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The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has taken a serious view of the increasing number of calls coming from nurses about patient safety concerns. Given this, the RCN has called for public access to a list of NHS member concerns regarding patient safety. Some nurses have expressed many concerns on this issue on a weekly basis throughout the past year.

The RCN supported hotline ‘Raising Concerns, Raising Standards‘ has been receiving these complaints and concerns. Based on the calls, the RCN believes that there are many nurses who have doubts about the quality of care provided at their Trusts. When initiated, the hotline was to function as the last option for caregivers who had failed to get proper solution for these concerns within their organisations. It was also designed for nurses who feared negative repercussions if they made complaints to senior staff .

The primary areas of concern as discerned from the calls are that the nurses are given inadequate time to fulfil duties properly. Another area of concern is that there are insufficient number of nurses which affects the quality of care.

Tina Donnelly, Director of RCN, Wales, said that the weekly frequency of calls from staff nurses is alarming. Some of the complaints also mentioned that decisions were being taken purely for profit and not for the good of patients.

She said that the very need for a hotline shows that there are deep seated problems in this field. She asked for public access to these concerns so that patients may be aware of risks.

The RCN hotline started functioning post Congress 2009. It was started after the findings of a survey of 5,000 nurses. The survey revealed that 78% nurses feared victimisation or detriment to career if they reported concerns to employers. In spite of this, about 63% of nurses continued to raise concerns but 35% said no action had been taken.

Companies need to be sure that they are giving the correct instructions to employees with regard to health and safety issues. The consultancy services from Workplace Law Training can assist companies in training staff to be aware of the proper health and safety procedures by identifying and improving upon awareness and attitude, and communication about safety to improve the health and safety culture within an organisation.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 31st, 2010 at 5:11 am and is filed under Best Legal Resources, Better Health, Markets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.