Accident and Emergency units may be short-staffed for half of the time, a leaked report reveals.
The report, written by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), was suspended following orders from the Department of Health.
The Government says responsibility for the analysis on safe staffing has been transferred to a newly-formed organisation called NHS Improvement.
The abandoned document was recently leaked to the Health Service Journal, and suggests that hospitals are miscalculating the number of nurses needed on A&E units.
NICE guidance says there should be one nurse for each patient during their assessment in A&E. Overall, there should be one nurse to every four patients. There should also be two nurses for every emergency patient suffering a cardiac arrest or major trauma.
During hospital inspections, some organisations were found to have just one nurse for every 22 patients.
In conclusion, the document says A&E units are not assessing safe staffing levels properly, and that “staffing levels may not meet demand approximately almost half of the time.”
The Government’s decision to prevent the publication of the report has been widely criticised, with disapproval coming from high-profile figures such as Sir Robert Francis QC, who led the inquiry into the Mid-Staffordshire NHS scandal.
Donna Kinnair from the Royal College of Nursing was also critical, saying: “These recommendations would have exposed shortages, and this would have had financial consequences. It is concerning that these consequences may have been a factor in the decision to scrap this important work.”
Shadow health minister Justin Madders said the Government’s decision to abandon the report called into question “the ability of experts to give independent advice to the NHS”.
The news comes after the results of a five-year study were published last month, showing that hospitals with fewer nurses have higher death rates.
Poor nursing care
If you or your loved one has been injured by substandard nursing care, please get in touch with us to discuss a potential medical negligence claim.
Share Article With:
|
|
|
|
|
|
