NMC response to budget 2018

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Drop in mental health nurses shows NHS under ‘severe strain’

Statistics published by NHS Digital on Thursday (27 September)  are evidence of a service under severe strain, says the Mental Health Network. Read NHS Confederation article here

NMC launches new approach to resolving complaints about nurses and midwives

We’re putting people at the centre of fitness to practise. This week we’ve begun introducing a new approach to resolving complaints about nurses and midwives. Read news piece from NMC here

Mental Health Nurses Have The Power To Save Lives

I developed anorexia when I was 12 years old and I was brilliant at it. I became the master of deception, lying to my friends and family for four years. I got sucked in to this cycle where anorexia would give me the value I needed, this sense of purpose that I wasn’t getting from anywhere else. That voice it my head became like my best friend, reassuring me all the time and making life okay. Read blog from HuffPost here

Nursing In The Digital Age: Using Technology To Support Patients In The Home

This report is based on a survey of over 500 nurses working in the community. It seeks to determine how far new healthcare information technology has changed and how skills and attitudes within community services have adapted. Read Kings Fund blog here

New NMC figures continue to highlight ‘major concern’ as more EU nurses leave the UK

Today we have released new figures from our register which show a significant rise in the number of EU nurses and midwives leaving the register. Read NMC webpage here

A just culture guide

A just culture guide


This guide encourages managers to treat staff involved in a patient safety incident in a consistent, constructive and fair way. It supports a conversation about whether a staff member involved in a patient safety incident requires specific individual support or intervention to work safely.


See the guide at: https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/just-culture-guide/

Health care education funding for postgraduate, dental hygiene and dental therapy students

Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) -
From August 2018 new postgraduate pre-registration nursing, midwifery, allied health professional, and most new dental hygiene and dental therapy students will access loans from the Student Loans Company. New DHSC guidance explains the changes in further detail.
Access the guidance at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/healthcare-education-funding-for-postgraduate-and-dental-students/healthcare-education-funding-for-postgraduate-and-dental-students

Series of films to support overseas nurse transition

Health Education England (HEE) has launched a series of films for overseas nurses and their trainers to help support transition and integration into UK practice.

Left To Chance: The Health And Care Nursing Workforce Supply In England

Royal College of Nursing report analyses UCAS data and finds that the number of applications for nursing degree courses has fallen by a third since 2016. It calls for a range of incentives to encourage people into nursing, Read King's Fund blog here

5 years on: responses to Francis: changes in board leadership and governance in acute hospitals in England since 2013

This report, written by the Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham in partnership with the University of Manchester and the Nuffield Trust, reveals that hospital boards report that they are placing a high priority on care quality and safety, and many invested significantly in nurse and medical staffing in the wake of the Francis Report. However, some hospital boards reported feeling that quality assurance as a pressure, as the demands of multiple external regulators was reported to sometimes feel burdensome, threatening to distract from a focus on the actual work of service improvements.

The nursing workforce

The Health Select Committee has published its nursing workforce inquiry.  This report highlights the importance of improving staff wellbeing and development to allow the NHS to retain the valuable experience and skills of its current nursing workforce.

Funding to support employers with the nursing associate role

Health Education England's (HEE) has announced that it will be supporting the implementation of 5000 nursing associate places with additional funding support for employers.

£15,000 has been agreed to cover the cost of providing the programme and to support practice placement preparation and supervision.

HEE will also be releasing a support package of £3200 to support mentorship and supervision, quality assurance and developing provider readiness for the role.

Enabling BME nurse and midwife progression into senior leadership positions

This report from NHS England summarises the learning from engagement work, which identifed what the best performing trusts in the workforce race equality standard area were doing, and includes examples that outline best practice approaches and a number of suggested actions to support improvement.

Launch of advanced clinical practice framework

The new national multi-professional framework for advanced clinical practice in England has been launched by Health Education England.

New case study on how to run a successful recruitment fair

NHS Employers has published a new case study focusing on how Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust successfully ran a recruitment day to increase its nursing and health care assistant workforce.

The study looks at how the trust targeted nurses wanting to return to practice in the NHS, as well as more traditional groups such as nurses in training. The organisation reached out to experienced nurses working outside of the NHS through a variety of communications channels to secure over 160 attendees at their event. They interviewed 110 people leading to 95 job offers to both registered nurses and healthcare assistants.

Clinical Nurse Specialist in Early Pregnancy Care

The role of the clinical nurse specialist in early pregnancy care is intended to enhance the care for women who may be concerned about a complication in early pregnancy.

This RCN document outlines the key skills and knowledge required to develop the role of this specialist nurse/midwife and should provide clear direction for commissioners and managers when creating roles to support best practice in local service provision for women and their families.

Understanding benchmarking

RCN guidance for nursing staff working with children and young people.  This publication is an updated version of the original guidance published in 2007 and updated in 2014. The model identified in the original version is as relevant today as it was then.

The aim of this guidance is to increase understanding of benchmarking and to encourage each of us to get involved. The process of benchmarking relies on you to share evidence of best practice with your peers.

Managing Unacceptable Behaviour

Guidelines for Accredited Representatives and Relevant RCN Staff. These guidelines introduce its Respect Charter, which governs how all our stakeholders should approach working with each other at all times.

They also: highlight what steps will be taken when the standards in its Respect Charter are not met; provide guidance for our accredited representatives who are subjected to unacceptable behaviour; and outline what support is available to them

NIHR Signal Individual support of nurses using electronic medicine monitors can improve HIV treatment

Use of electronic pill bottles that record when they are opened and follow-up discussion of the printed readouts with nurses improved HIV outcomes. It is thought that patients became more reliable in taking the medication, which can have complicated scheduling. Overall, the HIV virus in the blood and the risk of treatment failure were lower in the group of patients who had access to this intervention compared to regular care.


In addition to being more effective, the programme also reduced the estimated lifetime cost and disease burden per patient, considering quality and quantity of life lived.


The readouts were used to help focus attention on any patterns of medication usage so that strategies could be discussed to improve adherence. As non-adherence is the main barrier to effective management of HIV, any measures that improve it are welcomed. However, the intervention tested here requires several hours of training for the nurses delivering it and may not be that easy to introduce in practice. Evaluation of the approach in non-trial settings is necessary before wider implementation.