Nurses working in adult social care are wrongly seen ‘as somehow less skilled than those working in the health sector’, Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) chief executive Andrea Sutcliffe has said.
Since she joined the NMC 11 months ago, Ms Sutcliffe warned that concerns have been raised with her that social care nurses are sometimes ‘disregarded and undermined’ by others because they are seen as ‘less skilled’, which is ‘absolutely not the case’.
She pointed out that to join the NMC register, all nurses must demonstrate ‘clinical excellence and commitment to kindness, compassion and respect’.
The comments form part of a statement from Ms Sutcliffe ‘on the important contribution of adult social care nurses’, published yesterday for the annual Care England conference.
In the statement, Ms Sutcliffe continued: ‘Nurses working in adult social care should never be made to feel as though they are less important or less skilled than nurses working in the health service.
‘We know that in many cases, an adult social care nurse is often one of only a few registered nurses in their service – responsible for managing and providing care to people with increasingly complex needs requiring a very high level of knowledge, skill and competence.’
