Is anybody else tired of the current round of knee jerk reactions like these [url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21941395 ]UKBA to be split again[/url] and this [url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21945466 ]pilot for nurses training[/url]? I can't help but feel these are more short term changes which will create uncertainty and cost loads to implement when a) addressing the specific failngs rather than a blanket approach would be best and b) acknowledging that wholesale change isn't always for the best. Sometimes there just isn't enough money to do the job as well as you'd like.....
All I can say is that I'm thankfull that the NHS in Scotland is a devolved matter.
UKBA has been a disaster for years, afterall didn't John Reid describe it as not fit for purpose? So this is hardly a knee jerk reaction.
And isn't the second designed to deal with a specific criticism contained in a report compiled at great length. So again I am not sure it is a knee jerk reaction either.
The UKBA genuinely is awful... It shouldn't be too hard to put something better in its place, though on the other hand a lot of the things that made it a disaster for us recently were politically motivated not organisational issues (Government decides to be tough on immigration, makes it harder for fee-paying students to enter the UK to study because they're such an easy target, end result is a hole in university budgets. Then palms off responsibility for enforcement onto the universities to boot. And in the process makes everything so complicated that they still end up not being able to resource it)
OP, hundreds of people died at Stafford due to neglect and abuse. At UKBA they have a backlog of hundreds of thousands of asylum cases and lied to a parliamentary committee about the backlog size. Both of those situations are unacceptable and require action IMO, I disagree that it's kneejerk.
Ah ok 🙂 I say knee jerk in that both decisions are to a large extent a 'reaction' to a specific issue rather than institutional shortcomings per se. The UKBA is a complicated one in that the level of 'work' they had increased hugely without their resources simialrly increasing. I suspect the NHS suffers similarly but the nurses' training issue seems to be a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
When i worked in the NHS, i had an input into the training of student nurses,aged from about 20 to 50,, and one thing they all shared was compassion, and all had worked in a care setting before starting their training, on the wards and at our dedicated school of nursing, they got involved, had fun, and worked hard along with working long shifts while studying.
We now have kids leaving school a levels and a degree course in nursing with no experience of working in a care setting, and while at uni partime, dont usually have the initiative to work at a care home at weekend or holidays, to gain valuable experience, of the touchy feely part of nursing.
We need a return to these old days where a matron was like god, and staff did as they where told, and being to posh to wash hadnt been even thought of
Knee jerk reactions get more extreme when there is something wrong with the brain.
That is all.
We now have kids leaving school a levels and a degree course in nursing with no experience of working in a care setting,
From Sandwich junior doing the uni round last year and his experience this year, I can state that you are mistaken. The uni recruiters were asking about volunteering and care work and those that didn't or hadn't were marked down.
The majority of his Learning Disability Nursing course are second degree or from a care-worker background he is one of the youngest and he spent 18 months volunteering at the local "special needs" school and with MENCAP at a Saturday morning club while doing his A Levels.(I'm not fully au fait with the modern terms so forgive the ignorance). He is all ready tasked with 4 months of care work in his first year, full time and expected to contribute at all levels of the organisation.
I suspect that the cadre between this years intake and when you worked in the NHS are where the problem lies. I fully acknowledge that this is a gross generalisation but it's been a hard day and I'm not going to go mad on Google to prove a point.
The idea of student nurses having to do health care assistant work prior to becoming student nurse amuses me.
My experience is slightly out of date but I spent most of my first year on placements working as a healthcare assistant!
Oh aye, as well as the two other jobs I had working as a care assistant in various nursing homes.
Ex student nurse- 1998 to 2000.
.We now have kids leaving school a levels and a degree course in nursing with no experience of working in a care setting
What about the 1.5 years wher they have to spend on placements working in care settings?