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Higher staff numbers will save lives

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Senior nurses were among those meeting last month at the House of Commons in London to garner support from MPs for the Safe Staffing Alliance.

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The alliance, which includes the Patients Association and representatives from the RCN and Unison, was launched in January as a result of the Care Campaign established by our sister journal, Nursing Standard. Its aim has been to ensure that there are safe staffing levels on hospital wards across the country.

CONSULTANT EDITOR Debbie Mazhindu Reader in clinical nursing practice and innovation at Buckinghamshire New University and Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust, London EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Jane Brookes Ward manager (paediatric medical), Nottingham Children’s Hospital, Nottingham Geraldine Cunningham Associate director of culture change, Barts Health NHS, London Naomi Elliott Director of international initiatives, school of nursing and midwifery, Trinity College Dublin Gemma Ellis Consultant nurse in adult critical care, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board Jenny Kay Director of quality, Merton Clinical Commissioning Group, London Anastasia Mallidou Assistant professor, school of nursing, University of Victoria BC, Canada Ada ter Maten Nurse researcher, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, Institute of Healthcare, Netherlands Niall McCrae Lecturer at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, King’s College London Elaine Strachan-Hall Registered nurse, South Warwickshire Clinical Commissioning Group Governing Body Donna Swinden Senior therapist, Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust Frances Wong Professor (school of nursing) and associate dean (faculty of health and social sciences), Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HK, China Haiou Xia Professor at the school of nursing, Fudan University, China

Already on board are House of Commons health committee members Andrew George and Barbara Keeley, who attended the meeting, but nurses are being urged to contact other MPs and encourage them to back calls for minimum staff-to-patient ratios too. Six months ago, the message from the alliance was that ‘numbers matter’. Now, it has refined the message to ‘never more than 8’: eight patients for every nurse. The figure is based on evidence from the National Nursing Research Unit, at King’s College London, and the University of Southampton, and policymakers are being urged

NURSING MANAGEMENT RCN Publishing Company, The Heights, 59-65 Lowlands Road, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex HA1 3AW Nursing Management is indexed, abstracted and/or published online in the following media: British Nursing Index, Medline and Ovid ABC APPLICATION APPROVED 6,364 (Jan-Dec 2012) SUBSCRIPTION DEPARTMENT Royal College of Nursing Journal subscription department, Copse Walk, Cardiff Gate Business Park, Cardiff CF23 8XG. Tel: 0345 772 6100 Personal rates for print edition: from £66 a year in the UK and Europe, and from £121 a year in the rest of the world. Institutional print edition rates: from £446 a year Email: [email protected] ©2013 RCN Publishing Company Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be copied, transmitted or recorded in any way, in whole or part, without prior permission of the publishers. ISSN 1354-5760 (print). ISSN 2047-8976 (online) Printed by Stephens and George, Merthyr Tydfil Acceptance of an advertisement does not constitute a recommendation or an endorsement of a product or service, either by the RCN or RCN Publishing nm.rcnpublishing.com

NURSING MANAGEMENT

Nurses are being urged to contact other MPs and encourage them to back calls for minimum staff-to-patient ratios too

Nick Lipley Editor @editorNM

to think of this as a level below which mortality rates are higher, below which patients are dying unnecessarily. Some senior nurses are responding by changing practice. In Salford, for example, nursing director and alliance member Elaine Inglesby-Burke has helped establish the use of ward-based boards that publicise daily staffing levels to staff and service users. But alliance members want to hear of more examples of how nurses are coping with dangerously low staffing levels and how they are managing to improve them. Contribute to the debate through the pages of Nursing Management by emailing me, at nick.lipley@ rcnpublishing.co.uk, or by contacting Janet Snell, at RCN Publishing, at [email protected] On a final note, I want to welcome the new consultant editor of the journal, Debbie Mazhindu, with whom I look forward to publishing ever more of your articles that reflect contemporary nursing leadership and management. See news, page 7, and analysis, page 8

Our mission Nursing Management inspires and shares professional excellence in nursing leadership and patient care. The journal is editorially independent and opinions expressed in it do not necessarily reflect the policy of the RCN, nor that of any contributor’s employing organisation, unless specifically stated.

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Visit us at: Nursing Management November 2013 | Volume 20 | Number 7

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