New Nursing Education Standards Address The Care Of People With Dementia

Main Category: Alzheimer's / Dementia
Also Included In: Nursing / Midwifery
Article Date: 19 Nov 2009 - 1:00 PST

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The NMC has been addressing many of the issues raised in the Alzheimer's society report Counting the Cost: caring for people with dementia on hospital wards as part of our review of pre-registration nursing education.

Our review, which recently highlighted the need for future nurses to be educated to degree level, will help to prepare them for the challenges of caring for people with dementia.

NMC Chief Executive and Registrar, Dickon Weir-Hughes said:

"We recently met with the Alzheimer's Society ahead of the publication of today's report. We were very pleased to see that the major issues in the report in relation to care of people with dementia have been addressed within our new draft standards.

"The report is very timely since we are currently in the second phase of our review of pre-registration nursing education which has focused on developing new standards of competence for nursing students and new requirements for education programmes.

"We know that people are living longer and therefore are at greater risk of developing conditions such as Alzheimer's which is normally associated with older people. The review is looking at the knowledge and skills that future nurses will require in order to meet the challenges of caring for people with more complicated health needs. For example, a learning disability nurse will have some of the skills of a mental health nurse.

"The draft competencies and requirements have been developed through strong and effective partnerships between the NMC and a wide range of stakeholders including the RCN and a large number of service user and carer groups. We have listened carefully to what they have told us about what they expect from nurses and what is needed in future pre-registration nursing programmes to ensure that nurses are able to meet both the basic and specific needs of users and carers.

"We also agreed a plan for continuing to work with the Alzheimer's Society to identify how they and the people they represent can best be involved in our consultation on the draft standards next year. We are continuing to engage with service user and carer organisations in a similar way to ensure that other such vulnerable groups are able to give us feedback on our new competencies and requirements.

"Our consultation on the new pre-registration nursing education standards will be open to the public between January and April 2010 and we invite anyone with an interest in the review to participate.

"The report also included a number of case studies of examples of poor care. We would encourage anyone who has experienced or witnessed instances of poor care to speak to the person in charge or report their concerns to the NMC."

Further information about the NMC's review of pre-registration nursing education and for information about how to report poor care is available on our website.

Review of pre-registration nursing education: Phase 1
Review of pre-registration nursing education: Phase 2
Care and respect every time: new guidance for the care of older people

Source
The Nursing & Midwifery Council