MPs urge daily count of nurses on wards in wake of scandal

Hospitals should be identifying the numbers of nurses they have on each ward every day and publishing the information to help prevent a repeat of the Stafford hospital scandal, a powerful Commons committee is recommending.

MPs want the information to be collated immediately so it can be analysed but suggested hospitals should also look at posting the figures on wards so patients and families are aware of staffing levels.

The move would help to meet the need for reforms outlined following the public inquiry into the hundreds of needless deaths at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, according to the Commons Health Committee.

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Robert Francis QC found the prioritisation of financial performance over adequate staffing was a significant factor in the poor care at the hospital.

His review made 290 sweeping recommendations for healthcare regulators, providers and the Government, which MPs said boiled down to the need for a fundamental change of culture in the NHS.

In a report assessing the main proposals, MPs insisted a “routine culture” of transparency that allows staff freely able to raise everyday concerns, not just major wrongdoing, must be adopted. They warned that formal proceedings, such as disciplinary procedures, professional standards hearings and employment tribunals, are “not appropriate forums for honestly-held concerns” about patient care.

Committee chairman Stephen Dorrell said: “Openness ought to be part of the routine culture of the health and care system. It’s not just a duty of candour that arises when things go wrong.

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“If a duty of candour is a form of confession then people will always be defensive. It should be routine, it should apply in all circumstances.”

The wide-ranging report, After Francis: Making a Difference, calls for responsibility for monitoring patient safety data and practice to be handed to the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Following widespread concerns about the use of gagging orders preventing people speaking out publicly about poor care, the committee urged the CQC to write to anyone hit by such a clause to tell them the terms will not be enforced.

Breaches of planned fundamental standards of patient care in the NHS must be treated seriously and investigated thoroughly, it added.

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The report highlighted plans by Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust for a staffing board that would display the numbers of nursing staff and suggested other hospitals should adopt the same or a similar system.

MPs raised concerns about government proposals to reform nursing training that would mean students seeking NHS funding would be made to spend a year as a health care assistant, claiming it may deter recruits.

Mr Dorrell said: “Robert Francis made 290 recommendations in his report, but in truth they boil down to just one – that the culture of ‘doing the system’s business’ is pervasive in parts of the NHS and has to change. This cultural change will require a system where it is easier to raise a genuine concern about care standards or patient safety than it is not to do so.”

Health Minister Lord Howe said: “We agree that transparency on staffing numbers and making those numbers visible on the wards are a good thing.

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“Patient safety experts agree that safe staff-patient ratios should be set locally. It is not for Whitehall to set one-size-fits-all staffing rules.”

Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham called on ministers to implement the recommendations of the Francis Report. “England’s hospitals must have enough staff to provide safe care this winter,” he said.

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