ECA meet with the Liberal Democrat health team
Members of the RCN Emergency Care Association (ECA) national steering committee recently met with the Liberal Democrat health team at Westminster. The Liberal Democratic team included their shadow health secretary Norman Lamb, shadow health ministers Greg Mulholland and Sandra Gidley, and Baroness Barker of Anagach.
The politicians were very interested in the four-hour standard in emergency care. In particular, they wanted to know what sort of challenges nurses working in emergency departments face in implementing the standard on a day-to-day basis. It was pointed out to them that in certain departments, the 98 per cent target is sometimes achieved by manipulation of certain aspects of care. The ECA stressed that although they supported the four-hour standard in principle, there was often too much focus on the clock. It was suggested that at times quality was compromised just to achieve the four-hour standard.
Baroness Barker felt that certain groups of patients, such as older people, may have been disadvantaged and that in certain circumstances these sort of patients may need more time in order to receive the most effective care. Baroness Barker also stated that given the very different nature of patients in “minors” and “majors” areas of emergency departments that having one standard that applied to all of these patients seemed inappropriate. She expressed the view that the standard in “majors” should remain at four hours, or be more flexible than this under certain circumstances, whilst the standard in “minors” might be reduced to something like two hours.
Norman Lamb also raised the concern about the issue of ambulances waiting outside of emergency departments to unload patients so that the standard could be achieved. He agreed with the ECA committee that this sort of activity may dangerously compromise the care of patients being held for long periods of time in ambulances. It was also agreed that the public could also be put at risk when calling for emergency ambulances that could not respond to such requests because they had been unable to offload existing patients at emergency departments.
Norman Lamb expressed a desire to meet more front line emergency nurses and was interested in visiting emergency departments. The meeting finished with the Liberal Democrat health team offering to present their vision for emergency care at the RCN ECA conference in Cheshire this November.