Action is overdue on safe staffing guidance, RCN tells government

Abstract

The RCN is calling for swift action to implement a recommendation on safe staffing by Robert Francis in his report on care failings at Mid Staffs. Howard Catton, the college’s head of policy, said enough time had been spent talking about the report. He was speaking at a conference on implementing the Francis report – seven months on from its publication. The report made 29 recommendations on nursing that included a call for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to draw up best practice guidelines on minimum staff numbers and skill mix on wards. The government’s initial response to the report, which it titled Patients First and Foremost and published in March, accepted the Francis recommendation on staffing guidance. The full government response to the 290 Francis report recommendations is due within weeks. ‘We need to take action rather than have more words,’ said Mr Catton. ‘We just need to do it: commission NICE to work with a steering group of nurses on the guidelines. It could be done within the next 12 months.’ Mr Catton was addressing the conference last week on the same day as the Commons health committee recommended that every hospital ward publishes its staffing levels daily. In its report the committee recommends that hospitals adopt the practice of displaying staff numbers in every ward, as introduced at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust. Hospitals should collect information on staffing for every ward daily and publish it immediately for clinical commissioners, the MPs on the committee say. At the Salford trust a teleconference is held with senior nurses each morning at 8.30am. Chaired by the deputy director of nursing, it sets out to determine concerns about nursing staff numbers across all wards and departments. Jane Ball, deputy director of the national nursing research unit and a member of the Safe Staffing Alliance set up by Nursing Standard, endorsed the committee’s recommendation. ‘It is an important thing to do,’ she said. ‘But it is not the whole story. This is a starting point because it is not enough just to publish the numbers; you then need to do something if the levels are low, so we need to make sure measures are in place to ensure ward managers do not let them fall below a certain level by, for example, making good use of temporary staff.’ For more information on the Safe Staffing Alliance go to www.safestaffing.org.uk