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Care campaign
The Care campaign is a joint drive by Nursing Standard and the Patients Association to improve fundamental patient care across the UK.
Care stands for:
C - communicate with compassion
A - assist with toileting, ensuring dignity
R - relieve pain effectively
E - encourage adequate nutrition
Care is based on the four most common complaints the association receives about hospital care from patients and relatives. The campaign recognises that everyone who goes into a care setting is entitled to these four fundamental aspects of care - they are a human right.
We want all nurses, nursing directors, chief executives and non-executive directors of NHS trusts to sign up to the Care Challenge so that 'Care' becomes a universal expectation for patients.
Latest articles
Quantity and quality
Could Scotland's new mandatory staffing tools work elsewhere in the NHS? Bee Friend reports
Making time for that personal touch
Two trusts that signed up to the Care Campaign have transformed their wards with simple patient-centred initiatives. Bee Friend reports
A nursing alliance with a firm and simple message: Numbers matter
Senior figures have joined forces as part of Nursing Standard's Care campaign to demand minimum staffing levels that ensure quality care. Janet Snell reports
Experts discuss poor care
Poor care stories are constantly highlighted in the media and the blame is often put on nurses or modern nursing. As a result we called a special meeting of senior nurses, academics and representatives of the regulators and royal colleges, to discuss the causes and solutions to the problem of poor care.
Research that proves the value of nursing
Poor staffing levels and low skill mixes on wards are a key factor of poor quality care. Nursing Standard commissioned important research, which nurses can use to make the case for better staffing.
The Care campaign aims are:
- For nursing staff to adopt the Care Challenge, based on our four-point tool.
- To highlight obstacles nurses face in delivering the Care Challenge.
- For organisations to sign up to the Care Challenge.
- For patients to recognise the Care checklist and to use it to challenge poor care.
- To support nurses who expose failures to deliver the fundamentals of care.
What do you think stops nursing teams being able to deliver fundamental care?
Celebrating good nursing - The Patient's Choice Award
We know that the vast majority of nursing care is good. So we invited patients across the UK to nominate nurses who have made a real difference to their care through the Patient's Choice Award, in honour of the late nurse and patient champion Claire Rayner and supported by the Patients Association.
Read about the 2012 Patient's Choice Award winner
Nurse leaders call time on unsafe staffing levels
Nurse leaders have united to issue an unprecedented warning that patient care becomes unsafe on wards where one registered nurse is caring for eight patients, which happens about 40 per cent of the time in English hospitals.
NHS Supporters
See the list of NHS organisations that have signed up for our Care campaign.
Presentation
How can you tackle standards of fundamental care? Use this presentation to run a Care session among your team.
The RCN Publishing Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Royal College of Nursing, the world's largest organisation for nurses. RCN Publishing produces one weekly, eight monthly and two quarterly nursing publications. Nursing Standard, the flagship journal, is the UK's biggest selling weekly for nursing. It is produced by RCN Publishing Company along with a suite of specialist nursing journals - Cancer Nursing Practice, Mental Health Practice, Learning Disability Practice, Nursing Children and Young People, Nursing Management, Emergency Nurse, Nursing Older People, Nurse Researcher and Primary Health Care. RCN Publishing Company also produce the RCN Bulletin, a major source of up-to-the-minute information for RCN members in all specialities, grades and working environments. With the latest nurse vacancies from trusts nationwide, it has become the most cost-effective nurse recruitment magazine available.