This is our chance to say ‘enough is enough’
Nursing is facing a twin threat: the introduction of the nursing associate role and the scrapping of the student bursary.Both are subject to a so-called ‘consultation’, but look likely to be pushed through regardless. Early feedback on the nursing associate role, presented at a conference in Australia, focused on calls for it to be regulated, seemingly ignoring widespread opposition to the whole idea.
Fortunately, King’s College London’s Anne Marie Rafferty was there to offer a reality check. She predicted the new role ‘will become a default preferred grade for the registered nurse’ and called instead for the regulation of healthcare support workers.
Health Education England’s director of nursing Lisa Bayliss-Pratt argued that the nursing associate role was needed to ‘upskill’ the support workforce. Otherwise, she argued, graduate nurses would find it difficult to lead, manage and think critically as they would ‘keep getting dragged down doing fundamental care’.
Call me old fashioned, but I thought nursing was all about delivering fundamental care. If we’re not careful we will find ourselves back in the ‘too posh to wash’ debate and we are all heartily sick of that.
Professor Rafferty is right. Why complicate matters by inventing a new role when we already have support workers who could be offered training and development that would enable them to progress? This proposal just doesn’t make sense. But then neither does scrapping the bursary.
The consultation on introducing student loans opened last week, with the Department of Health seeking views on how – not whether – the changes can best be implemented. They have clearly made up their minds. But don’t let that stop you giving feedback, because silence can be taken as consent.
Let’s show them they will have a fight on their hands over these wrong-headed proposals. It is time the profession said ‘enough is enough’.