Some findings from round 1 of the survey

Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to round 1 of the survey. We present below some results. 

Respondents

We received 163 responses to round 1 of the survey. Just over 30% of respondents were care home nurses, and a similar number were care home managers. Several care home nurses were also acting as managers. One in ten of the respondents  were researchers or nurse educators in higher education. The remainder were health care professionals working in the community (29%), including GPs, hospice doctors, elderly care consultants, district nurses, specialist nurses, psychologists, podiatrists, community mental health nurses and nurse practitioners.

We received responses from all four countries in the UK, with the majority of responses coming from England.

The nurse in the care home

Almost three quarters (73%) of participants strongly agreed that registered nurses in care homes need to have a particular set of skills, knowledge, competence and experience in order to provide high quality care for older residents.

The three responsibilities of the care home nurse that were most often ranked as top priority by respondents were:

• Promoting dignity, personhood and wellbeing
• Enhancing quality of life
• Ensuring patient safety

The three continuing professional development (CPD) needs that were most often given the highest priority by respondents were:

• Personal care (for example nutrition, continence care)
• Dementia care
• Managing long term conditions

Continuing Professional Development

Almost half of respondents (49%) felt that opportunities for CPD were not regularly available to all care home nurses. However, one third (33%) disagreed with this and considered CPD opportunities to be available.

The three barriers to CPD that were most often given the highest priority by respondents were:

• Staff shortages / lack of cover
• Time constraints
• Lack of funding

The three methods of delivering education and training to care home nurses that were top ranked most often were:

• On the job / opportunistic training
• Formal courses / qualifications
• Seminars and workshops

The future workforce

Almost half of respondents (49%) felt that undergraduate pre-registration nurse education does not provide care home nurses with the required skills, knowledge, competencies and experience to deliver high quality care to older residents.

Just over one third (35%) of respondents felt that care homes provide supportive learning opportunities for pre-registration student nurses, which encourage them to return to work in care homes later in their careers.

There were mixed views from respondents on whether the care home industry offers challenging and rewarding career pathways for newly registered nurses: 41% agreed and 44% disagreed.

We received a large number of additional comments from respondents relating to the future workforce. We will explore some of the key issues in round 2 of the survey, and are in the process of analysing these open responses in more depth.

Round 2 of the survey for this project will open  on Tuesday 18^th November and will be available for one week. You can access the second survey by 

clicking this link.

We will post a summary of the findings from round 2 on the blog after the closing date (Tuesday 25^th November).

Thank you for your continued help and support with this project.

Supporting nursing in care homes: What matters to you?

We would like to invite you to participate in a short survey to share your perspective of future priorities for the care and professional development needs of nursing staff employed in care homes. For this stage of our work we are keen to hear from UK care home nurses and managers, health care professionals supporting care delivery in care homes and/ or nurse educators.

We are using a technique called the Delphi method, which involves establishing a ‘panel‘ who are asked to respond to a number of questionnaires. The aim of this method is to generate consensus between the panel, which is achieved by allowing panel members to reflect on the results of the first survey before they respond to the second round.

This questionnaire is the first of two rounds. Each survey will take less than 15 minutes to complete. Once we have received responses from this round, we will collate and summarise the findings and formulate the second questionnaire based on the initial response. A copy of our results summary will be posted on the blog alongside the second questionnaire.

You can access round 1 of the survey by clicking on this link (closes Monday 10 November at 5pm). Round 2 launches on Tuesday 18^th November at 9am.

Your views are really important to us.  We look forward to hearing from you.

News headline: Too much "awful care" is happening in care homes in England

Reports of poor care for older people in care homes are in the headlines today http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29547598.  The chief inspector of adult social care in England, Andrea Sutcliffe, acknowledges that good care exists in many care homes but that in about 2 per cent of care homes the standards are ‘not good enough’. Yesterday at the RCN Foundation Board we reported on our ongoing work to identify key issues in the care and professional development needs of nurses in care homes.  In the next week we will be sharing some of our interim findings on this blog.  The understanding, knowledge and competence of nurses in care homes directly affect the quality of care that older people experience in care homes and their quality of life.  Knowing more about nurses working in these settings is of great importance and this information gap must be acknowledged and addressed, to reduce the number of reports of poor care.

So, what are we up to at the moment?

A first stage for our work is to carry out a review of literature to understand the main issues in relation to nurse staffing characteristics in UK care homes and the care and professional development needs of nursing staff in care homes.  We also want  to explore innovations or developments (including any new roles for nursing staff) in this care setting.  We have completed our search and have a range of papers covering dementia care, end of life care, resident safety, nursing contribution in care homes and staff development (as well as other important areas).  We are currently extracting main headlines and learning points from this literature.  We will be looking at the international as well as UK literature to see what we might find out about non-UK settings.  Over coming weeks we will be sharing these headlines and we would really like to hear you views and comments. Watch this space…

Why this project and why now?

As trustees of the RCN Foundation we were considering the next steps in funding projects that were innovative and previously unresearched. We are clear that that there are significant and growing number of nursing staff working in care and nursing homes. We recognise that they are of growing importance to the delivery of health care yet realised we know little about them.

After in depth discussions the Foundation called for tenders to carry out a scoping exercise with a  theme of ‘patient care and professional development for nursing staff in care and nursing homes’ to inform us on the areas of work we could best make a difference to with future project funding. The University of York provided a clear view on how they could map the current care and nursing home landscape in the UK and assess the pressing issues facing nursing staff working in these environments and their ability to work in partnership was clear. It is likely that this productive partnership will help us as trustees to better understand the complexity of this important area of nursing. We are looking forward to hearing every contributors views and this will be critical in helping to focus the Foundation’s future project grants strategy.

Guest blog by Professor Tony Butterworth, Trustee of the RCN Foundation and Chair of its Benevolent Committee