In light of the recent report by the Health Select Committee suggesting that hospitals should be required to display live information on nursing staff levels, we wanted to ask you what you thought of this.
Should it just be extended to nurses? What about Doctors and other members essential to the running of a hospital. In the spirit of creating a more transparent NHS, would this move do just that? Or would it be too difficult and time consuming to execute.
The basis for this wave of concern about nursing levels comes from a report in The Times that alleges that 43% of wards have less than the advised staffing level, the minimum of which should be 1 nurse to every 8 patients, which is the number recommended by the safe staffing alliance.
In response, Jane Ball, deputy director of National Nursing Research Unit said 'Patients are being put at risk because hundreds of hospital wards do not have enough Nurses to look after them properly.' Is the central problem not the standard of care, but the lack of it? Or the does the entire culture of the NHS need to undergo a radical change?
How do you establish a system of staff recruitment that is flexible enough to ensure that hospitals and surgeries maintain a safe ratio of accountable staff to patients? How can this ratio data be collected centrally?
With GPs, Network Locum (now Lantum) seek to help build the 'culture of openness' (as highlighted by Stephen Dorell, chairman of the Health Select Committee.) Our ‘matchmaking’ approach to the fair and open staffing of GPs is one of the fastest means to connect quality staff with practices, removing the delay and the uncertainty of some traditional agencies. We have the right technology and have built an accountable bank of locums.
With an online system like Network Locum (now Lantum) supplying staff quickly and transparently, conceivably this could extend to hospital staff. And with this it would be possible to directly share our data with hospitals. In a week where it has been estimated that a failed IT overhaul has cost £10bn, could outsourcing be the most valuable route for the NHS?
This is just one suggestion. What do you think about these measures overall? What would you do to solve the lack of staff? Is that the biggest problem here?
Let us know : Tweet, Facebook, Linked-in or in the comments below.
