The new framework for nursing – Leading Change, Adding Value – has been released by Jane Cummings, chief nursing officer for England. It follows on from Compassion in Practice out of which came the hugely successful 6 C’s campaign. The new framework builds on the 6 C’s, works alongside and addresses the identified gaps in the Five Year Forward View.
Leading Change focuses on health and wellbeing, care and quality, and funding and efficiency while the Adding Value arm concentrates on better outcomes, experiences and use of resources. This is further broken down to 10 commitments to support action of nursing, midwifery and care staff in achieving the outcomes. The framework is not disease specific but is for all nurses whatever our role or place of work.
The Five Year Forward View also looks at the importance of leadership going into the future. It talks of empowering patients and engaging communities. There is an emphasis on New Models of Care – different ways of delivering services to the populations we serve. The Five Year Forward View mentions little about clinical care, although dementia is covered.
The NHS Business Plan 2016 does tackle clinical areas as well as organisational and funding priorities. Dementia again features, alongside mental health, cancer care, obesity and learning disabilities.
The General Practice Forward View promises increased GP and practice nurse training, expanded primary care work force, reduced bureaucracy increasing time for patients, summarising 10 high impact Actions including Quality Improvement expertise – a particular interest of mine.
So will the latest release of government reports see an improvement in care for patients with long-term respiratory conditions? It would seem that many are focused on the bigger picture of changing organisational structure rather than clinical areas and those that do have a clinical element do not have a respiratory theme.
However, unplanned admissions and unscheduled care for these patients continues to be a big drain on NHS budgets (without any consideration for the distress caused to the patients) so while not featured directly in government this remains on most CCG’s target lists.
It is worth taking the time to look up the details contained in these reports. The 10 commitments contained in Leading Change, Adding Value applies so accurately to our patients with respiratory disease, or the nurses caring for them. From promoting the population’s health, ensuring the right education and training, to the use of technology and informatics to improve practice, we need to be sure that respiratory disease stays on the agenda and is done well.
We also need to continue the flow of inspiring nurse leadership, and all of these reports encourage this. Jane Cummings, in her foreword, says: “The impact and leadership ability of our workforce is phenomenal.” In my experience, a better example of that could not be found than that within the respiratory community.
