NNRU presents research findings to NMC
The National Nursing Research Unit (NNRU), part of the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery at King’s College London, recently presented the results of its review of evidence around the possible regulation of healthcare support workers to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
In February 2010 the NMC commissioned the NNRU to research the regulation of healthcare support workers. They were given three objectives:
- assess the evidence of risks presented to public protection from an unregulated healthcare support workforce
- identify and consider key questions to be addressed in developing models of regulation
- make recommendations for further work required in taking healthcare support regulation forwards
NMC Chief Executive and Registrar, Professor Dickon Weir-Hughes said: ‘I would like to thank the National Nursing Research Unit for this report. The complex issue of regulating support staff has been debated for many years. This report makes clear the risks associated with patient safety if healthcare support workers continue to remain unregulated.
‘Healthcare support workers (and assistant practitioners) provide a vital service to help ensure person-centred care. They are a central part of a diverse workforce that is becoming more complex as the role of nurses continues to develop and new environments of care emerge. We now have a comprehensive UK wide evidence base to inform the discussions with our key stakeholders which will allow us to consider how we take this important work forward.’
‘Any future model of regulation for healthcare support workers must be proportionate and flexible enough to work across all of the UK's healthcare settings without compromising patient safety. The public need to have confidence that the people who care for them are competent and that there are robust systems in place to address issues of poor conduct or competence. We will therefore be taking a risk-based approach in order to ensure that the public are appropriately safeguarded.’
Professor Peter Griffiths, Director of the NNRU and co-author of the report, said: ‘It seems clear from the material we reviewed that there are significant risks to the public from the current situation where unregulated practitioners are taking on more and more previously regulated nursing work.
‘The assumptions that have been made in the past, for example that there would always be close supervision just don’t really apply in many current healthcare settings and are not bourne out by the reality on the ground. Although there are a number of options for addressing this issue and it is far from clear that the solution is necessarily for the NMC to regulate these workers, they do have a vital interest in the problem and it is gratifying to see them taking this forward.’