Policy paper

2010 to 2015 government policy: compassionate care in the NHS

Updated 8 May 2015

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

Applies to England

• Publication for Northern Ireland
• Publication for Scotland
• Publication for Wales

This is a copy of a document that stated a policy of the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. The previous URL of this page was https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/treating-patients-and-service-users-with-respect-dignity-and-compassion Current policies can be found at the GOV.UK policies list.

Issue

People who use health and care services have the right to be treated with respect, dignity and compassion by staff who have the skills and time to care for them.

But quality of care varies across the country. Despite many examples of excellent care, there have also been some high-profile cases of staff mistreating people or ignoring their care needs. Examples include the abuse of patients with learning difficulties at Winterbourne View hospital and the neglect of patients under the care of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

Cases like these are reminders of the devastation that a lack of care can cause. Understandably, they damage people’s trust in health and care services and lower staff morale.

Actions

Putting people first in decisions about care

We want compassion to be a part of all health and social care services. This means making quality of care as important as quality of treatment.

We are:

• introducing a new national friends and family test from 1 April 2013 to ask patients if they would recommend their ward or A&E department to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment – the NHS can use this feedback to improve services and the public can tell which hospitals are performing well
• giving people information about health and care services to help them make informed choices - for example through ‘provider quality profiles’, which tell people about the training and qualifications of staff in social care services
• introducing personal health budgets, which will give people with long term conditions and disabilities greater choice, flexibility and control over the health care and support they receive

We have also created Healthwatch England, an independent organisation that will make sure that the public has a say in health and social care services.

Helping staff to be more compassionate

We need to make sure that NHS and social care services recruit the right staff to provide compassionate care. But staff need the right leadership, education, training and support to help them do their work as well as possible.

We are:

• helping to implement ‘Compassion in Practice’, a 3-year strategy for building the culture of compassionate care for nursing, midwifery and care staff
• working with Health Education England to make sure the NHS recruits, appraises and trains nursing and care staff according to their values as well as their professional skills
• working with Skills for Care and Skills for Health to develop minimum training standards and a code of conduct for care workers - both will stress the importance of dignity and respect
• training more care workers to provide high quality care - we want to double the number of apprentices in social care to 100,000 over 5 years to 2017
• appointing 2 chief social workers to provide leadership roles for the social work profession
• spending £40 million to help nurses and midwives develop leadership skills and to help them and their staff provide high quality care

We also want to use technology to free up more time for staff to care. Between 2013 and 2015, we are spending £100 million on providing nurses and midwives with the latest technologies that will help them provide safer, more effective and more efficient care.

Keeping patients and service users safe

It is important to learn from mistakes in health and social care and to prevent them happening again.

As well as setting out the actions we will take after the Winterbourne View scandal, we have published our response to the ‘Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Inquiry Report’.

We are also taking action to protect patients from avoidable harm. This includes making it easier for staff to report their concerns about issues that are in the public interest without the risk of suffering detriment - for example, victimisation or losing the chance to be promoted.

Measuring how successfully services treat people with respect

It is important that we know how successfully health and care services treat people with respect, dignity and compassion, so that we can make changes, where necessary.

We use the national patient survey programme, run by the Care Quality Commission, to measure patients’ experiences across a range of heathcare settings. The results are published and patients can compare the quality of services at trust level, across the NHS, and organisations can also compare themselves to other providers to find out where they need to improve.

We will continue to publish the NHS Outcomes Framework and the Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework, which explain what we need to measure to rate success. For 2013 to 2014, we have introduced measures of:

• people’s experience of integrated care (for people who need both health and care services at the same time)
• the proportion of patients who would recommend their hospital to a friend or family member (the friends and family test)
• the number of vulnerable people who are referred for care to protect them from harm and who say they feel safe in care

Background

In 2010 the government published its strategy for improving the NHS: ‘Equity and excellence: liberating the NHS’. The strategy emphasises the importance of putting patients and the public first and of ensuring people have high-quality care.

In 2012, we published ‘Compassion in practice for nurses, midwives and care staff’ and the white paper ‘Caring for our future: reforming care and support’ to help make sure that all health and social care services treat people with respect, dignity and compassion.