Standards Of Care Are Under Threat From “Poorly-Qualified” Nurses, Say Academics
Standards of care are under threat from under-qualified nurses and health workers, experts say. Two leading nurse academics told the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine that NHS care would be better if more nurses had degrees.
{mosimage}Professors Linda Shields and Roger Watson said care was also threatened by the use of poorly qualified staff such as healthcare assistants.
But nursing leaders said the profession was highly skilled and vibrant.
The experts from Hull and Sheffield universities said: “Educating nurses to the highest standards is better for the health of all, and is cost effective.
“The consequences of poor education and mistakes are deaths, so the imperative to educate nurses to the highest standard, to provide them with ways to access the best evidence, the critical thinking skills to use that evidence safely and the skills to generate their own knowledge is mandatory.”
Latest statistics show that just 4% of the nursing workforce have degrees. The professors also argued that nurses were being replaced by less qualified staff. While medicine without nursing was “an untenable concept”, things were heading that way.
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