Invest in experienced nurses says RCN following BCH report

Published: 20 March 2009

Patient care suffers when trust managers do not invest in experienced nurses, the Royal College of Nursing has said.

The comments were made in response to the publication of the Healthcare Commission report on Birmingham Children's Hospital (BCH), and the RCN added that management must be blamed when hardworking nurses leave employment because they feel they are not being listened to.

The Healthcare Commission report reviewed paediatric tertiary care services at the Birmingham Trust and found they were struggling to meet rising demands which resulted in "delays in treatment, less than optimum care, and children being redirected to other services". (Healthcare Commission).

The RCN Chief Executive & General Secretary, Dr Peter Carter, said:

"The RCN has been saying for years that high quality care requires enough highly skilled nurses to deliver it. The BCH management were not focused on recruiting and training nurses to provide quality care in one of only four specialist children's hospitals in the country. When you overwork and overburden staff in any profession, morale deteriorates and the quality of their work suffers. It is no different with health care staff and the stakes are incredibly high.

It is deeply worrying that this specialist children's hospital had to send seventy children a month elsewhere for treatment because they didn't have the capacity to care for them".

The RCN highlighted its desire to work in partnership with the Government to address poor management practice. Dr Carter added:

"Nurses spend more time with patients than any other health professional and it's time this trust listened to their views. We want to work with the Government to root out poor management practice and ensure that the views and experience of health professionals are central to every trust board decision."

The Healthcare Commission report was carried out at the request of Health Secretary Alan Johnson in response to an article in The Observer newspaper.