National Institute for Health and Care Excellence

Debate between Lord Swinfen and Lord Prior of Brampton

Monday 13th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Countess makes a very insightful point. Non-productive time—by which I mean the time when nurses are not dealing directly with patients—varies considerably, but the average seems to be about 20% to 25% of their time. The better-organised wards—which takes me back to an earlier point—where there is strong local leadership from the ward sister will be organised in such a way that staff will spend much more time with patients. I agree entirely with the noble Countess’s point.

[Lord Swinfen (Con)]

My Lords, is part of the problem due to the specialisation of nurses? Are far too many of them being trained only as specialists so that they are therefore unable to be moved from one part of a hospital to another? Would more general training be better?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I do not think that is a problem. In many ways, in acute hospitals we lack generalists. That is true of consultants as well of nurses. That is actually my noble friend’s point. Possibly there are too many specialists, but on a cardiac ward or a specialist acute ward you need specialist nurses who know how to operate the equipment as well as how to look after the patient. You need a good balance between the two but, if anything, I fear we have, as my noble friend said, become too specialist and insufficiently generalist.