Many specialist nurses don’t speak up about the great things they do, about the compassion and care they provide to their patients or the innovative ways in which they deliver care to patients within their specialist service.
We believe we should be doing this, and the resources on Apollo are there here to help nurses do just that: demonstrate their value.
This week there have been great positive news stories about specialist nurses and the value of specialist nursing. Roy Lilley seemed to start the ball rolling when he described specialist nurses as being highly skilled and delivering expert care for patients but he cautioned that despite nurses being the ‘Swiss army knife of the NHS’ we lack direction and leadership. Read his “What would Flo say?” blog here.
Private Eye, in their Medicine Balls column, in a piece entitled ‘On the way to oblivion’ looked at the issues around safety in the NHS and safe staffing levels going on to say that ‘the best specialist care occurs if patients have easy access to specialist nurses’.
In this month’s Gastrointestinal Nursing Vol 12 No 2, Dr Terri Porrett wrote that to holistically develop and provide specialist nursing service to a specific client group, CNS’s need to be able to articulate clearly what their patients need and what care and services they provided. With documenting the value and outcome of specialist nursing services being as much about patient advocacy as it is nursing care. Suggesting that if CNS’s don’t advocate for their services, maybe in the future, patients won’t have the specialist services currently provided, let alone enhanced nurse led services. See the Gastrointestinal website here.
Specialist nurses can be a good news story and whilst it’s a positive move forward to see others writing about the value of specialist nurses wouldn’t it be best if we did this too?