NHS Nurses

You know from browsing this site that we’ve been eager to hear your thoughts on what you’ve been doing to achieve quality and efficiency in your daily work. Over 600 nurses and midwives have done just that as part of a joint initiative, “High Impact Actions for Nursing and Midwifery” - a partnership between the Department of Health, NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives and the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Led by the Strategic Health Authorities, this NHS-wide survey of views has produced eight key action themes: preventing falls, keeping patients nourished, promoting skin care, speeding up the discharge process, protection from infection, end of life choices, reducing sickness absence among nurses and midwives, and supporting natural births.

Changes in these areas have proven to be the most useful to, and successful for, nurses and midwives working on the frontline. Lynne Maher, the interim director for innovation at the NHS Institute, put it this way: “nurses and midwives [...] are uniquely placed to know what works and what does not.” To make High Quality Care for All a reality in a financially challenging time, it’s this sort of experience - and this sort of feedback - which we need, so that everyone can benefit from shared best practice. Dame Christine Beasley, the Chief Nursing Officer for England, said: “By asking nurses and midwives to identify what innovations they believe have had the highest impact, we’re giving NHS organisations everywhere quicker access to the tools they need to improve quality care.”

By sharing your experiences, you might just help staff nationwide find just the idea they’ve been looking for themselves. That’s how important your ideas are. So please do!