Nursing’s voice needs to be heard

I like many others have been watching the highs and the lows of the 2016 RIO Olympic Games, cheering the participants, celebrating the success that the athletes training and perseverance have bought to individual competitors and to their countries. Whilst commiserating with the defeats, losses and inevitable accidents that occur.   It takes me back four years to when we celebrated the highs and lows, the achievements of the 2012 London Olympics and the opening ceremony where the NHS was celebrated in a truly, original and quirky British Style.  How proud we were then of the NHS and looking back over those four years how far we seem to have fallen

Here’s the thing, 2016 is not by anyone’s imagination shaping up to be a good year for the NHS and for nurses.  The mood is grim, budgets have been overspent or cut, junior doctors are contesting an imposed contract, the NHS Pay Review Body providing ‘independent advice’ has recommended yet again a 1% rise in Agenda for Change (do they actually just copy and paste from year to year), at a time when the Royal College of Nursing #Nursingcounts campaign states that there has been a 14% real terms fall in nursing pay since 2010, not to mention the 1.4% increase in national insurance contributions that occurred in April.  Add to this the fact that nursing bursaries have been scrapped and that the Department of Health has closed the Nursing and Allied Health Professionals policy unit leaving no effective nursing voice left at the Department of Health,

On writing to the Department of health about the closure of the policy unit, I received the following response in July (red type is mine)

“I note your concerns.  As part of the DH 2020 plan, the Department is changing the way it works to deliver its essential work for the Government while achieving efficiency savings.  

The Department’s approach is to access professional advice flexibly from a wide range of sources, including arms-length bodies, regulators, stakeholders and professional bodies, rather than from a fixed standing team of internal advisers.  

The Department’s policy teams will establish new networks and relationships with stakeholders and partners and collaborate with the Chief Nursing Officer and Chief Allied Health Professions Officer at NHS England to ensure systems are in place to secure advice when developing evidence based policy.

Please be assured that the Department is absolutely committed to ensuring the voice of nursing, midwifery and allied health professionals is heard loud and clear in all of our policy making.”

The letter raises more questions than it answers:

1. Who exactly are the Department of Health’s policy teams setting the agenda for nursing, because clearly they are not nurses, because the nursing unit has been closed
2. Why does Nursing need new networks, relationships and stakeholders, and what exactly do they mean by all this?
3. Why is this ‘policy unit’ only ‘collaborating’ rather than being led by the Chief Nursing Officer and what is this about ‘securing advice’? Advice is by definition something that may or may not be accepted.
4. And contentiously why do the offices of Chief Medical Officer and Chief Social Worker remain within the Department of Health (I’ll leave you to ponder that one yourselves).  
   
   
   I’ve been watching the ‘Keep the Nursing Directorate in the Department of Health’ petition signatures, talk about a slow burn, it hasn’t yet reached 10,000 signatures, the point at which the government responds.  See petition link at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/132672.
   
   The Francis report (2013) suggested that nursing had a 'weak voice', and that profession’s voice to be strengthened, this move is counterintuitive.  The lack of interest in this significant move at the Department of Health just reinforces the view that ‘nursing has a weak voice’.
   
   I would urge any of you who read this blog, whether nurses (or allied health professionals), whatever band and job description you have to sign this petition, write to your MP, ask questions why this is happening, demand an answer and keep questioning.
   If like nurses in America who are making their voice heard through #nursestakedc campaign, we in the United Kingdom truly believe nursing has value and a powerful voice then we as nurses need to demand that it is heard and stand up to be counted and we need to take back our voice.
   
   But if there is anything that we can learn from those Olympic athlete’s striving for their best, it is that perseverance and stamina will, despite inevitable setbacks, enable us to reach the end goal of having a strong clear nursing voice, a seat at the top table, nurses defining nursing policy and how our image and values are projected to the public, our patients, the media and to the government.
   
   Let’s together make nursing a stronger voice to be reckoned with.

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