IN BRIEF A nurse academic is to head up a national evaluation in how to make nursing care more compassionate following the care failings at Mid Staffordshire. Laura Serrant, professor of community and public health nursing and director of research and enterprise at the University of Wolverhampton, has been seconded to the office of England’s chief nursing officer Jane Cummings to lead an assessment looking at compassion in practice. Four in ten people take antibiotics for a cough or runny nose, despite both conditions normally clearing up without treatment, according to research by Public Health England (PHE). A survey of 1,625 adults also found that 40 per cent of respondents wrongly believed antibiotics could be used to treat viral infections. PHE said the survey showed more needs to be done to dispel the misconception that antibiotics are a ‘cure-all’. A shortage of midwives could be to blame for falling numbers of women opting for home births, the Royal College of Midwives has claimed. Figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal that the number of women having babies at home in England and Wales has fallen by almost one fifth in four years. Some 15,500 women gave birth at home in 2013, down from 19,000 in 2009. A former hospital porter has been named the new chief executive of NHS Employers. Danny Mortimer has had a 25-year career in the NHS, starting out as a porter and was most recently director of workforce and strategy at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. Mr Mortimer said: ‘I started life in the NHS as a porter and then became a healthcare assistant. My wife is a nurse, as was my mother. I understand the rewards and challenges of working in the NHS.’ More than 340,000 front line healthcare workers in England have already had a flu vaccination as part of this year’s programme to protect staff against the virus. Public Health England reports that 36.8 per cent of staff were vaccinated in September and October this year, up from 35 per cent in the same period in 2013. The British nurse who survived the deadly Ebola virus says the international response to the crisis has been ‘woefully slow’. William Pooley contracted the virus while volunteering in Sierra Leone in August, and made a full recovery after being flown back to England for treatment. He returned to Sierra Leone last month, and said that medical teams in the country ‘need all the support they can get’. Doing six hours of physical activity a week could help protect against Parkinson’s disease, researchers claim. A study of almost 43,500 people by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden found those who spend up to an hour a day on an activity such as gardening, housework or exercising were 43 per cent less likely to develop the disease.

Workplaces should provide nurses with healthier options Nurses can be healthy role models for patients, but it would be wrong to ‘demonise’ those who are overweight, an obesity expert has said. GP and National Obesity Forum chair David Haslam told last week’s Food Matters Live conference in London that nurses had a public health role in tackling the UK’s obesity crisis, but their own weight does not alter their ability to provide good care for patients. He said NHS workplaces need to offer more healthy eating options for staff as well as patients. ‘Nurses should not be demonised if they have a weight problem,’ Professor Haslam added. A survey of 3,500 nurses, part of Nursing Standard’s Eat Well, Nurse Well campaign, reveals almost three quarters of respondents are struggling with their weight. But University of Oxford professor of diet and population health Susan Jebb said imposing a blanket ban on convenience food and snacks was not enough.

UNIFORM BADGE WILL DETECT DIRTY HANDS A&E nurses are among the first NHS staff in the UK to try a new hand hygiene device designed to reduce the number of healthcare-associated infections. Staff at Doncaster Royal Infirmary’s emergency department are taking part in a three-month trial of a tool that reminds them to wash their hands regularly. The device, called Biovigil, is a digital badge worn on a staff uniform that detects the presence of hand sanitiser when hands are placed over it. The device turns green when hand sanitiser is present, indicating the hands are clean, while amber shows they are ready for washing. It starts to beep and turn red when hands are unclean. Around 300,000 patients a year pick up an infection while being cared for in the NHS, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust matron Samantha Sidwell said: ‘We are hoping that it will bring extra confidence to our patients that staff take precautions against passing any infections on to them,’ she added.

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