Photograph by Pete
Prime Minister David Cameron has defended his controversial plans for NHS England, where trainee nurses would first work as healthcare assistants to improve patient care.
Cameron’s comments come after the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) called the idea “stupid”, with senior nurses more worried about current nurses being overstretched with current low staffing levels. More than a third (36%) of the 2000 senior nurses surveyed at the RCN conference warned that staffing levels were so low as to be unsafe on a weekly basis, with 74% warning of unsafe staffing levels once a month.
RCN president Andrea Spyropoulos said the scheme would “waste tax payers money” whilst the government fails to implement the suggestion of staffing ratios proposed recently by the Francis inquiry.
On the controversial nursing plans, Cameron said:
“We have said that nurses should spend some time when they are training as healthcare assistants in the hospital, really making sure that they are focused on the caring and the quality, and some of the quite mundane tasks that are absolutely vital to get right in hospital
It is going to be controversial, but in the end the sort of health service we want is not just about making sure we have the facts and the figures, and the money spent well, it’s about the level of care, so when our elderly relatives go in there, we know they are going to get a really good quality of care.”
