Information Revolution and Greater Choice and Control - webchat Nov 9

Put your questions about the Information Revolution and Greater Choice and Control direct to Andrew Lansley, Secretary of State for Health, on November 9 at 1.30pm.

People can ask questions in advance by emailing:
informationrevolution AT dh.gsi.gov.uk - or -

 by Tweeting their question, using the hashtag #inforevolution.

The webchat will be available from November 9 at www.dh.gov.uk/informationrevolution and you can watch the live Q&A on screen, ask questions and leave comments. We will also be tweeting Andrew Lansley's answers and the comments we receive. A transcript of the webchat will be available on the website after the event.

I would be grateful if you could bring this to the attention of any interested individuals or groups.

With best wishes

Anne Cooper
National Clinical Lead for Nursing
Office of the Chief Clinical Officer
NHS Connecting for Health
anne.cooper AT nhs.net
http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk
NHS Connecting for Health supports the NHS in providing better, safer care by delivering computer systems and services which improve the way patient information is stored and accessed.
Additional link:
http://conversations.dh.gov.uk/2010/10/17/home/
My source:
British Computer Society Nursing Specialist Group

Ru! Ru! Ru! Ru! ..... alarmed by the noise? [ambient care]

Working in nursing home liaison I am a regular visitor to various homes in my patch.

As I respond to referrals inevitably I spend several minutes waiting to see residents, relatives and staff. At this point I can take in the ambience of the home and all too frequently what stands out is the home's call system.

Many are acutely effective.

Even though I am not there for long - 30-60 minutes, the volume, tone and the overall quality of some of these systems can be grossly irritating. Due to the care needs of the resident population the alarm calls are also a constant. This is not just my audiological experience, but one shared with students on placement with me.

Attracting the attention of staff is crucial. Caring staff do want to know who, where and when someone needs assistance. Ironically, sometimes that annoying, intrusive alarm call is supported with a plaintive shout for "someone!". As ever there are many ways to define person centred care. In response to the alarm's screech, scream and shrill the staff head to the panel and seek direction to Room 3 or 7.

If care is personalised then whatever happened to our signature tunes? Did this individual play a musical instrument? Gleaned from their life history record this might at least include Jo's musical favourites? It's true that existing alarms are anonymous, and so confidentiality is preserved. Meanwhile though peace, well-being and staff retention rates(?) are lined up against the walls and reverberated, rev erbe rat ed, re ve r be ra te d ... ...

Of course, at some remote future time I might embarrass myself as I press the red button and the Thunderbirds March rings out down the corridor, around a left, a right corner to light a panel.

Fellow residents and visitors might be given to say "Gee, there goes Alan Tracy needing help again!" Maybe by then the robots will have it sorted: the latest in-situ care units will save the day and people's ears.

Seriously though: designers, owners and managers of homes must consider the acoustic architecture of the care environment; or are they also anticipating a rise in the average age of employees with a consequent impact on the hearing acuity of employees? As to the quality of life of the residents go figure: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!

College of Social Work

At the moment there is an ongoing consultation relating to the creation of a College of Social Work. Here is an explanation from the website - http://www.collegeofsocialwork.org.uk/

Welcome to the home of the campaign for an independent, professionally led national college of social work across the UK. This website is dedicated to supporting the development of a fully independent national College of Social Work which will seek to improve and support social work by providing leadership by and for the profession.

The College of Social Work will lead the development of the profession and represent it in discussions with organisations that regulate, train, work with, and are affected by social work.

For further information on BASW or the campaign for the national college of social work, please visit http://www.basw.co.uk for the latest news, information and updates.

Take part in discussions online in BASW's member-only forum at MyBASW Exchange

If you would like to get in touch with your local BASW office, please find our contact details at http://www.basw.co.uk/contact

For several decades social workers have been my colleagues on the ground floor, doing the 9-5 turn and more. I once started a talk to a local constabulary on service development and thought the reception was a bit odd: the introduction met with a frosty tone in high summer. Things settled when I revealed I was a nurse, not a social worker. The audience highlighted the need - this was well over a decade ago - for more effective out-of-hours access to social work and mental health service colleagues. Things have improved markedly and with ongoing re-organisation pressures on the NHS and social services, the need for radical change has now shifted to social work itself.

I do hope the new College of Social Work will consider the health career model as a potential foundational and lifelong learning resource. The qualities and relevance of the model to the social work profession are manifold, and include the model's being:

• person-centred -
• the model is also socially oriented (25% of the model concerns the 'social' agenda);
• recognizes the oppositional experience of person - state / law;
• can support reflective models of practice for new learners and established staff;
  
• the vulnerable can be represented there - infants, adults, older adults ...;
• multidisciplinary in scope, or phrased another way - discipline neutral;
• multi-contextual in scope, individual (self), group (family, community), service (resources, policy), budgets (financial), recovery, strengths, information-education, quality and outcomes (reporting);
• a currency to support interprofessional education and training, and -
  
• prior to the above provides a tool for curriculum development.
  

Best wishes to our social work colleagues as they set out on their own journey, which can also provide a vehicle for sharing.

Nursing & Midwifery Council consultation on standards for pre-registration nursing education

This NMC consultation seeks your views on new standards for pre-registration nursing education programmes. These standards set out what nursing students must demonstrate to be fit for practice at the point of registration.

They will be used by Approved Education Institutions (AEIs) and their partners within the UK to design and develop education programmes.

The new standards

The proposed standards have been developed following a review of the existing Standards of proficiency for pre-registration nursing education (NMC 2004) [PDF]. They set out the requirements that all pre-registration nursing education programmes must meet.

They also set out guidance, which should be followed by AEIs and their partners. Finally, they offer advice, providing extra information and context to those who design and develop nurse education programmes.

There are two parts to the standards:

• Standards for competence the knowledge, skills and attitudes that all graduate nurses need to demonstrate at the point of registration with NMC. Generic competencies need to be met by all nurses. Field competencies relate to the four fields of adult, mental health, learning disabilities and children’s nursing.

• Standards for education the requirements all pre-registration nursing programmes have to meet, including those relating to the teaching, learning and assessment of nursing students. The standards for education have been developed to ensure students’ competence can be rigorously assessed and demonstrated. The standards must be robust enough to meet public expectations for safe and effective practice.

The standards for pre-registration nursing education will be published in the autumn of 2010. They will replace the existing Standards of proficiency for pre-registration nursing education. New education programmes, designed to meet the new standards, will be introduced from September 2011.

The consultation

This consultation gives us the opportunity to receive your feedback on the proposed new standards. We want to know:

• how effective you think they will be in enabling programme providers to develop nursing education programmes
• how they can be enhanced or improved
• whether you can see any barriers to their successful introduction
• whether they are clear and easy to use
• whether we should include anything else and
• whether they support and promote equality and diversity.

Some of the requirements and guidance in the proposed standards for pre-registration have been carried over from the current Standards of proficiency for pre-registration nursing education (NMC 2004). [PDF]

Most of the questions in this consultation will ask you about information that is new, or where there have been major changes to the existing requirements.

Get involved
Our online survey will run from 29 January to 5pm on 23 April 2010.
Link to survey page.

Attend a question and answer event

During February and March we will host five question and answer events across the UK.

If you are considering taking part in the consultation, this is an opportunity for you to ask NMC professional advisors who have been leading this review any questions you have about particular aspects of the consultation document or the new standards.

The events are designed to support you in completing the online survey - their purpose is not to receive feedback on the new standards.
To find out more go here.

My source NMC mail list:
Leila Harris-Ryberg
Communications Officer
Press and Public Relations
Communications and Stakeholder Relations
Nursing & Midwifery Council
23 Portland Place
London W1B 1PZ
www.nmc-uk.org

Research Capability Programme NHS UK - consultation

From: The NHS-HE CONNECTIVITY PROJECT Forum - Malcolm Teague
Sent: Thursday, 30 October, 2008 16:42:25
Subject: Research Capability Programme - consultation

Consultation on the wider use of patient information

I attended a briefing event on the Research Capability Programme yesterday in Birmingham which was very informative and excellent progress is being made. It was mentioned that the researchers view was under-represented at the moment in the consultation on the wider use of NHS data eg for clinical research. Researchers currently represent only 2% of the responses. But I have just completed it as an NHS user which was the category that best fitted, so everyone can take part. It also takes you through the scenarios gently step by step. Anyway it would be great if you could encourage as many colleagues to take part as possible at:

http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/research/consultation

There were a series of RCP briefing events so some of you may already have attended elsewhere. The presentations are going to be made available so I will endeavour to pass those on in some way later. The NHS-HE Forum got a positive mention from Sir Alex Markham!

Many thanks,

Malcolm