\

mpassion in Practiice
Com
Nursingg, Midwiffery and Care
C Stafff
Our Vission and Strategy

1
DH INFORMATION READER BOX

Policy Clinical Estates

HR / Workforce Commissioner Development IM & T
Management Provider Development Finance
Planning / Performance Improvement and Efficiency Social Care / Partnership Working

Document Purpose Policy

Gateway Reference 18479
Title
Compassion in Practice

Commissioning Board Chief Nursing Officer and DH Chief Nursing

Author
Adviser
Publication Date 4 December 2012
Target Audience PCT Cluster CEs, NHS Trust CEs, Care Trust CEs, Foundation Trust
CEs , Directors of PH, Directors of Nursing, Directors of Adult SSs,
Directors of HR, Directors of Children's SSs

Circulation List #VALUE!

Description This strategy sets out our shared purpose as nurses, midwives and care
staff to deliver high quality, compassionate care, and to achieve
excellent health and wellbeing outcomes. It builds on the proposals set
out in the engagement strategy.

Cross Ref
0

Superseded Docs Developing the culture of compassionate care: Creating a new vision
for nurses, midwives and care-givers.
Action Required
NA

Timing NA
Contact Details Nursing, Midwidery and Care workers Team
Quarry House
Quarry Hill
Leeds
LS2 9UE
0

0113 254 6810

For Recipient's Use

2
Compassion in Practice
Nursing, Midwifery and Care Staff
Our Vision and Strategy
December 2012

3
Contents

Foreword 5
Introduction 7
Context 7
Engagement process and what you said 8
Vision 11
The 6Cs 13
Delivering the vision 14
Action area one: Helping people to stay independent,
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maximise well-being and improving health outcomes
Action area two: Working with people to provide a positive
17
experience of care
Action area three: Delivering high quality care and
19
measuring the impact
Action area four: Building and strengthening leadership 20
Action area five: Ensuring we have the right staff, with the
22
right skills, in the right place
Action area six: Supporting positive staff experience 24
Next steps to implementation 26
Conclusion 27

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Foreword

By Jane Cummings, Chief Nursing Officer for England, and Viv Bennett, Director of Nursing,
Department of Health and Lead Nurse, Public Health England.

To be a nurse, a midwife or member of care staff is an extraordinary role. What we do every

day has a deep importance. We are key to the drive to enable people to stay healthy and well
for longer through promoting health and well-being, and supporting independence. We help
people to recover from illness, sometimes when they are at their most vulnerable. We support
hundreds of thousands of people in living with illness. We provide care and comfort when
peoples lives are coming to an end.

We care for everyone, from the joy at the beginning of new life to the sadness at its end. We
do so in the privacy of peoples homes, in the local surgery, in the community, in care homes,
in hospices, and in hospitals. We support the people in our care and their families when they
are at their most vulnerable. We have the clinical expertise, compassion and humanity with
which to shape the culture of our health service and our care and support system. We are
proud to be part of a remarkable health and care service, making a difference to peoples lives
each and every day.

There are big challenges. People also encounter care that falls short of what they have a right
to expect, sometimes by a long way - we will all have seen such care in the course of our
working lives. We know we miss too many opportunities to support people keep well,
connected and healthy. And society and the health, care and support system is changing fast,
and we will need to prepare to meet the changing needs and work in new ways.

We have the self-confidence to acknowledge these realities. We also have the professional
commitment, which drives our determination to tackle them, to ensure that we address head on
the challenges facing our professions and care staff today and in the future. We have the
potential to transform the care, advice and support that people receive from us. We all joined
our professions to make a difference. We must never underestimate our significance. As health
and social care changes what does not alter is the fundamental human need to be looked after
with care, dignity, respect and compassion. To achieve this the enduring values of nursing and
care must underpin our work.

Our draft vision was underpinned by six fundamental values: care, compassion, competence,
communication, courage and commitment - with six areas of action to support professionals
and care staff to deliver this excellent care. You agreed that clearly stating these enduring
values and behaviours in nursing, midwifery, care and support was timely and important. You
provided feedback that enabled us to produce the final version of the 6Cs. We have set these
out in this, our completed vision and strategy for nurses, midwives and care staff. Your
responses emphasized the need for real actions as being key to achieving real improvements
for people in our care and for the development and support of local leaders - nurses, midwives
and registered managers and these too are shown in our strategy.

In particular we need to work together to ensure we meet the needs of older people - the
largest group of people who use services - and treat them with the dignity and respect that they
deserve in joined up health, care and support services.

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We need to strengthen our capacity to prevent ill health and delay dependency in the first
place and learn new skills in supporting people to manage their own health and well-being, and
in particular, when they have long term conditions.

We would like to thank everyone who contributed throughout the engagement period
participating in conferences, meetings and online, taking part in social media debates, and
responding to the engagement documents. We look forward to continuing to work with you in
making the vision and strategy a reality.

As Chief Nursing Officer for England, I want to make sure we give our
patients the very best care with compassion and clinical skill, ensure pride
in our professions and build respect. The response from staff since my
appointment has confirmed that nurses, midwives and care staff feel the
same. The actions set out in this vision and strategy, which have been
developed with you, will change the way we work, transform the care of
our patients and ensure we deliver a culture of compassionate care.

Jane Cummings, Chief Nursing Officer for England

NHS Commissioning Board

As the lead nurse for public health in England, it has been a privilege to
develop this vision and strategy with so many of you. Nurses, midwives,
and care staff share in your ambition to support people to have the best
possible health outcomes. Making the 6Cs real across all our services and
taking actions to make every contact count for health and wellbeing, will
make a difference to individual people and to the publics health.

Viv Bennett, Director of Nursing

Department of Health and Lead Nurse, Public Health England

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Introduction

Context

The context for health care and support is changing. Most significantly, with people living
longer, we have a greater number of older patients and people to support, many with multiple
and complex needs, and with higher expectations of what health, care and support can and
should deliver. Delivering health and care support and services involves us working with
people in a new partnership, offering and engaging with people in making choices about their
health and care, and supporting no decision about me without me.

In response and in parallel, the roles of nurses, midwives and care staff have significantly
changed. We have learned new skills and our responsibilities have increased accordingly,
some of this driven by our desire to develop our roles and better training of staff, and some by
greater access to and use of technology. Nurses, midwives and care staff work in
multidisciplinary teams, where individuals have specific tasks and responsibilities, but
increasingly they work together as a team to support and care for patients and people in a
variety of settings from hospitals, to care homes and in their own homes.

These changes are set in a broader social and economic context of greater demand for health,
care and support and the need to make the most and best of every penny available for
peoples care.

The health, care and support system provides people with often good and often excellent
service. But this is not universal. There is poor care, sometimes very poor. As professionals
and care staff, we are as shocked by the failings at Mid Staffordshire and Winterbourne View
as the public are. Such poor care is a betrayal of what we all stand for.

We must strive for the best care for all patients and people we support, and we must ensure
that we are delivering quality of care as well as quality of treatment.

This strategy sets out our shared purpose as nurses, midwives and care staff to deliver high
quality, compassionate care, and to achieve excellent health and wellbeing outcomes. It builds
on the enduring values we have set out and for the pledges and rights of the NHS Constitution,
which patients, the public and staff should and will expect. Every patient and person we
support can and should expect high quality; we want that too and will deliver it.

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Engagement process and what you said

The vision and strategy builds on what you said to us. In September, we published our draft
vision for nursing, midwives and care-givers, and asked you to help us develop it. We have
been delighted by the response we received, and the conversations that document has started.
Over 9000 nurses, midwives, care staff and patients were involved in our engagement exercise,
which ran for eight weeks, with the professions, patients, users of the service, members of the
public, stakeholders and other thought forming groups. The engagement process made use of
face to face events, online questionnaires, email and postal questionnaires, as well as new
digital engagement through Twitter and other online forums.

The questions focused on:

1. What the six values and behaviours meant personally to individuals

2. What steps were needed to embed these values and behaviours
3. Would a focus on the six priority areas deliver the vision and what additional factors may
be missing
4. Identifying the national and local initiatives currently supporting the six priority areas
5. How partnership working between the health and care sector can be strengthened
6. What obstacles might there be to delivering the vision
7. The terminology used and were the terms care givers and people we care for

The purpose of the engagement was two-fold. Firstly, we wanted to get wider views on the
6Cs: care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment. We wanted to
test whether these would resonate with staff and patients and form the common language of
our vision. As a result of this feedback we changed the term care-giver to care staff.

Secondly, we wanted to test responses to six areas of action that (underpinned by the 6Cs of
value and behaviour) will enable ongoing improvements in care and services for all patients
and service users. The strategy will be developed incorporating these responses.

A key part of our engagement process was ensuring that the strategy addressed equality
issues under the Equality Act 2010, considering it from the point of view of both the people
receiving care and those giving it. This is particularly important when it is considered that many
patients or service users could fall within the scope of the Act (for example, the age profile of
patients and service users means that they are more likely to have age-related hearing loss;
over half (55%) of people over 60 have a hearing loss which rises to 90% of people over the
age of 81). Above all, the engagement process served to remind us that understanding the
diversity of the people we care for, and their specific needs, is key to delivering good quality
care. In addition, in terms of staff well-being and the culture in which we operate, failure to
include all sectors of our diverse workforce is planning to fail. It is clear from the vision that the
responsibility under the diversity and equality agenda is recognised and shared, not just by
Department of Health (DH) and by the NHS Commissioning Board (NHS CB), but by all our
health and care delivery partners.

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The wealth and richness of the response and debate as part of the consultation on the draft
vision was overwhelming, and demonstrates the passion that we have in our community to
work together to deliver compassionate care for our patients and the people we help.
The breadth and range of views reflect the diverse community of staff that we are, but there
were many common threads. Your responses have sent clear messages which have shaped
the vision and strategy in this document. They were:

1. Making the 6Cs part of everything we do

There is widespread support for the 6Cs and the six areas of action. They all carry equal
weight, and naturally focus on putting the people we care for at the heart of everything
we do. If we want the 6Cs to be universally adopted and embraced by everyone
involved in commissioning and delivering care, they need to be an explicit part of
planning guidance, NHS Operating Plans and future plans across the NHS, Public
Health and Social Care.

2. Change delivered by frontline staff

Front line staff are our change champions. Front line staff who responded were very
positive about the 6Cs, and felt that good support from local leaders would harness the
passion and energy for improvement. Everyone working in the commissioning and
delivery of health, care and support should take personal action and responsibility for
delivering the 6Cs at every opportunity. Success in all organisations is only achievable if
front line staff are empowered to drive and support change, both in its development and
implementation.

3. Leadership at every level

Strong and effective leadership is essential at all levels in all organisations to set clear
expectations, to support staff in the delivery of the 6Cs, to manage performance, to
champion change and create an environment where the courage to speak out is
welcomed and encouraged.

4. Training and development of all staff reflecting the 6Cs

The 6Cs are relevant to all staff, and should be embedded throughout career pathways,
including recruitment, education and training, organisational culture and the appraisal
and development of staff.

5. Creating the right culture

Creating the right organisational culture, where people are encouraged to go the extra
mile and challenge the status quo, working to improve quality and patient and user
experience, is crucial to embedding the 6Cs and promoting an environment in which
staff can help deliver the best care for people.

6. Communicating our vision

A clear communication strategy needs to be in place to ensure this vision is understood
throughout the workforce. The way this is delivered to front line staff needs to win hearts
and minds to ensure positive change.

7. Doing this collaboratively with others

Collaboration is hugely important at all levels and across all settings as it underpins
excellent care and the work needed to deliver the vision. Working with others in our
teams is at the core, and our stakeholders and partners must feel involved to ensure

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 best practice is shared, resources are utilised effectively and the maximum shift in
culture is achieved.

8. Supporting staff health and wellbeing

The health and well-being of staff is essential. Treating each other well is fundamental.
The link between the values and behaviours that staff are shown by their employers,
managers and peers and the way they in turn treat others, including their patients and
users of the service, is very clear. Ensuring staff feel valued, cared for and
communicated with is essential.

9. Shared decision making and communications with patients and the people we
support
Patient and service user choice and clear communication with patients and the people
we care for is crucial to ensure they are partners in their care and they share decision
making with the team providing their care. All the people in our care need to have a
voice, choice and control.

10. Releasing time to care and reducing bureaucracy

The level and burden of bureaucracy needs to be addressed. Actions included in the
vision and strategy should have a clear benefit and demonstrate how they will improve
patient care. We must use agile innovation to deliver the positive changes so that front
line staff can spend as much time as possible with patients and service users.

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Vision

Above all, during our conversations and discussions over the past two months, it has become
clear that our six fundamental values - care, compassion, competence, communication,
courage and commitment (the 6Cs) resonate strongly with both staff and people who use our
services, across the whole range of health and care settings. These are the values that
motivate us to want to work in health and care in the first place. Importantly, staying connected
to these values is what gives us the strength to keep doing this challenging work every day.
You also said that the vision will not become reality simply by publishing a document. Frontline
staff are the people who can and will make change happen.

Many of you told us about your sense of privilege in being a nurse or midwife. With that
privilege comes professional responsibility, and all nurses and midwives by demonstrating the
6Cs in practice can renew their professionalism and public confidence in our professions. The
6Cs are not just the business of nurses, midwives and care staff. They are the business of all
health and care staff: from doctors, to porters, to physiotherapists, to care workers and
managers.

For staff to make this vision a reality they need to be in supportive organisational cultures. All
the people working in health and care are contributing to the same aims, to provide high quality,
compassionate care and treatment, and to achieve the best possible health and wellbeing
outcomes for each of the people we care for. The evidence on what enables us to do that is
overwhelming. To ensure that patients receive good care, we all need to care about our
colleagues. If we feel supported and cared about, we are enabled to support and care about
our patients.

Leadership is key. Leaders and managers need to create supportive, caring cultures, within
teams, within organisations and in the system as a whole, in the way that organisations relate
to each other. Leaders at every level have a responsibility to shape and lead a caring culture.
We talked in our draft vision about the emotional labour of care. This is something we have
also heard much about over the last two months, and something that we urgently need to find
ways to address. Working in healthcare and in the care sector, caring for vulnerable, sick and
dying people, is inherently stressful and emotionally demanding. Time and space is needed for
individuals and teams to reflect, to share experiences and seek support and to build emotional
resilience.

We all have a part to play. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has a major role in ensuring
services are provided appropriately and with quality outcomes across health and social care,
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has an important regulatory role for nurses and
midwives in all health and care sectors. In the NHS, Monitor has an important regulatory role,
and the National Trust Development Agency (NTDA) has an important role to support
organisations to become Foundation Trusts who provide high quality care and outcomes, and
those who commission and provide services have improving quality and outcomes for patients
at the heart of all they do. Health Education England (HEE) and Skills for Care will ensure
quality education and development of the future workforce.

Our vision encompassed improved health outcomes now and in the future, and Public Health
England (PHE) will provide leadership across the system to ensure that our services and
professions play their full role in improving the health and well-being of the population.

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There is also a growing recognition, in all levels of the health, care and support system, that we
have to change our culture if we are to change our care. The reports on Winterbourne View
and Mid Staffordshire will be a call to action for everyone, Government, the NHS
Commissioning Board, the NMC, the Care Quality Commission, the trades unions and all the
other players in the system, to get behind staff and support them in their professional instincts
for compassion. This vision will form a vital part of that wider response.

The full implementation plans for this vision and strategy will be available by 31 March 2013.
This strategy will run over three years, and the plan for implementation of these areas action
will be over this timeframe. Some of the actions in this document are subject to piloting, further
testing and appraisal after which further recommendations will be considered. Action areas will
be within the current budgets and subject to the normal business planning processes. NHS CB
is not looking to include further funding within the current tariff.

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The 6Cs

We have revised the draft definitions of the 6Cs based on what you told us during the
engagement.

The values and behaviours covered by the 6Cs are not, in themselves, a new concept.
However, putting them together in this way to define a vision is an opportunity to reinforce the
enduring values and beliefs that underpin care wherever it takes place. It gives us an easily
understood and consistent way to explain our values as professionals and care staff and to
hold ourselves to account for the care and services that we provide.

Each of these values and behaviours carry equal weight. Not one of the 6Cs is more important
than the other five. The 6Cs naturally focus on putting the person being cared for at the heart
of the care they are given.

The revised definitions are:

Care
Care is our core business and that of our organisations, and the care we deliver helps the
individual person and improves the health of the whole community. Caring defines us and our
work. People receiving care expect it to be right for them, consistently, throughout every stage
of their life.

Compassion
Compassion is how care is given through relationships based on empathy, respect and dignity
- it can also be described as intelligent kindness, and is central to how people perceive their
care.

Competence
Competence means all those in caring roles must have the ability to understand an individuals
health and social needs and the expertise, clinical and technical knowledge to deliver effective
care and treatments based on research and evidence.

Communication
Communication is central to successful caring relationships and to effective team working.
Listening is as important as what we say and do and essential for "no decision about me
without me". Communication is the key to a good workplace with benefits for those in our care
and staff alike.

Courage
Courage enables us to do the right thing for the people we care for, to speak up when we have
concerns and to have the personal strength and vision to innovate and to embrace new ways
of working.

Commitment
A commitment to our patients and populations is a cornerstone of what we do. We need to
build on our commitment to improve the care and experience of our patients, to take action to
make this vision and strategy a reality for all and meet the health, care and support challenges
ahead.

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Delivering the vision
As well as the clear focus on developing and communicating the 6Cs, our consultation
proposed six areas of action where we can concentrate our effort and create impact for our
patients and the people we support. The action areas are:

1. Helping people to stay independent, maximising well-being and improving health

outcomes
2. Working with people to provide a positive experience of care
3. Delivering high quality care and measuring the impact of care
4. Building and strengthening leadership
5. Ensuring we have the right staff, with the right skills, in the right place
6. Supporting positive staff experience

Your input has been reflected to further shape the action areas and what we can do
individually, locally and nationally.

As individuals, the way in which we live and demonstrate the 6Cs has an immediate and direct
impact on our patients and the people we support every minute of every day. Every action
counts and we can really make a difference now.

To support us as individuals, local organisations and national bodies including regulators, such
as CQC, NMC and Monitor, will act to provide the leadership, create the environment and give
the highest priority to enabling the culture for compassionate care. The remainder of this
strategy sets out what each of us can do, as well as the support we need to enable this to
happen.

The valuable reflections, discussions and comments that you had and made, have been
reflected in this strategy and action plan. Your views and suggestions will be further reflected
as we produce implementation plans for the action areas set out here.

Action area one: Helping people to stay independent, maximise well-being and
improving health outcomes

Care is our business means action at individual, family and population level. It means
prevention, early intervention and health promotion as well as treatment of ill health. This
means maximising the contribution of nurses midwives and carers to improving the publics
health and to ensuring that people get both a positive experience and the best possible
outcomes from care. It also means working across health and care boundaries to provide
support and services which enable people to remain active, connected and independent in
their own homes, or another place of their choice, for as long as they are able, and it means
joining up health and care services to provide the integrated care that people want.

Many of the actions across all areas have application in social as well as in health care and in
providing integrated services for people. The systems, organizations and practitioner networks
are, however, very different. This is the first vision and strategy to explicitly seek to reach
nurses and care staff in the care and support system, and thus we are at an earlier stage of

14
engagement. We have, therefore, presented the actions to be developed with the care and
support system under action area one and referenced in other areas where we will work with
this sector to consider how actions may have relevance for improving care elsewhere.

Action area one is thus concerned with achieving our aims around wellbeing and covers both
public health and care and support. The area includes the strategies developed for specific
conditions and those developed by professional groups for their areas of practice.

Public Health

Nurses, midwives and care staff make significant contributions to improving and protecting the
publics health. This is not always recognised, and we know that there is more to be done so
that we can:

Deliver evidence-based care and extend evidence through research

Explicitly demonstrate our impact on outcomes
Make every contact count to promote health and well-being at individual, family and
community level across all care pathways
Support people to remain independent
Maximise the contribution of specialist community public health nursing and midwifery

Social Care

Nurses and care staff in the care sector are central to achieving high quality care for some of
our most vulnerable citizens. Peoples need for care and support is changing and the
business of care is changing too. Demand for services for long-term care and support into very
old age will grow and there is clear need to support people to stay as well as possible for as
many of those years as possible. What is also clear is that we need to think about health and
care in new ways and deliver integrated services to people, families and communities. We
have begun to work with the care sector on how elements of this strategy can support those in
social care and can build positive partnerships to achieve joined up care in local services. As
stated this will include looking across the action areas to understand when and how actions
could support improvements in social care settings. What people who use services want is a
seamless service where people on the ground work well together in spite of different structures
and systems it is about improved relationships between NHS and non-NHS staff as well as
the wider voluntary and third sectors.

To maximise well-being and improve health outcomes, each of us can:

Develop skills as health promoting practitioners, making every contact count for people
we care for and in professional contacts with carers and communities
Contribute to the Dementia Challenge to improve support for people affected by
dementia
Local organisations can support by:

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 Promoting every contact counts to improve health and wellbeing as part of the role of
all clinical and care staff
Developing an approach for specific services contribution to long term health and
wellbeing
Considering how to maximise organisational support to staff to maximise their own
health and wellbeing
Encouraging nurses and midwives to be part of work between local partners and with
the Health and Wellbeing Board to improve local health outcomes
Supporting nurses, midwives and care staff to maximise their contribution to the
Dementia Challenge
Enabling midwives to deliver innovative, evidence-based, cost-effective, quality care
across all sectors
Supporting midwives to embrace a greater public health role
Ensuring practice is supported by appropriate technology to optimise information
sharing and decision-making with people in their care.

This will be further supported by national bodies:

From April 2013, Public Health England will lead public health and promote and develop
nursing and midwifery roles in prevention and health promotion

PHE will, in partnership with DH and working with an expert advisory group, develop
and demonstrate the significant nursing, midwifery and care contribution to public health,
including work on research, evidence, inequalities and outcomes

PHE, working with the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and
expert public health nurses, will produce accessible evidence for nurses and midwives
providing individual and community interventions, and will consider metrics to assess
the impact of public health nursing and midwifery on improving health outcomes

PHE, working with DH, will draw up recommendations for nurses and midwives to make
every contact count and work with HEE on education to underpin health promoting
practice

DH, NHS CB, PHE and Health Education England (HEE) will maximize the impact of
specialist community public health nurses through Health Visiting Call to
Action/Implementation and school nursing development

DH and NHS CB will draw up a vision and strategy for community nursing, based on the
6Cs and the six actions, and will develop practice nurse contribution through practice
nursing forums

DH, with the midwifery profession/professional bodies, will be reviewing the

recommendations of the public health chapter from Midwifery 2020 to map the

16
 contribution of midwives to public health (e.g. screening programmes, working with
vulnerable women and families, increasing breast feeding rates) and to scope the
potential for a midwifery public health career pathway

DH will lead a programme working across the range of organisations in health, care and
support to maximise the nursing and midwifery contribution to the Dementia Challenge
and develop a model for the contribution to the Dementia Challenge from community
action, to acute and specialist, care to end life care.

DH will develop a model for the nursing and midwifery contribution to no health without
mental health, set specific actions for implementation and work with learning disability
nurses to reduce the health inequalities experienced by people with a learning disability.

To help people stay independent, each of us can:

Use our skills at building relationships to help stimulate greater integration of health,
care and support in meaningful ways.

Local organisations can support by:

Working in a culture in which the values and behaviours of the 6Cs enable us to do the
best for the people in our care.

Further support will come from national bodies:

DH will actively engage with nurses, care staff, local government, professionals in social
care and care home managers during 2012/13 in social care to make real their
contribution to the vision and strategy
DH will ensure alignment with relevant initiatives in the white paper Caring for Our
Future
DH and NHS CB will lead work on the nursing contribution to the Adult Social Care
Outcomes Framework 2013/14
DH will build on its current relationships to establish a viable and on-going network of
nurses and care staff across social care settings to help maximise their contribution to
public health, well-being and improving health outcomes.

Action area two: Working with people to provide a positive experience of care

Quality of care is as important as the quality of treatment. When a person reflects on their
contact with a nurse, midwife or member of care staff, they think about other issues as well -
the environment they received care in; whether they were treated kindly, with respect and
dignity and whether they had to tell their story more than once. The people that we care for,
and in many instances their families and carers, are our partners in care and our practice must
reflect that.

17
This action area is concerned with ensuring that service users are treated with dignity,
empathy and respect, which is something that we all want for ourselves and our loved ones.
This requires us to listen to feedback and act on it, and to design services to enable people to
be involved in their care.

This action area supports the implementation of the Friends and Family Test for inpatients
from April 2013 and maternity services from October 2013, and we will consider how it can be
expanded to further groups of inpatients and people who use mental health, primary and
community services.

Each of us can:
Actively seek out, listen to and act on patient and carer feedback, identifying any
themes or issues and ensuring the patients voice is heard.
Support the roll out of the Friends and Family Test in all acute hospitals and emergency
departments from April 2013 and in all maternity settings from October 2013
Measuring and improve staff experience using the Family and Friends Test thus
improving patient experience.

Local organisations can support by:

Reviewing the options for roll out of the Friends and Family Test across all settings
Commissioners and NHS Trust Development Authority (NTDA) working with providers
to ensure rollout and improve the experience of patients as reported in the Friends and
Family Test
Providers using the published results of the Friends and Family Test to improve patient
experience and work with public forums and patient groups to further continuous
improvement
Commissioners and Providers using their professional and clinical networks to actively
share examples of good practice which can be replicated by others.

We will be further supported by national bodies:

NHS CB will lead on work to provide options for rapid feedback from patients through
the Friends and Family Test across all services funded by the NHS. This will include
community, primary and mental health services
NHS CB will continue the work across the NHS for a range of different sources of
feedback and develop methods of synthesising this data to build a rich picture of patient
experience, including views on the 6Cs in action
NHS CB will lead work with key stakeholders including patient organisations across the
NHS and care and support sectors to develop strong patient experience measures for
specific groups, especially children and young people, those with dementia and
vulnerable adults in all settings
NHS CB will support local services in using these measures to seek the views of the
most vulnerable and those without a strong voice and prioritise improving the
experience of NHS funded services for them

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 NHS CB will provide leadership for the NHS in England through regional and local
teams to improve the reported experiences of patients. They will link with the CQC, and
other regulators and adopt the NHS Change Model as the overarching approach to
quality improvement
NHS CB will lead work with key stakeholders on the development and implementation
of effective integrated care and identify strong patient experience measures that can be
used between settings and sectors
NHS CB will build on the existing evidence and use that to work with patients and
service users to find the best way of ensuring they are partners in their own care, and
are at the heart of the decision making process.

Action area three: Delivering high quality care and measuring the impact

We want to deliver care that is evidence-based. To do this we need to measure the right thing
and measure outcomes to drive improvement. Measurement should focus on the experience of
the person using the service, the outcomes of care, and should be transparent.

This action area is concerned with the ability to measure what we do and the commitment and
courage to publish data so that commissioners, staff, patients and the public are able to see
what is being measured and what is being done to improve care. The burden and cost of data
collection should be assessed and the role of technology to reduce this as far as possible
should be reviewed. Metrics should also be developed with staff, patients, service users and
key partners across the health, care and support systems.

The area should learn from work already undertaken, in particular:

The task and finish group, commissioned by the CNO, which examined the
measurement of nursing quality and with the National Nursing Research Unit at Kings
College
The North England Transparency of Care Project that reviewed how collecting and
publishing data in a transparent fashion could lead to improvements in quality.

Each of us can:
Support the measurement of care that we and others provide in order to learn, improve,
and highlight the positive impact we have on patients and the people we care for.

Local organisations can support by:

Commissioners and providers publishing and discussing quality metrics and impact on
patient outcomes at each Board meeting
Commissioners and providers developing options to enable staff to gain the knowledge
and skills necessary to understand and interpret data
Providers reviewing the recommendations of NHS North of England and considering the
rollout of the public reporting of the incidence of pressure ulcers, falls and patient and
staff experience

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 Providers and commissioners supporting the NHS CB in the development and rollout of
the Safety Thermometer in other settings
Reviewing the use of lean methodology and technology to ensure measurement and
data collection is streamlined, effective and simple.

This will be further supported by national bodies:

NHS CB will support the publication of High Quality Care Metrics for Nursing by the
National Nursing Research Unit
NHS CB will lead on the identification of metrics and indicators, which reflect
compassion and effective care
CQC will consider how to integrate the care metrics into its regulatory processes
NHS CB will review options and system levers including the use of the Information
Centre's information powers and the use of Commissioning for Quality Innovation
payment framework (CQUIN) to implement new metrics from 2014/15
NHS CB will work with stakeholders to commission the development of the Safety
Thermometer in all settings, including mental health, learning disability, children and
young people
NHS CB, in conjunction with the CQC, will lead on the publication of information that
identifies the quality of care and informs patients and the public
DH will publish Provider Quality Profiles on NHS Choices where people will be able to
view comparative information, aggregated from a range of sources about the quality of
care at every registered care home and home care service in the country
NHS North of England will complete their review of the publication of the incidence of
pressure ulcers and falls, an evaluation of the care provided together with patient and
staff experience in the North West and make recommendations for further rollout.

Action area four: Building and strengthening leadership

Our leaders must have the skills they need to deliver. We know that there is a correlation
between strong leadership, a caring and compassionate culture and high quality care. It is not
just about looking up to your line manager and beyond. We all have a role to play in providing
leadership within our teams and upwards to our leaders and our Boards.

This action area is concerned with the support and empowerment of nurses, midwives and
registered managers in social care to lead change locally and motivate their teams to improve
the experience and outcomes of the people using their services.

This action area recommends:

A national leadership development programme that will underpin the nursing, midwifery
and care staff vision and embed the 6Cs in daily activity. The programme would result in
a nationally recognised qualification gained by working through placements during

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 which specific skills are practiced. This would include change management skills,
building coalitions of support and communications and engagement with staff, patients,
service users, carers and other stakeholders
The involvement of junior staff in leadership and service improvement early in their
careers and a review of undergraduate courses and preceptorship programmes to
check the syllabuses relate to ways of improving service quality
Mentorship programmes for aspiring leaders
That leadership teams reflect patient and staff groups locally to ensure balance and
representation
Each of us can:

See ourselves as leaders in our care setting and role model the 6Cs in our everyday
care of patients

Local organisations can support by:

Providers undertaking a review of their organisational culture and publishing the results.
This should include feedback from staff and the people the organisation cares for.
Action should be taken to ensure the 6Cs are embedded into the organisation at every
level and demonstrated at every opportunity
Providers reviewing options for introducing ward managers and team leaders
supervisory status into their staffing structure

It will be further supported by national bodies:

NHS CB will work with key partners to develop a set of tools that enable organisations
to measure their organisational culture. Once a set of tools has been agreed, joint
recommendations will be published to help all organisations measure their
organisational culture
NHS Leadership Academy has committed to developing a new leadership programme
for ward managers, team leaders and nursing directors that is based on values and
behaviours and the implementation of the 6Cs
DH will lead work with the National Skills Academy for Social Care and Skills for Care to
implement and embed the Leadership Qualities Framework for Adult Social Care and
look to roll this out across all levels of the care and support settings

The Future Leadership Forum for Social Care will lead transformation across the care and
support landscape to deliver on the White Paper ambitions of high quality leadership in support
of high quality care.

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Action area five: Ensuring we have the right staff, with the right skills, in the right place

To deliver the vision, we need the right number of staff with the right skills and behavior and
working in the right place to meet the needs of the people they care for. Staff need time to
learn, to reflect and to re-energise and they need to be supported by organisations that
promote compassionate and caring culture and values and which dedicate time to valuing
these.

This action area is concerned with the local determination of a suitable staff mix of competency,
experience and education in order to best improve the experiences of service users and staff.
The aim of this action area is to use the evidence, both national and international, to provide a
series of tools to determine, locally, the most appropriate staffing levels for a particular health
and social care setting that reflects and delivers quality of care, productivity and a good patient
or user experience.

This action area recommends that:

The determinants of workforce tools (such as the safer nursing care tool, nurse hours
per patient day, birth-rate plus, Paediatric Acuity and Nursing Dependency Assessment
(PANDA) and Nurses per Occupied Bed (NPOB), are refined to ensure we have a suite
of suitably sensitive workforce measures. The use of NPOB only to provide a general
overview of an organisations staffing levels given that the measure is not sufficiently
sensitive to reflect the staffing skills mix at the point of care delivery
Directors of Nursing in Trusts should agree staffing levels through the application of
evidence based tools and we recommend these are published at least every 6 months.
All nursing and midwifery staffing levels and quality and experience metrics should be
discussed at Trust Board level in a public meeting at least twice a year. Any proposed
changes to the nursing and midwifery skills mix, required to reflect any service redesign
project, should also be discussed at Board level
The development of access to pre-registration nurse training possibly through
foundation courses or apprenticeships. For qualified nurses and midwives, the action
area will develop models of clinical supervision that build on good practice in midwifery
and mental health. The need for greater flexibility to support nursing staff to work in
different settings is also identified
Values based recruitment is included in the national standard contract for pre-
registration education programmes
Ward or community nurse /midwifery leaders are supervisory to give them time to lead.
We hope this will be accepted and built into all future workforce tools

Each of us can:

Take responsibility for deploying staff effectively and efficiently and work with colleagues
and leaders to identify the impact this has on quality of care and patient experience
Where relevant, demonstrate the impact supervisory status has on role modeling, staff
supervision, clinical placements and communication with patients, families and carers

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Local organisations can support by:

Providers ensuring that Boards sign off and publish evidence based staffing levels at
least every 6 months, linked to quality of care and patient experience and discuss this in
public Board meetings
Providers reviewing options to deliver supervisory status for ward / community nurse
and midwifery leaders
Commissioners reviewing the staffing levels using evidence based tools/methodology,
links with quality and patient experience and ensuring appropriate action is taken
Providers implementing the recommendations about the recruitment and appraisal of
staff using the 6Cs and assessment of values and behaviours
Providers utilising the offer of 100m to support the use of technology in all settings and
identifying the benefits for nurses, midwives and care staff

This will be further supported by national bodies including:

NHS CB and DH will commission work on evidence- based staffing levels for mental
health, community, learning disability services and care and support.
Health Education England (HEE) will work with the education sector, employers, the
regulator and staff groups to ensure that the 6Cs are embedded in all nursing and
midwifery university education and training.
HEE will work with the education sector, employers, the regulator and staff groups to
ensure that quality improvement methodology is included in the curricula for
undergraduate nurses and midwives
HEE will work with the education sector, employers and staff groups to ensure that
recruitment to university undergraduate programmes is based on values and behaviours
as well as technical and academic skills
NHS Employers and HEE have committed to working together, with partners, to develop
a plan for promoting the use of the 6Cs, values and behaviours into all stages of
recruitment and appraisal systems for nurses, midwives and care staff, prior to
expanding to other staff in the NHS
DH will work with national organisations to agree stronger arrangements to ensure
effective recruitment, induction and training of support workers in health and care
All national organisations will work with stakeholders to finalise the definitions and then
recommend that all providers publish information on evidence based staffing levels at
least every 6 months together with an explanation of how they impact on quality, and
discuss this in public Board meetings. NHS CB will support an assessment of the impact
of ward or community nurse / midwifery leaders having a supervisory role
NHS CB will lead the work to rollout the 100m technology fund across all settings, with
plans to identify the benefits for nursing, midwifery and care staff
DH will work with care providers, service users and carers to develop a sector-specific
compact to promote culture change and skills development with dignity and respect at

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 the heart. The compact will set a framework for agreement between employees and
employers to improve skills, competencies and behaviours
The sector skills councils for Social Care and Health will work with the Government to
develop a code of conduct and recommended minimum training standards for adult
social care workers and health care support workers, drawing on the Dignity Code, the
National Pensioners Convention and the Dignity in Care campaigns Dignity challenge
The CQC will play a key role in ensuring that providers use appropriately trained and
qualified workers as part of enforcing quality standards.

Action area six: Supporting positive staff experience

Our shared purpose will only be achieved if staff is supported to do their job well. This involves
providing supervision and support within a culture of care, compassion and a recognition of the
emotional labour of nursing, midwifery and care giving. Research evidence supports the
correlation between staff experience and quality of care.

This action area is concerned that staff who provide care are nurtured and supported to be
positive about their role and show this in the care that they provide and the way that they
describe it. This means enabling involvement in decision making; promoting healthy and safe
work environments; creating worthwhile and rewarding jobs in which every role counts;
supporting each other; being accountable and being prepared to embrace innovative working
and new technology.

The action area recommends:

Supporting the ongoing work to develop and test a Cultural Barometer in a small
number of London Trusts. The Cultural Barometer aims to help managers, leaders and
staff at the frontline to reflect on the culture of their organisation, department or team or,
indeed, themselves
Integrating the 6Cs into any new local nursing and midwifery strategy and considering
the recommendations from the Image of Nursing report. We will also work with the
social care sector to determine how the 6Cs can support leaders and their staff in
improving care locally
Ensuring that health employers aim for 90% coverage of all staff with their local
appraisal system and that staff self-report that this is of a high quality 80% of the time
Reviewing the implications of statutory supervision for registered nurses and a refresh
of the Nursing and Midwifery Councils Raising Concerns message

Each of us can:

Commit to working with local employers to improve our own and colleagues experience
in the work place

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Local organisations can support by:

Providers committing to implement a measure of organisational culture and developing

a plan for the on-going monitoring of this within their organisation
Providers developing, implementing and embedding strategies to secure meaningful
staff engagement to optimise the experience of their workforce and, ultimately, patients
drawing on the five key factor of the staff engagement star from the NHS Employers
Staff Engagement Toolkit
Providers reviewing options for implementing the Friends and Family Test for staff on a
regular basis, measuring and publishing the results
Providers considering the 6Cs, the impact on their culture and values and organisational
application and publishing for staff, patients and local people
NHS CB working with local commissioners to ensure that services are commissioned
from organisations that achieve locally agreed targets to deliver high quality appraisals
for their staff

And further supported by national bodies including:

NHS CB will lead work with partners to develop a national scheme to recognise
organisations or teams who implement the 6Cs and who are excellent examples of the
6Cs in action
DH, HEE and NHS CB will lead a piece of work with partners to consider how care staff
are supported within the workplace
NHS CB will work with partners to support the implementation of the Cultural Barometer
once initial piloting and review has taken place
DH and NHS CB will review evidence based good practice for clinical placements of
students, preceptorship and supervision, with the intention of proposing a robust model
for implementation across all care settings
NHS CB will work with partners to review the "Image of Nursing" work and develop
actions for implementation as appropriate

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Next steps to implementation
Following the launch of this Vision and Strategy, at the Chief Nursing Officers Conference on
4 December 2012 in Manchester, the real work of successfully embedding the 6Cs and the
values and behaviours will begin. The greatest impact will come from individuals acting to
embed the 6Cs in everything they do, supported, as set out above, by their local organisations
and by national bodies.

This journey will begin at the conference where the most senior leaders from across the NHS,
public health and social care will discuss how they can take a lead in driving the required
changes in their organisations and in their role.

In addition to this, we will lead work with key partners including PHE, HEE, NTDA, CQC,
Monitor, NMC and professional bodies to develop our implementation plans and timescales.
We will build on successful initiatives that have already been developed and piloted and that
we can implement quickly and easily. We will work collaboratively with key stakeholders and
partner organisations to share good practice and ensure everyone has an opportunity to
contribute to the achievement of the vision.

We will also work closely with regional and front line staff to understand the barriers that we
need to address and overcome, so that this vision does reach the heart of every care setting
and makes a positive and sustained difference to the people we care for.

We commit to having the detailed implementation plans in place by 31 March 2013. At this time
the NHS CB assumes its full operating powers and responsibilities, the DH moves to a role as
system steward and other new organisations assume their responsibilities. We will then work
together, in this new national framework, to deliver this vision and strategy for nursing,
midwifery and care staff and so make a significant impact on patients and the people we care
for. This strategy will run over three years and the implementation of these areas of action will
be within this timeframe. Some of the actions in this document are subject to piloting, further
testing and appraisal, after which further recommendations will be considered.

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Conclusion
This vision and strategy is our vision and strategy. Collectively developed, collectively owned
and to be collectively implemented. Whilst each of us can and does make a positive difference
to every one of our patients and the people we support, we can do more. We commit to doing
more, we commit to care we commit to deliver compassion in practice.

Endnote
1.
See the NHS Commissioning Board website for more information.

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 Crown copyright 2012
First published 4 December 2012
Published to www.commissioningboard.nhs.uk, in electronic format only.

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