Nurses and nursing bodies have expressed frustration at the delayed roll-out of a Community Nursing Safer Staffing Tool (CNSST) which was first piloted last autumn.
The tool, which was expected to be formally introduced earlier this year, aims to support community nursing teams to calculate the number of staff required for a specific volume of work, in the hopes of better managing workload and reducing risk.
The CNSST was finalised for testing late last year, before being trialled in a phased roll-out.
It was expected to be introduced fully earlier this year, following some proposed changes post-trial –but an updated version remains to be seen.
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Nursing in Practice understands that updates to the CNSST have been taking place over the summer and that the new version will be released in the coming months.
Steph Lawrence, a recently retired executive director of nursing and allied health professionals (AHPs) at Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust, helped design the first-phase CNSST in her role as co-chair of the clinical reference group for community nursing.
She told Nursing in Practice that it was ‘demoralising’ for the tool to be delayed.
While she recognised that it would not ‘bring more staff’, Ms Lawrence said it would ‘at least give us the evidence that we haven’t got the capacity, and the resource needed in community’.
She acknowledged that the pilot tool did need ‘refining’ before being formally introduced, but said ‘that was the point of the testing’ of the earlier draft.
‘My worry is that there’s still a lot of work left undone in the community. Struggling with capacity is a big issue,’ Ms Lawrence said.
‘The safe staffing tool is not the only answer by any means but would be there to support and help guide whether we’ve got the right staffing levels or not.’
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She added: ‘Community staff are now dealing with urgent community responding, we’ve got virtual wards, we’ve got high acuity patients previously held in hospital.
‘All that goes into the mix of “how do we safely provide the care that is needed in the community”.’
Dr Crystal Oldman, chief executive of the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI), told Nursing in Practice that the tool was needed because employers ‘do not know’ the staffing levels needed to maintain safe practice in the community.
‘Employers don’t have a good, robust understanding of how many district nurses, healthcare assistants, and nursing associates that we need in order to deliver district nursing services to our communities,’ she said.
Dr Oldman said introducing the tool would ‘win hearts and minds’ and ‘give hope for the future’ of community nursing.
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‘One of the major messages right now for all nursing, but I think particularly in the community, is that they need hope. They need some hope that things are going to get better,’ she said.
The National Institute of Care Excellence (NICE) has endorsed a safer nursing care tool (SCNT) for hospitals since 2014, to support nurses setting staff levels on inpatient wards.
