Friday 21 September 2012 saw the launch of the engagement exercise for the Nursing, Midwifery and Care-Giving Vision and Strategy.
The vision and strategy is the starting point in further developing our culture of compassionate care. The documentation examines how nurses, midwives and care-givers can be supported to provide excellent care. At the heart of this are the 6Cs; the six key behaviours and values that encapsulate what we in the caring professions do.
I want to develop the ideas contained in the draft vision and strategy further. To do this I need your input. I need the views of people working in all care settings, patients, those receiving care, their families, carers and the public.
The engagement activity continues to Friday 16 November. Over coming weeks there are multiple opportunities to get involved and provide your opinion. The NHS Commissioning Board hosts a series of webinars and I am speaking at several events and conferences across the country.
We all have the opportunity to make a significant difference.
How to get involved
This feedback exercise is now closed. It ran from 21 September 2012 to 16 November 2012. Thank you for your valuable input. We are now considering all of the responses and feedback received. Any comments left on this page after 16 November 2012 will not be added to the feedback exercise.
- View the vision and strategy
- Watch a short film with Jane Cummings talking through the background to the vision and strategy
- View details of webinars and Tweetchats
Use the hashtag #6Cs and follow me on Twitter: @JaneMCummings
Comments on this page are now closed.
I heartily support compassionate care. I wonder what care is if it is not compassionate? It is interesting that it is described in terms of a number of behaviours. Compassionate care comes from having a compassionate attitude and decisions to act in a compassionate way stem from this attitude.
You are right to say what is care if not compassion. The important thing about compassion is that it is not an emotional response (like empathy or sympathy) but compassion is a state of mind to identify genuine human need and to chose to do something meaningful to resolve that need. If they are hungry feed them, if they are cold then warm them, if they are uncomfortable, in pain or lonely or sad then comfort them. None of these are emotional responses. It is a decision to SEE the need and to ACT to resolve it.
Putting Compassion at the Heart of the Board’s role in Quality Assurance – I work with FT non-executive directors as a visiting speaker for Cass Business School, and challenge them to constructively review their board assurance processes for quality and safety. How do Board members assure themselves that the culture of care and compassion that they seek to promote within their organisations is real in every corner or every part of their organisation. Understanding the relationships between great staff engagement and great leadership, staff motivation and morale and a culture of care and compassion is vital. Its all too easy for Boards to reassure themselves that ‘all is well’ by placing patient stories at the top of their agenda, whilst they are missing the small signals that suggest all is not quite as they would believe.
The feedback exercise is now closed. It ran from 21 September 2012 to 16 November 2012.
Thank you for your valuable input. We are now considering all of the responses and feedback received. Any comments left on this page after 16 November 2012 will not be added to the feedback exercise.
Kind regards
Simon
My elderly mother was in hospital many times. The one thing that would have made an enormous difference to her care would have been for the same nurse to have been on the ward twice running!
Every day I went in to see her, there was no one who could tell me about her condition from direct experience-they just looked at her notes. To them she was not a person, simply a name to be dealt with while they were on that shift and then they were gone! Surely compassion and care would improve if the nurses could develop even a small relationship with the patient. I know in my mother’s case, she would have loved to see a familiar, friendly face, instead of strangers day after day who didn’t even know her name.
Why can nurses not be scheduled on the same ward for at least two to three days-it would make such a difference.
I can relate to your comments. I think much ‘twaddle’ is spoken by the powers that be as to how compassionate nursing care in should be delivered. I firmly believe that things would improve drastically if the system of training reverted to my day. We began our training with three months in PTS (Preliminary Training School) where we learned our anatomy and phsiology, learned how to carry out procedures, and were taught the highest standards of nursing care. At the end of this period we took an exam to check on our academic knowledge at this early stage. We then were placed on our various wards under the constant gaze of a very senior sister who continued ‘on the job’ teaching. We were supervised every step of the way and our failings reported back to our Tutors. We spent six weeks on each ward working along side the staff nurses or sister. We were taught how to do the important little things such as combing the patient’s hair, cleaning their teeth and generally making the patient comfortable before opening the curtains. Patients were addressed as Mrs X or Mr Y or Miss Z. none of the present day over familiarity. I squirm at youngsters addressing patients they have just met by their first names. What has happened to respect. We wore beautiful (albeit uncomfortable when our collars and cuffs were overstarched)uniforms so all grades were recognisable and uniform gave patients confidence. We were taught to care for people as if they were our own. The nursing council should reinstate a different system of training and maybe then we will see again the standard of nursing for which we were famed far and wide. Not anymore sadly.
Child Care Tuition can be an essential part of any student’s development. Studies have shown that students who attend regular, additional Child Care tuition on average achieve higher results than students who don’t take extra tuition. Child Care Tuition provides the environment in which the student learn friendly, comfortably and supportively, free from the pressures of home or school.