So, what are we up to at the moment?

A first stage for our work is to carry out a review of literature to understand the main issues in relation to nurse staffing characteristics in UK care homes and the care and professional development needs of nursing staff in care homes.  We also want  to explore innovations or developments (including any new roles for nursing staff) in this care setting.  We have completed our search and have a range of papers covering dementia care, end of life care, resident safety, nursing contribution in care homes and staff development (as well as other important areas).  We are currently extracting main headlines and learning points from this literature.  We will be looking at the international as well as UK literature to see what we might find out about non-UK settings.  Over coming weeks we will be sharing these headlines and we would really like to hear you views and comments. Watch this space…

Why this project and why now?

As trustees of the RCN Foundation we were considering the next steps in funding projects that were innovative and previously unresearched. We are clear that that there are significant and growing number of nursing staff working in care and nursing homes. We recognise that they are of growing importance to the delivery of health care yet realised we know little about them.

After in depth discussions the Foundation called for tenders to carry out a scoping exercise with a  theme of ‘patient care and professional development for nursing staff in care and nursing homes’ to inform us on the areas of work we could best make a difference to with future project funding. The University of York provided a clear view on how they could map the current care and nursing home landscape in the UK and assess the pressing issues facing nursing staff working in these environments and their ability to work in partnership was clear. It is likely that this productive partnership will help us as trustees to better understand the complexity of this important area of nursing. We are looking forward to hearing every contributors views and this will be critical in helping to focus the Foundation’s future project grants strategy.

Guest blog by Professor Tony Butterworth, Trustee of the RCN Foundation and Chair of its Benevolent Committee