Nurses for Reform Blog

Yesterday I was interviewed on the LBC lunch time show to comment on this story .  The head of the Royal College of Nursing, Dr Peter Carter, has been calling for family members of elderly patients on NHS hospital wards to help provide care, such as helping with eating and going to the toilet.

I made the made the point very strongly that this is not a problem of nurses not wanting to look after elderly patients. I know many, many dedicated, hard working nurses who are as appalled at this situation as the rest of us.

The reason we are in this crisis is because of the system that is the NHS.  Nurses for Reform has argued for a number of years that this is the inevitable conclusion of a system that has taken the tax payers money, promised the earth and been unable to deliver, and will continue to be unable to deliver.  Peter Carter knows this as do many of our politicians.

This move to have relatives working on the wards is simply privatisation from the inside out and it is not just happening in healthcare.  We are seeing it with the establishment of free schools and it won’t be long before something similar occurs with policing and other state provided services.

It is now time for the politicians of all parties to be honest with the british people.  The state cannot and never could do it all.  Before yet more people die unnecessarily in this failing system the Government must open up the planning laws to make it easier for new market entrants to build and run hospitals to care for NHS funded patients.  There must also be a return to the independent sector of all NHS hospitals so that NHS money goes only on the funding of patient care, not the propping up of the crumbling NHS estate.  Finally, the Government must allow Doctors, Nurses, Hospitals and Clinics to advertise their services as only by building up brands that are successful and trusted will Britain have a health service that is truly fit for the 21st Century.

This irrelevant scaremongering nonsense is what we have come to expect from the Royal College of Nursing. It is designed to lead to the public to believe that 100,000 nursing jobs will be lost completely due to the Government spending cuts and healthcare reforms.

However, what is not taken in to account are the jobs for nurses that will be transferred to the private sector.  With reference to my previous post, I would suggest that we may see increased demand for nurses to work in many different healthcare settings.  As for the accusation that less nurses would be trained, surely the time has come for the state to lose its monopoly on nurse training and for us to see a plethora of new entrants to the nurse education market.

This really is great news.  Dr Peter Carter, of the Royal College of Nursing, is finally beginning to listen to Nurses for Reform and to really understand the NHS reforms.

His understanding that failing hospitals should close is a major step forward.  Sadly, he still seems to think that healthcare provision should still be managed top down by central government rather than develop via market mechanisms, but this  is definitely a start!

Earlier this morning I was interviewed on LBC Radio with Peter Carter from the Royal College of Nursing I was pleased that I was able to convey many of the points that I wanted.

Briefly, I warned the RCN against going on strike.  To wander up a Scargillesque blind alley at this time of such national financial pressure would be fool hardy.  That said, if they do strike and I were in the government I would press ahead and seek to abolish National and Regional Collective Pay Bargaining.

Again, adamant that all UK hospitals should be placed in the independent sector so as to drive up quality NFR made the case that away from the whines of sectional trade unions real patient interests require some blue skies thinking

This morning I was interviewed on LBC Radio’s Sunday Morning Show to discuss the Government’s healthcare reforms and the response of the Royal College of Nursing

There has been a lot of publicity recently about the poor care given to patients by Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust

It has been found that patients were routinely neglected, left to die and “cared” for in appalling conditions.  For me though, one of the interesting and appalling things about this is that in all of the media reports I have listened to I heard few genuine apologies.  In the main hospital managers, so-called nursing leaders such as Dr Peter Carter the General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing and various Politicians have all been rushing to shift the blame on to each other.  I have heard no one come up with any long-term plans to improve the situation and to stop patients from dying at the hands of the NHS.

One thing that NFR believes should not happen is a rush of new target driven reforms, it is time that the Government realised that all targets do is to pull resources away from patient care and in to the administration of reports to the Department of Health.

Radical reform is needed across the NHS it is time that the Government had less involvement not more in the delivery of patient treatment and care.  As a start, Mid-Staffordshire, and indeed all other failing NHS Trusts, must be given over to new management, ideally from the private sector as has happened here.  If hospitals or trusts continue to fail their patients they must expect to be closed or taken over by new management.

It is time that we stopped tolerating this NHS that is failing in its duty time and time again.