Drawing on contributions and input from around 9,000 nurses, midwives care staff and patients, we are delighted to launch Compassion in Practice, the new three-year plan. Our enduring values for high quality care and good health and wellbeing are set out as the '6 Cs' together with 6 areas for actions that will help us achieve our shared goals.
The ‘6Cs’ - care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment are a statement of the constants of nursing and midwifery for a modern health and care system. They were strongly supported in our discussions with you and our final definitions reflect your ideas. This strategy is the first that explicitly reaches out to nurses and care staff across health and social care promoting high quality joined up care for older people. It is also recognises the importance of public health and the huge contribution that nurses and midwives play in improving health as well as providing high quality care..
Nurses, midwives and care staff have a key role in preventing ill health and promoting good health and wellbeing including health protection, early intervention and health promotion. This starts at the very beginning of life to give our children the best start and continues throughout the life course and as well as the supporting our specialist public health nurses and midwives our aim is to maximize the contribution of all nurses midwives and carers to improving the publics’ health by making every contact count for health and wellbeing.
We are also publishing a number of 'strategy on a page' visuals that show how the vision works in action for improving health
Public health nursing for children and young people
As our population lives for longer nurses and care staff are increasingly involved in supporting older people so that the extra years can be healthy years. This means working across health and care boundaries to enable people to remain active, to enjoy good physical and mental health, stay connected within their local communities and independent in their own homes, or another place of their choice, for as long as they are able. This means we must join up health and care services to provide the integrated care that people want.
We have published two 'strategy on a page' visuals to contribute to this work
The Nursing contribution to the dementia challenge
Take a look at these and let me know your thoughts on how we can use these to quality of care and health and wellbeing.
I would like to thank all of you who shaped this strategy - through meetings, formal responses and the fantastic use of social media (with special thanks to @wenurses).
5 comments
Comment by julie smith posted on
Morning. I contributed to this through twitter chats and a web cast. I agree with it but I am surrounded by cynical and dillusioned nurses who just see it as another political exercise. Lets face it. It says nothing new and no one could disagree with it. But nursing and nurses to day are to be found in serious trouble. They are blamed for system failures and are faced with being downbanded and deprofessionalised, whilst medicine just does what it always does. Those of us who are confronted with supporting these nurses through this reality are not best helped by nurses in executive positions in provider and commissioning roles who hide behing their pensions and the politics of their position. Please please, dont set us up to fail......
Comment by Deborah Evelyn posted on
You could stop abuse immediately by allowing visitors access from 8am to 8pm. With close scrutiny from relatives nurses would have to be much more careful. We allow this for children in hospital. Why not extend it to elderly patients too. They need compassion and a face they recognise too.
Comment by Linda Triggs posted on
I agree with you. However, I'm not keen on the word "allow". I believe facilitating open access to friends or family in hospital when patients may be at their most vulnerable is a basic human right. Only the patient knows who is important to them and this shouldn't be assumed or decided by healthcare staff.
Inadequate nursing skillmix definately needs addressing but should not be a reason to deny patient choice.
Comment by J.Jones posted on
What an absolute load of baloney! Total and utter garbage!
Is this the best theses so called "Senior Nurses" can dream up ?
When will these so called "Nurse Leaders" learn ?
Inadequate RN staffing levels lead directly to poor outcomes !
Evoking the 6Cs will not improve RN/patient ratios!
Replacing RN's with care assistants will guarantee dreadful and sometimes fatal outcomes! ( Ref. Stafford and others !)
I am tired of these nonsense inititives which are no more than a smoke screen to disguise the continuing assault on Registered Nurse staffing levels !
Comment by rtunmore posted on
The consultation on Compassion in Practice’ the vision and strategy for nursing and midwifery, along with the associated 6Cs, draws together views from a wide range of nurses, midwives, other health professionals, patients, service users and the public across the country. They have all been involved in this important work and have contributed to its development.
The ‘6Cs’ care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment are a statement of the constants of nursing and midwifery for a modern health and care system.
There are 6 action areas that will shape the delivery of the strategy. Some of the actions are subject to piloting, further testing and appraisal after which further recommendations will be considered. The full implementation plans for this vision and strategy will be available by 31 March 2013
Action area five: ‘Ensuring we have the right staff, with the right skills, in the right place’ inculdes addressing the nursing workforce and staffing levels - an opportunity to use this initiative to address your concerns.