Correspondence

Nursing and Care Quality Forum make recommendations to Prime Minister

The Nursing and Care Quality Forum’s initial recommendations to the Prime Minister have been published today.

Documents

Read the Forum’s letter to the Prime Minister

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Details

The Nursing and Care Quality Forum’s initial recommendations to the Prime Minister have been published today.

The independent Forum, made up of a range of experts on nursing and care quality working across all settings, aims to improve the quality of nursing care across all care settings.

The Forum’s initial recommendations include:

  • making sure nurses are recruited for their caring nature and compassion as well as their knowledge and skills**
  • reinforcing the need for leaders of organisations to ensure appropriate staffing levels and skills mix are in place, and for boards or equivalents to be held to account for this**
  • highlighting the importance of leaders being supernumerary  for them to be fully accountable and have the time to lead **
  • a call for action to increase the number of staff who would be happy for their friends and family to be treated at the same place they work.**

Speaking about the Forum’s  ongoing work, Chair, Sally Brearley said:

‘Our initial recommendations to the Prime Minister highlight the good work that  many are already doing to ensure that nursing and care is of the best quality, and we want others to benefit from these lessons. The Forum will now work with others to help make these ideas a reality and to continue to highlight good practice in nursing and care.’

The Forum is basing its work around a set of priority themes to help focus its discussions. These are:

  • to promote accountable nurse leaders across the NHS
  • to encourage the right culture and the right values
  • to involve, listen to, hear and respond to feedback from patients
  • to make sure that nurses have the time to give high-quality care to patients.

Across all of these areas, the Forum considered the education, training, knowledge and skills needs of staff, and also care across all care settings.

Over the last few weeks, the members of the Forum have used their own wide ranging networks, attended and hosted a variety of engagement events, and used an online questionnaire to gather a broad range of views on these issues, and to help shape their initial advice.

The Forum will now build on its initial recommendations, with a particular focus on identifying and disseminating best practice in these and related areas, and continue to look at recommendations for improvement. It wants to continue to involve a range of people in these discussions, both to help inform their advice, and to identify best practice in these areas.

The Nursing and Care Quality Forum was established earlier this year, and met with the Prime Minister in April. At this meeting, they were asked to provide their initial recommendations this month, with further work to follow on from this.

You can contact the Forum at NCQF@dh.gsi.gov.uk

Published 25 May 2012