Health and Social Care Bill

Baroness Emerton Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I am not suggesting that they would. What I am suggesting is that the registered nurse might go and check the chart.

[Baroness Emerton]

My Lords, perhaps I could be helpful at this stage. I am grateful to noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. A large number of issues have been brought forward; I shall start with the title “nurse”. As noble Lords have mentioned, a person who is nursed—and feels that they have been nursed—experiences care, compassion, respect and dignity. There has been a lot of discussion among the public, and indeed in this House, about registered nurses becoming graduates and whether they will be too posh to wash, to put it colloquially. To me, a nurse who is a graduate would be only too grateful to be able to attend to the basic needs of patients, because that is part of holistic care. When you do various intimate things for patients, you learn a great deal about their condition.

The point that has been raised about the nurse is very important. We talk about support workers but we cannot talk about support nurses, because the term “nurse” is completely left for the statutory requirement of a regulated nurse. We are looking for a support worker who is able to do tasks which they understand, with the skills of the graduate nurse—because by 2013, we will be producing all-graduate nurses—within holistic care. That is the point I was trying to make this morning: it is the holistic care we are looking for in the delivery of care. However, it is not only holistic care in the acute sector; we are looking at the holistic care which is integrated with social care, because we are now looking at patients going into the community. Indeed, people working in the acute sector need to understand that the patients they are discharging are going into the community, which is a different scene and which may require not only a nurse but social care support. Therefore, somewhere in our education we need to bring together a basic core of understanding healthcare, nursing care and social care.

The point that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, made is very important. We need to conduct this review. On the other hand, the research evidence shows us that as regards highly qualified registered staff, the higher the proportion, the less likely it is that patients will have a longer stay in hospital. They will have a better clinical outcome. I hope that the Government are not going to ignore that research. If possible, we should carry out a truly safe cost-benefit analysis into increasing the number of trained staff, seeing where they are needed, rather than having a higher proportion of support workers.

The Royal College of Nursing has been resolute in putting forward the regulation of healthcare support workers because it feels that that is the way to ensure that they are answerable to a registered nurse. We talk about employers but I am not sure who the employers are going to be—social workers, managers or the nursing profession. This whole issue needs to be taken away and looked at, and perhaps we could return to it. I do not know whether these comments are helpful but I feel strongly about this issue, as noble Lords may have gathered. I pass it back to the Minister.

[Baroness Northover]

I hear what the noble Baroness says. She is extremely well informed, as ever, and I hope that she will continue to engage as we take this forward, as she has done up to now. However, at this point I hope that she will withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Emerton]

My Lords, I am prepared to withdraw but we will probably come back to this on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 338 withdrawn.