Cash-hit NHS asks families to wash and feed patients
‘It’s a real benefit for patients’
SCOTS hospitals have launched DIY nursing schemes, asking families to help care for relatives.
Visitors will wash, dress and feed their loved ones. Wards have even extended visiting times so relatives – rather than NHS staff – can do such jobs ‘day or night’.
Those driving the move have called it ‘the biggest change in a generation’. But critics have branded the scheme ‘deeply concerning’ amid a growing nursing shortage – and warned it cannot be used as ‘care on the cheap’.
Hospitals in Fife, Lanarkshire and Grampian have introduced the scheme – and it could be extended across the country.
Early trials involved families of elderly patients with dementia but are set to encompass all patients as relatives are considered ‘part of the care team’. This means they will take over some of the duties previously performed by ward staff, such as taking patients to the toilet, helping them eat and keep clean and even assisting in giving medication.
The revelation has sparked alarm families will come under pressure to look after relatives in hospital; while concerns were also raised about patient privacy and confidentiality.
Scottish Labour health spokesman Anas Sarwar said: ‘This is deeply concerning. We already know the SNP has presided over a staffing crisis in our NHS. Now the situation appears so bad that hospitals are being forced to ask friends and relatives to volunteer.’
Vacant NHS nursing posts in Scotland have risen from 3.5 per cent to 4.3 per cent over the past decade.
Ellen Hudson, associate director for professional practice at the Royal College of Nursing Scotland, said: ‘Family members becoming more involved in care in hospital is a real benefit for patients. It’s a natural extension of the family relationship.
‘But having family members or carers helping out must not be seen as a way of providing care “on the cheap”, as a substitute for having enough registered nurses and health care support workers on the ward. It must be what both the patient and those helping want. Privacy and confidentiality of other patients must also be protected.’
The scheme was launched in NHS Fife two years ago as Partners in Care. NHS Lanarkshire adopted a similar policy for elderly patients. This month, NHS Grampian said it was extending the move to all patients following a geriatric trial.
NHS Fife director of nursing Helen Wright said: ‘The involvement of carers does not replace nurses; those who take part in the scheme are supported by a member of the nursing team and the number of nurses required on each ward is completely unaffected.’
NHS Lanarkshire executive director of nursing, midwifery and allied health professions Irene Barkby said: ‘Relatives and carers are vital to ensuring care is delivered by and with the ward team. Family and other carers are not in any way a replacement for clinical staff.’
An NHS Grampian spokesman said: ‘Our Welcome Wards enhance our work with friends, relatives and carers to offer the best support we can to patients.’
Health Secretary Shona Robison said: ‘Flexible and extended visiting for families and friends is a welcome innovation and will help ensure patients can spend time with their loved ones while in hospital.
‘This recognises the reality that most families need some flexibility to deal with competing demands on their time. The feedback to date has been almost universally positive.’
AFTER a decade of SNP stewardship, the Scottish NHS is in ailing health; while budgets are cut, targets are missed. That patients are now being asked to provide assistance on wards paints a picture of an NHS in grave decline.
Despite repeated promises to invest in and improve the health service, the Scottish Government has complacently allowed it to stagnate.
Eye-catching policies such as free prescriptions for all or the abolition of parking charges in hospital car parks may have helped create the early impression that the SNP had a vision for a modern health service, fit for the 21st century – but the depressing reality is that beyond these headline-grabbing policies lies a lack of ideas.
It is clear – and former ministers have admitted as much – that the SNP has shied away from being bold on domestic policy in case failure harmed the case for independence. This paralysis must end if the NHS is to become fully fit for purpose again.
Rather than relying on added input from relatives, many of whom will be under extreme pressure while their loved ones are receiving treatment, health boards must find solutions to problems such as the rising number of vacant nursing posts.
Of course, there will be many occasions when patients and relatives will be glad of closer involvement during treatment – but the assistance of family members should not be taken for granted by medical staff.
As Ellen Hudson of the Royal College of Nursing Scotland says, the encouragement of relatives to become involved in looking after patients must not simply become a way of providing care on the cheap.