HEALTHCARE DELIVERY


Nurse leadership and the quality agenda


KATE WOODHEAD RGN DMS looks at the latest initiatives announced by the Government, aimed at improving quality of care, following a series of damning reports on failures in nursing standards.


There would be very few nurses working in the NHS and other healthcare organisations today who would not welcome wholeheartedly the announcement by the prime minister, David Cameron, that paperwork and bureaucracy will be reduced in future. The Coalition Government will also establish a nurse review group to address issues of standards across the NHS. The Nurse Quality Forum Group will lead the uptake of good practice and recommend ways of improving care standards, although the terms of reference of the group will not be decided until the first meeting at the end of February. The Nurse Quality Forum is to be led


by Sally Brearly, a former nurse and expert on patient involvement and


experience and a lay member of the National Quality Board. It will be composed of nurses, nurse leaders and patients and will be charged with taking a national leadership role in promoting excellent care and ensuring good practice is adopted across the NHS. A Number 10 statement said: “The prime focus will be to exhibit national leadership, to stimulate local action by those delivering care to address problems and promote improvements needed across services.” Those readers who keep up with the


healthcare news will be aware that this is a response to a variety of damning reports published last year, which did not reflect well on the state of nursing in the acute sector. In October 2011, the Care Quality Commission found that a half of NHS


Kate Woodhead.


hospitals were not delivering expected standards of nutrition to elderly patients and 40% did not offer dignified care.


Releasing Time to Care The Government also announced its aim to have all hospitals implementing the NHS Institute ProductiveWard by April 2013. A recent report found that, despite the countless examples of quality improvement and savings incurred, only half the potential wards in England have availed themselves of the programme. The report says this is a ‘huge missed opportunity – and one which needs to be addressed urgently.’ The research team were particularly keen to answer the question about how the spread and sustainability of staff experience of implementing the ProductiveWard, can help the spread of other large scale change initiatives.1


The Productive Series


‘The Nurse Quality Forum will be composed of nurses, nurse leaders and patients and will be charged with taking a national leadership role in promoting excellent care.’


MARCH 2012


aims to empower teams to identify areas for improvement on the ward by giving staff information, skills and the time they need to regain control of their ward and the care they provide. While a successful implementation of


the ProductiveWard would seem to be an ideal solution for hospitals wishing to tackle the quality agenda and also make savings, it is recognised that


THE CLINICAL SERVICES JOURNAL 17


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