Paperwork poser

However there is a world of difference between updating medical records and the scale of non-essential paperwork that has now been exposed by the Royal College of Nursing.

Ahead of its annual congress, it has calculated that nurses spend 14.3 millions hour a week on bureaucratic processes rather than tending to the needs of their patients.

Yet, while the Department of Health disputes some of the RCN’s calculations, this row must not deflect attention away from the need to improve the management of hospital wards and departments. If levels of filing, photocopying and the ordering of supplies has reached epidemic proportions, the claim made by the RCN, there could be merit – finances permitting – in hospitals appointing secretaries, or former medical practitioners, to undertake these important but time-consuming tasks.

It would then enable nurses, and others, to provide the quality of care that has been denied to patients in recent times because hospital staff simply do not have enough hours in the day to perform their duties to the highest possible standards.

Health minister Dr Dan Poulter accepts this. He 
said yesterday: “NHS staff need to be free to do what we were trained to do – look after patients.”

They are words that Dr Poulter now needs to honour.