One of the action areas in the NHS Commissioning Board’s ‘Compassion in practice nursing, midwifery and care staff – our vision and strategy’ is action area five: ‘ensuring we have the right staff, with the right skills in the right place’.
Ruth May, Nurse Director, NHS Midlands and East is the senior responsible officer leading this work nationally.
One of the objectives of this workstream is to ensure that directors of nursing have access to evidence based tools to help them review their organisation’s nursing and midwifery staffing requirements.
For adult acute care areas, the Association of UK University Hospitals (AUKUH)’s safer nursing care tool is readily available to use and can be accessed here
The tool has been used successfully in a number of acute trusts across England.
Powerful endorsements
Professor Katherine Fenton, OBE, Chief Nurse, University College London NHS Foundation Trust highlighted that the tool ‘is a relatively simple tool for nurses to use and is not too resource intensive. It is based on patient acuity and dependency data and is suitable for use across a range of specialties. The outcomes of the tool help directors of nursing to identify risk areas and support the appropriate deployment of nursing staff. It is important to triangulate the results with other methods such as professional judgement’.
Professor Hilary A Chapman CBE, Chief Nurse, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, advised that ‘the multipliers used in the tool are in the process of being updated. Following completion of this work it is anticipated that the new version will be available in the Spring. In the meantime, the existing tool is still readily available for use’.
User views acted upon
Following feedback from users on the limitations of the web based safer nursing care tool, hosted by the NHS Institute, this version is being decommissioned, but the non-web based tool is still available and remains a robust method of determining nurse staffing requirements.
Ruth May explained that ‘following use of the tool, it is recommended that directors of nursing discuss the findings of the staffing review and linkages with patient safety and quality metrics at Public Trust Board meetings at least twice a year’.
It is recognised that there is a lack of suitable tools available for other areas of nursing, including mental health, learning disabilities and community settings. As part of the safer staffing workstream, tools for these specialist areas will be commissioned.