Repeated failings by the nursing regulator demand a new approach
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has allowed 350 underqualified or fraudulently qualified nurses to work in the UK, a damning new report from the Professional Standards Authority has found.
The NMC is also failing to spot workers who could pose a risk to patient safety and to prioritise investigating them, as we report today.
These are only the latest of a series of damning findings by inquiries that might not have taken place if it were not for journalists acting on the concerns of whistleblowers to investigate problems.
Rebecca Thomas, The Independent 's award-winning health correspondent, has been tenacious in reporting the problems of poor NHS services that are so often compounded by cultures of covering up, usually backed by bullying or threats.
This latest inquiry was prompted by her reporting, based on the testimony of whistleblowers.
What is most discouraging is that The Independent and other media organisations have been reporting on failures of the NMC for at least 17 years. We reported two years ago that Sir Ben Bradshaw, who was a health minister in the last Labour government, said that he was 'extremely concerned' to see many of the same issues that led him to commission an inquiry in 2008 'are still being raised today'.
In a health service beset by problems, a regulator that is fundamentally unable to root out problems is instead going to make them worse. The Independent has led the way in reporting the systemic problems in maternity care and mental health care – and in both cases, the failure of the regulator to ensure nursing standards makes matters worse.
After the Lucy Letby case, we ought to be more aware of the need to pick up concerns about nurses at an early stage. This is a job that the NMC has simply failed to do in far too many cases.
Since The Independent 's reporting, the NMC's chief executive and chair have stood down, and Paul Rees, the interim chief executive of the NMC, said the report reflected a 'dark period' in the NMC's history. But it is a dark period that has lasted for far too long.
We hope that Mr Rees is capable of the 'radical change' that he has promised. Bringing about a change in the culture of organisations is a huge challenge, and one that seems to plague the health service and many of the regulatory bodies linked to it.
This requires leadership from the top. The running of a regulator such as the Nursing and Midwifery Council may not be the direct responsibility of the secretary of state, but ministers have to take a close and intrusive interest in it. Rooting out rogue nurses ought to be part of a wider safety culture in the NHS.
Jeremy Hunt, who was the longest-serving health secretary, made the making of a safety culture a personal mission towards the end of his time in office. Wes Streeting should take up his crusade. The current health secretary should even consider drafting in his predecessor, in a safety overlord role, to assist in trying to change the culture of the NHS at a fundamental level.
Mr Streeting owes it to all patients to try a new approach. Patient safety is too important to allow any more years of repeating the same failures.
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Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE I was overeating and depressed about my 25 stone weight until one small change turned my life around - now I'm 10 stone lighter and becoming a personal trainer
A man who was overeating to deal with being bullied and depressed has revealed how he dropped a more than 10 stone with one unlikely lifestyle change. David Smith, from Hinckley, Leicestershire, tipped the scales at 25 stone at his heaviest and made many attempts to lose weight but nothing proved effective. Before 2012, the 49-year-old was maintaining a regular gym routine, on fat-loss pills, using slimming shakes and going on extreme diets but the weight was not shifting. David was feeling hopeless until a friend gave him some unexpected advice - that he should eat more to fuel his body. He admitted he was 'cynical' when he started upping his calorie intake, recording what he ate in a food diary as well as hitting the gym and walking 10,000 steps a day. Much to his surprise, he managed to lose almost 10lbs in the space of a month - a win that motivated David to keep eating right and continue exercising. David stuck to his new diet and exercise regimen and over two years got down to a slender 14 stone 7lbs - which he has managed to maintain until today. He is even starting his own personal training business and hopes to help people like him. 'Being overweight is not a problem that can be fixed overnight or be solved with quick fixes. The process is long and slow but trust in that process,' he told Femail. David's weight woes started when he was in school when he said he 'stopped eating properly' for over 20 years. He said was being relentlessly bullied at school and his home town before his mother had to leave her job as a dinner lady because of a rumour started by the family of one of his harassers. 'As a result, I started comfort eating and my weight ballooned to 25 stone. 'Many of the bullies, as well as numerous doctors, nurses, managers, kept parroting the same old mantra that I needed to move more and eat less,' David recalled. 'When I was 25-stone, complete strangers would come up to me in the street and bully and abuse and harass me simply for being fat. 'I would hide away because I was ashamed of myself. 'I tried many different methods to lose weight including Slimfast, keeping a food diary on paper and Orlistat - a fat-blocking pill from the doctor. None of these worked.' In 2005, David started hitting the gym and managed to maintain a fitness routine for seven years but his weight never shifted. 'By the end of November 2012, I was seriously depressed and contemplating suicide as I was still massively overweight,' he said. 'One night I was chatting to a friend on Facebook. This friend was going to the gym and Zumba classes and the weight was falling off her. 'I asked her what it was that she was doing right that I was doing wrong. She asked if I was eating enough. I replied that I was trying to lose weight and eating less.' The friend suggested to David that he might be eating too little and recommended adding more calories to his diet as well as keeping a food diary. 'I started the diary on the 1st of December 2012 in a very cynical frame of mind. I thought that Slimfast, the previous food diary and Orlistat hadn't worked and keeping a food diary on the internet was not going to work either,' he said. Reluctantly, David started inputting everything he was eating into MyFitnessPal which suggested he had not been eating enough. The information gave David the wake-up call he needed, so he set a new, higher calorie limit that allowed him to eat more with the goal of losing one pound per week. 'I also learned to properly calibrate the exercise equipment at the gym I was using so it showed the correct amount of calories I was burning - I hadn't done this before so was burning more calories than I thought,' he added. 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Daily Mail
29 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE The areas most at risk of a measles outbreak REVEALED amid slump in MMR vaccination rates
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The MMR jab, which offers life-long protection, consists of two doses. In Britain, it's given when a child turns one and then again at three years and four months. After both doses, 99 per cent of people are protected from measles. The illness, spread through coughs and sneezes, typically causes flu–like symptoms followed by a rash. However, measles can trigger fatal health complications if it spreads to the lungs or the brain. If pregnant women get infected, the virus can cause stillbirth and miscarriage. One child in a classroom can give the virus to up to nine other unvaccinated children within 15 minutes, making it one of the most infectious diseases worldwide and even more transmissible than Covid. To achieve 'herd immunity', the WHO states 95 per cent of a population needs to be vaccinated against measles. This would stop the illness from being able to spread, even among the unvaccinated. It comes after the death of a child in Liverpool last week from measles. 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The Sun
29 minutes ago
- The Sun
My toilet EXPLODED with poo & sewage flooded my home leaving me in a ‘coma' in hospital – I'm lucky to be alive
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