The Role of NHS in Community Nursing

The NHS mission is to provide effective healthcare to people regardless of their identity or their ability to pay. For over seventy years, the NHS has been striving hard, despite recessions and daunting events, to provide and also continually improve the quality of care that every person residing in England and Scotland receives. The Focus Areas At the core, the NHS remains focused on primary care. This means that the NHS works towards enhancing the local, immediate care available to people wherever they live. Secondary care is rendered at hospitals and other specialised care providers. Recent studies have shown that England’s growing elderly population and those with chronic health conditions need more care close to home and will benefit immensely from high quality, integrated (health and social needs) care at their homes or as close to home as possible, without having to access the local clinic or hospital. This is where the NHS has risen to the challenge. One of the many ways that the NHS plans to improve quality of care is by taking community nursing to the next level. The Five Year Forward View A Five Year Forward View has been laid out, in consensus with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the Department of Health and Social Care. This Forward View sets out the pressing health needs in these modern times and the way that care needs to evolve over the next five years in order to meet the increased health and social care needs of the people. Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) General Practices coming together – area-wise – to commission high-quality care services to their locality and attendant patients form a Clinical Commissioning Group. Prior to the establishment of CCGs, Primary care trusts (PCTs) were in force till April of 2013. These CCGs – governed by the NHS – are responsible for engaging care services independently, or engaging required services from any available care service provider, that has met the quality and cost standards set by the NHS. Service providers could be a private firm, a hospital, social services or even a voluntary association. Agencies such as a medical nursing agency, that fits the bill set out by the NHS, are commissioned by the CCGs to engage nurses and Carers who can meet the nursing needs of the local community. Community Nursing is thus one of the NHS’s ‘way forward’ in providing out-of-hospital care to those who cannot easily get to a hospital such as the elderly, differently abled, and similar persons who for some reason or other are unlikely to re-visit a hospital as and when their health may require them to. Community Nursing: The role of a Community Nurse is similar to that of a general practice nurse who works in a hospital or clinic, except for the fact that they must be specially trained to provide nursing care, emergency care and play an educational role for patients in their own homes. These nurses do not act independently but will provide care in close association with the patient’s medical practitioner. If social services or other specialist caregivers are involved, the community nurse’s role is to work with all the influential parties involved and render daily care to patients assigned to him/her. Training for the position of a community nurse is a rigorous one and must extend for at least a year unless equivalent experience can be proven, in which case the duration of training may be reduced slightly. Such training is essential in order to ensure that the community nurse has the skill and stamina to work 24/7/365 and possess excellent listening and communicating skill to communicate between medical practitioners, social services, family members, other specialist caregivers, and the patients. With this framework of community nurses in place, the NHS plans to reduce medical emergencies and hospital re-admissions, while ensuring that patients are given every chance to care for themselves in the best possible way.