Restraining someone can stop them living the life they would choose
Senior nurses must engage "generation Y" on productivity
Directors of nursing must win the “hearts and minds” of frontline staff to boost productivity and avoid cuts, according to one of the country’s most senior nurses.
NHS South Central chief nurse Katherine Fenton said the profession had not done enough to improve productivity over the past decade. This had to change, she said, as the alternative was “slash and burn” cuts and poor quality care.
She said: “We could return to slash and burn and start doing things that are wrong and not in the patient’s interest. But we have got time this year to start doing the things that are right.”
Speaking at a Nursing Times conference on nursing productivity last week, Ms Fenton highlighted the chief nursing officer’s high impact actions – which include reducing falls and pressure ulcers – as methods of cutting costs by improving care (news, page 1, 17 November 2009).
She said: “I do believe these things are largely doable if we focus on it. I don’t think we’ve focused on it enough, particularly in the recent period when we have had significant growth.”
NHS investment has increased significantly each year since 2000, but this will stop from next year.
Ms Fenton said nurse leaders had to win the “hearts and minds” of frontline staff to change how they work. In particular they had to engage young nurses, “generation Y”. She said: “Unless we do engage them we will be back to just doing cuts.
“There is a lot of negativity out there. Because we haven’t communicated to our nursing and midwiferyworkforce as well as we could, they feel things have been ‘done to them’ a lot of the time.”
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Anonymous | 16-Mar-2010 9:50 am
'Productivity'. That term and nursing should not be in the same sentence.
Nurses worked into an early grave and still 'productivity' is not enough.
Nursing should be about quality not quantity. Unfortunately the NHS is now a business. And of course there has to be financial accountabilty for an organisation such as the NHS.
But therein lies the crux of the matter. . . .peoples healthcare and financial accountability are not compatable. Reduce costs and you reduce quality of care. There will ultimately be 'smarter' ways of working. . . .but there is only so much water you can squeeze from a sponge.
They will say quality matters, of course they will and it does to an extent. As money is cut and financial restraints applied quality will suffer....it has to.
Do you health ministers not see that? Do you want an NHS? have you not the guts to be honest with the public?
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