ECA presents evidence at NHS Workforce Review

Committee member Heather Jarman represented the RCN Emergency Care Association in raising key nursing issues at a recent meeting of the NHS Workforce Review Team in London.

The review team is responsible for gathering, analysing and advising on workforce planning for the NHS. This meeting gave us an important opportunity to bring our workforce issues forward at a national level alongside those of colleagues from the College of Emergency Medicine (CEM), the Ambulance Service and the Royal College of Physicians.

This is a crucial time for nurses working across urgent and emergency care to be represented, given the proposals to change the provision of services outlined in the Government's Urgent Care Strategy and the Darzi report.

The CEM, representing medical staff in emergency departments, identified changes to specialist emergency medicine training and varying levels of consultant cover as issues.

These are the issues raised by RCN ECA:

Reconfiguration of services and the likelihood of a "two-tier" system of major and local hospitals has implications for the skills required and recruitment of emergency nurses working in both settings.
Emphasis on increasing "care closer to home" needs investment, particularly in nurses fulfilling these roles in the community and the patchy implementation of community matrons (and similar roles).
Nurse practitioner roles are likely to increase in urgent care, particularly in places such as polyclinics and urgent care centres. There is a lack of information on the number of nurses working in practitioner roles in emergency care, minor injury units and other urgent care settings and these are still not regulated in terms of training or differences in scope of practice. Also in this area, we need to address discrepancies in pay which vary significantly across these roles.
While emergency care remains an attractive career option for many nurses and has so far largely avoided the recruitment issues prevalent in some areas, recruiting paediatric nurses to work in emergency departments is more difficult. This leads to concerns about the provision of care in these areas and the need to equip emergency nurses with the appropriate skills to look after children

The review continues

The discussions at this meeting will inform a report into the priorities and risks associated with workforce planning in emergency care - to be published later in the spring on the NHS Healthcare Workforce website.

More information on proposals to change emergency and urgent care provision is on the Department of Health website.

Email your comments on these issues to: heatherjarman.rcneca@yahoo.co.uk