Impossible to keep to just 100 words today, so won't try (I knew
this would happen, but thought it might be longer than 5 days before I had to
break this rule, hope you still find it interesting!).
I spent the morning today with Directors of Nursing from both NHS
commissioner and provider organisations in Hertfordshire & South Midlands
led by Heather Moulder; this
included acute hospitals, mental health & learning disability and community
Trusts as well as CCG lead nurses. The focus of the meeting was workforce
and Regional Chief Nurse @RMayNurseDir
joined us to talk about work she is doing leading National Nursing
Vision Action Area 5. She presented an overview of guidance and national
expectations for nursing workforce, likely to be launched at the Chief Nursing
Officer conference this Autumn.
We also heard from Director of Nursing colleagues about nursing
workforce challenges respectively in community, mental health and learning
disability, along with impressive values-based recruitment to nursing and care
assistant roles at Northampton General Hospital led by Suzie Loader.
We celebrated the success that has been achieved in
reducing pressure ulcers within the region, but acknowledged that complacency
must not be allowed as there is more to tackle on this, such as those originating
from the community-based care settings.
There was also a very interesting conversation
about compassion including the measurement of this. Further research being done looking at
measurement and how this can be used to best influence improvements in
compassionate care.
My afternoon was spent catching up from being out
of the office for the past day and a half and also, very importantly, finally
got pictures of Mrs F & the kids out and put up in my office!
Thank you for reading my blog this week, do comment
and feedback, as I want this to be helpful, interesting, useful to you and
willing to improve this. More to come
next week.
