residents are being referred to GPs or A&E at huge cost to the NHS. She cited one home where a patient had been left with a catheter inserted for 20 weeks because staff did not know how to remove it. He was eventually referred to A&E. Ms Ford, a former district nurse, is piloting the training scheme across North Yorkshire funded by Health Education Yorkshire and Humber. More than 500 nursing home staff have so far received the training, which is
delivered using simulation manikins in areas such as catheter care. The pilot is due to end in March 2015. Ms Ford said 32 staff at four nursing homes where safeguarding issues were raised are among those who have received the training. Following this, no resident in these homes has developed a grade 4 pressure ulcer. She said: ‘Resolving this issue is in everyone’s interest and owners should be taking more responsibility. Clinical commissioning groups, the NHS and nursing homes in particular should be putting their hands in their pockets to pay for this training.’ Registered Nursing Home Association chief executive Frank Ursell said: ‘The resources available to the NHS for training vastly exceed those in nursing homes, many of which have seen fees for publicly funded patients frozen or cut in real terms in recent years.’ He said Health Education England should use some of its £5.6 billion budget to fund nursing home nurse training. He added: ‘As in the NHS, competencies in nursing homes will vary between individuals, but the majority of nurses strive constantly to do their best for patients.’ may 28 :: vol 28 no 39 :: 2014 13
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NURSING STANDARD
Trust raises numeracy concern Nurses are being turned down for NHS jobs because of poor maths skills, a trust chief executive has warned. Claire Murdoch, chief executive of Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust and a registered nurse, claimed some nurses were ‘unable to do basic drug calculations’. Her trust regularly sees failure rates of 50-80 per cent when testing job applicants’ literacy and numeracy, she added. Ms Murdoch called on Health Education England, the NHS
body responsible for nurse training and education, to be ‘tougher’ on how universities recruit students. But the Council of Deans of Health, which represents 85 university health faculties, dismissed the claims, insisting nursing students enjoy ‘excellent employment prospects’. All prospective pre-registration students are tested for literacy and numeracy before they get to interview and throughout their course, said council chair Ieuan Ellis.
Care home nurses are ‘inadequately’ trained By Katie Osborne Hundreds of nursing home staff in northern England are receiving additional training from the NHS in an attempt to drive up care standards. A pilot scheme is being led by Kay Ford, strategic clinical skills adviser at Health Education Yorkshire and Humber, who told a conference last week that nursing staff do not feel sufficiently skilled to perform tasks such as turning patients to prevent pressure ulcers. Ms Ford, who is responsible for clinical skills training in nursing homes, said thousands of nursing home residents are being referred to GPs or A&E at huge cost to the NHS. She cited one home where a patient had been left with a catheter inserted for 20 weeks because staff did not know how to remove it. He was eventually referred to A&E. Ms Ford, a former district nurse, is piloting the training scheme across North Yorkshire funded by Health Education Yorkshire and Humber. More than 500 nursing home staff have so far received the training, which is
delivered using simulation manikins in areas such as catheter care. The pilot is due to end in March 2015. Ms Ford said 32 staff at four nursing homes where safeguarding issues were raised are among those who have received the training. Following this, no resident in these homes has developed a grade 4 pressure ulcer. She said: ‘Resolving this issue is in everyone’s interest and owners should be taking more responsibility. Clinical commissioning groups, the NHS and nursing homes in particular should be putting their hands in their pockets to pay for this training.’ Registered Nursing Home Association chief executive Frank Ursell said: ‘The resources available to the NHS for training vastly exceed those in nursing homes, many of which have seen fees for publicly funded patients frozen or cut in real terms in recent years.’ He said Health Education England should use some of its £5.6 billion budget to fund nursing home nurse training. He added: ‘As in the NHS, competencies in nursing homes will vary between individuals, but the majority of nurses strive constantly to do their best for patients.’ may 28 :: vol 28 no 39 :: 2014 13
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