Nursing Times • 31st October 2023

Analysis: The evolving role of healthcare support workers

Part of the unregulated and unregistered workforce, they support good patient care by helping registered nurses, midwives and other healthcare professionals in a variety of settings.

The HCSW role has continued to expand and develop in recent years, and now there are more than 30 different job titles that align with it.

According to NHS England, HCSW is an umbrella term that covers a variety of health and care support roles, the majority of which are on a band 2 or band 3 Agenda for Change con

Nursing Times • 26th September 2023

How nurse-led community kitchen is helping asylum seekers

Tables are laid and decorated with fresh flowers and lit candles, as traditional music from different countries around the world hums in the background.

On these evenings, asylum-seeking families are invited to cook and eat together, and in turn celebrate the rich and varied cultures from their home countries.

All of this has been made possible by the nurse-led inclusion health team at Children and Family Health Surrey, who have been running the community kitchen since 2021.

The multidiscipli

Nursing Times • 20th September 2023

Bid to raise the profile of occupational health nursing

To mark Occupational Health Awareness Week, which aims to educate on what OH is and how it maintains the health and wellbeing of the UK workforce, nurses working across OH have told Nursing Times about the importance of getting the next generation into the specialty.

OH nurses provide risk-based advice to help people in workplaces to live well, perform well, heal if injured or ill and continue into retirement in the best health possible.

An average day as an OH nurse varies depending on the se

Nursing Times • 30th August 2023

Exclusive: Nursing universities ‘open to change’, say new charity chiefs

In their first interview with Nursing Times since being appointed, the new chief executive and chair of the Council of Deans of Health (CoDH) have described some of the key challenges facing nursing education right now, and how universities are looking to address them.

The CoDH is a charity which represents UK university faculties that deliver education and/or research for nursing, midwifery and allied health professions.

Professor Alison Machin, who is a registered nurse and health visitor, w

Nursing Times • 10th August 2023

Windrush family reflect on six decades of NHS contribution

The Edwards family, who have worked across a variety of roles and trusts in Nottinghamshire, have spoken to Nursing Times about what they love most about working in the NHS, their Windrush legacy, and what they would say to the next generation of nurses.

It comes as next week the family will be the latest to feature in the BBC’s Extraordinary Portraits series, which is this year celebrating the contribution of health and care workers to mark the 75th anniversary of the NHS.

The Edwards family’

Nursing Times • 4th August 2023

Exclusive: RCN chief nurse says fight for fair pay and safe staffing ‘not over’

In an interview with Nursing Times, Professor Nicola Ranger reflected on the challenges facing the nursing profession in recent years and what the UK might be able to learn from colleagues oversees in how to tackle them.

Professor Ranger joined the RCN as chief nurse in December 2022, describing the role as the “professional voice for the college”.

She had come from King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust where she had been chief nurse and executive director of midwifery since July 2019.

Nursing Times • 1st August 2023

Exclusive: WHO chief nurse urges governments to ‘listen to nurses’

The chief nursing officer (CNO) of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Amelia Latu Afuhaamango Tuipulotu, has called on national governments to listen to the voice of nurses, amid the pay disputes that are currently taking place across the globe.

In her first interview with Nursing Times, Dr Tuipulotu laid out her priorities and ambitions for her time in post. She explained that now was the right time “for empowerment, recognition, value and respect for nurses and midwives”.

Dr Tuipulotu s

Nursing Times • 19th July 2023

Analysis: How nurses fare in the public sector pay struggle

In response, nurse unions and campaigners hit back at the government, accusing it of giving nursing staff the lowest percentage pay rise out of all public sector workers after their 5% deal earlier this year.

Nursing Times has spoken with some of these campaigners, as well as workforce policy experts, about nurse pay frustrations and the wider dangers of implementing below-inflation pay rises across sectors with growing recruitment and retention issues.

Among the public sector workers who last

Nursing Times • 16th June 2023

How nurse education is embracing simulated practice learning

The University of East London (UEL) is among the higher education institutions across the UK that are investing time and money into expanding their simulated learning facilities.

It comes after a signficant move earlier this year by the Nursing and Midwifery Council to double the number of clinical practice hours that a student nurse can complete through simulation.

Following an extensive public consultation, students are now allowed 600 hours of clinical placement in a simulated setting, out

Nursing Times • 31st May 2023

Analysis: How nurses are supporting veterans’ mental health

By the time they do reach out to a health professional, some have developed trauma-related or stress-related mental health problems resulting from military service, such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

As such, specialist help from clinicians is often needed to come up with a treatment plan that fits the veteran’s individual needs.

For over a century, nurses at Combat Stress, the UK’s leading charity for veterans’ mental health, have provided specialist mental

Nursing Times • 4th May 2023

Exclusive: What the NHS digital nursing review has found so far

The Phillips Ives Nursing and Midwifery Review into the digital readiness of the nursing and midwifery workforce was launched in 2022 as a year-long research project and is set to be published soon.

Led by Dr Natasha Phillips, chief nursing information officer (CNIO) at NHS England, and American nursing academic, Dr Jeanette Ives Erickson, the review is exploring what skills and training the workforce might require when working with new technologies in the coming years.

In an interview with Nu

Nursing Times • 17th April 2023

What happens next in the England NHS pay dispute?

The Royal College of Nursing announced that its members had marginally rejected the latest offer from the government, meanwhile Unison announced that the majority of its members had accepted it.

They were among several unions that have been balloting their members on the latest pay offer, which would provide Agenda for Change (AfC) staff in England with an additional lump sum for 2022-23, and 5% pay rise for 2023-24.

Nursing Times has broken down what the next stages are in the NHS pay dispute

Nursing Times • 31st March 2023

Nurse-led plant initiative improving staff wellbeing

Despite working at the height of the winter crisis in the NHS, and with strike action looming around the corner, staff members in the queue were smiling.

Nurses and their colleagues from other professions were waiting patiently to be given a potted plant, which they were eager to take back to their non-clinical spaces to look after.

Throughout the week, staff at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust continued to be gifted plants, all thanks to nurse Nina Henton-Waller’s wellbeing scheme

Nursing Times • 17th March 2023

Exclusive: Health minister ‘hopeful’ that nurses will support pay deal

In an interview with Nursing Times, health minister and former nurse Maria Caulfield said that she hoped the recently-concluded pay negotiations had “brought both sides closer together”.

But while most unions are recommending the deal to members, a snap poll by Nursing Times on social media site Twitter has indicated unhappiness with the proposals among the majority of respondents.

Yesterday, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) put forward a new pay offer for NHS staff in England,

Nursing Times • 21st February 2023

Exclusive: Concern mental health nurse education has become ‘too generic’

In an open letter published in Nursing Times today, the Mental Health Deserves Better group has called for the regulator to launch an inquiry into the impact that its Future Nurse standards have had on the content of mental health nursing courses at higher education institutions.

Mental Health Deserves Better is a grassroots campaign group, made up of mental health nurses in academia and clinical practice, which aims to promote change within mental health nurse education.

Its letter, signed by

Nursing Times • 16th February 2023

Analysis: BTEC replacement ‘paints bleak picture’ for future nursing workforce

The concerns relate to government plans in England to stop funding Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) courses in health and social care, as part of a reform to the post-16 education system.

However, the most recent exam papers for the replacement qualification, T Level health, were recently deemed not fit for purpose by the exams regulator.

T Levels are a two-year technical qualification, equivalent to three A Levels, which are open to people aged 16 to 19.

They include a substa

Nursing Times • 8th December 2022

Nurse activist calls on colleagues to ‘stand up’ to climate crisis

Anna Bunten, an advanced nurse practitioner at Nene Valley Hodgson Medical Practice in Peterborough, described how the “trusted” voice of health and care professionals is one which could “help the public to understand the gravity and seriousness” of climate change.

Ms Bunten was recently found not guilty, after she was arrested for blocking Lambeth Bridge in London on 10 April as part of a climate protest.

She was one of 20 health professionals representing the climate activism group Doctors f

Nursing Times • 29th November 2022

Analysis: The nurses set to benefit from English language changes

Ms Nyandieka had just made her third attempt at the OET exam when the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) announced in September 2022 that it would change its English-language test requirements, following a consultation exercise. When she found out the changes would apply to her, she could not believe her dream of working as a nurse in the UK was “finally coming true”.

To pass the English-language test, an applicant needs to achieve a score of B in the OET, or 7 in the alternative International

Nursing Times • 2nd November 2022

Analysis: Virtual wards offer potential benefits but come with risks

At the start of 2022, NHS England laid out ambitious plans that asked integrated care systems (ICSs) across the country to deliver on virtual wards, which allow patients who would otherwise be in hospital to receive acute care in their own home. The plan said ICSs must deliver virtual ward capacity equivalent to 40-50 virtual beds per 100,000 population by December 2023 (around 24,000 virtual ward beds in total).

To enable the roll-out, £200m was made available from the NHS Service Development

Nursing Times • 19th October 2022

Exclusive: Nurses given ‘anti-strike’ leaflets by managers

There has been “proactive" spreading of anti-strike information by word of mouth and through leaflets in some trusts in England, the Royal College of Nursing has warned.

RCN director for England Patricia Marquis has told Nursing Times that these actions from senior staff “feel co-ordinated” within specific trusts across the country.

In one instance, physical guidance has been circulated by managers including misinformation about industrial action and inaccurate claims around criminal charges a

Nursing Times • 13th October 2022

Fellowship acts as a much-needed voice for ethnic minorities

Ms Pratt, a Nigerian national, was the first Black nurse to qualify from the Nightingale School of Nursing at St Thomas’ and was also believed to have been the first Black nurse working in the NHS after its creation in 1948.

The Kofoworola Abeni Pratt Fellowship was created by GSTT to address the gap in senior leaders who identify as being from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background. Five fellows were selected, who set out a vision to disrupt structural barriers and biases that negatively

Nursing Times • 6th October 2022

Analysis: School nursing under pressure as eating disorders rise

Latest data from NHS Digital shows the number of CYP in England who urgently need eating disorder support has increased by 333% in six years. During the first quarter of 2022-23, 230 CYP in urgent need were on a waiting list, with 102 of them waiting more than 12 weeks. In the first quarter of 2016-17, 53 CYP were waiting, of whom just nine were waiting for more than 12 weeks.

“We have never seen the likes of the number of CYP stepping forward or showing indications of being at risk of actually

Nursing Times • 31st August 2022

Interview: HEE chief nurse sets out ambitions for recovery of education sector

Student nurses, midwives and allied health professionals were “phenomenal” during the pandemic, Professor Radford told Nursing Times. He highlighted how, at times, students had experienced “a double burden” of trying to complete their courses as well as providing support.

However, the last few years have seen positive trends emerge, said Professor Radford, including a growth in the number of people applying for nursing and midwifery courses.

There had been a slight drop this year, he noted, be

Nursing Times • 12th August 2022

Nurses with long Covid being ‘pushed’ to take ill health retirement

In some cases, this was happening without reasonable adjustments being put into place to help staff get back to work, according to the group Long Covid Nurses and Midwives UK (LCNMUK).

Dr Alison Twycross, nursing academic and chair of LCNMUK, who advocates on behalf of NHS staff with long Covid, told Nursing Times that some employers viewed staff with the condition as a “bother”.

“It seems to be many of the employers, so the managers and also occupational health departments, [are] pushing staf

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DIVA • 30th September 2021

Sex Education opened up dialogues at home: Here’s why that’s a good thing

How the show sparks up conversations on everything from consent to gender identity.

DIVA • 24th September 2021

Tracing the timeline of my bisexuality

“ Barbies scissoring, I have learnt, was an obligatory part of being a Queer child”

DIVA • 24th September 2021

Six bisexual awakenings for women and non-binary people that defined the 2000s

Bi moments of realisation from the defining decade that was the ’00s. To celebrate Bi Awareness Week we’re taking you on a whistle-stop tour of the most universal bisexual awakenings of the 2000s.

DIVA • 23rd September 2021

Six songs for every bisexual mood

Whether you’re crushing on someone or feeling reflective, there’s a song for every vibe.

DIVA • 20th September 2021

5 myths that need dispelling about being bisexual in 2021

Bisexuality is not one size fits all, and that diversity should be celebrated. As it is Bisexual Awareness week, we wanted to tackle some of the myths about bisexual people which, unfortunately, still seem to be circulating in 2021.