The Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) has urged district nurses across the UK to complete its first major national survey of the profession since before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Data collected from the survey responses will be used to produce a report that ‘articulates the needs’ of the district nursing workforce and will be of ‘crucial importance’ to politicians and system leaders, the QNI has said.
The survey – which is expected to remain open until early September – is particularly for those leading and managing district nursing services.
Its launch comes amid increasing demands on the workforce, new models of care and service changes since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Results will be published later this year, and the information gathered will be used to analyse trends in the work done by district nurses, as well as how these services are organised, the support the workforce receives and where additional support is needed, said the QNI.
Comparisons will be drawn from before the pandemic when a similar report was published by the institute in 2019.
QNI chief executive Dr Crystal Oldman said: ‘District nursing is the bedrock of healthcare delivery in the community and yet the profession has suffered from poor understanding, and lack of investment, by politicians and system leaders.
‘The number of district nurses has been falling in recent years, despite an increase in demand led by a growing and ageing population who are living with multiple complex health conditions.’
She added: ‘To help us create the evidence needed to argue for greater investment in the district nursing workforce, we need nurses to give us the numbers and the intelligence about how services are delivered by their teams, in their area.
‘We will analyse this data and produce a report that articulates the needs of the district nursing service on a national basis. This evidence will be of crucial importance to politicians and system leaders.’
The survey is being conducted by the International Community Nursing Observatory (ICNO), led by Professor Alison Leary, INCO director and chair of healthcare and workforce modelling at London South Bank University, and Dave Bushe, project manager and ICNO data Analyst at the QNI.
