Safeguarding adults
Martine Tune, Professional Adviser, Nursing, introduces a new 12-month project that aims to promote and support best practice in safeguarding by making available useful resources, links, articles and videos, all to be posted here on our website.
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The NMC is beginning some work on the role of nurses and midwives in safeguarding adults and I'm the lead officer for the project.
Although many nurses and midwives work effectively to uphold the standards of the profession, there is evidence that some nurses and midwives are failing people in their care through abuse, harm and neglect. We want to help nurses and midwives recognise the full range of circumstances and situations in which abuse occurs and develop appropriate responses to it. We want to help them challenge rather than tolerate unacceptable attitudes and unacceptable care.
How will we do this? By promoting safeguarding best practice and providing, here via our website, a hub for the wealth of valuable resources already ‘out there'.
To understand better your needs in this area, we recently put a short safeguarding survey on the website. We had over 1300 responses, so thank you to everyone who took part. We will be evaluating the findings in detail in the next few weeks, before posting the results here.
What's already clear is that many of you have concerns around safeguarding: about what the term means in nursing and midwifery practice; about how well informed (or otherwise) your colleagues are; and about how best to eliminate the poor practice threatening your ability to safeguard patients.
A definition
Safeguarding used to be associated exclusively with the care of children and adult groups deemed vulnerable. However, in England, the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act (2006) [PDF] recognises that any adult receiving any form of healthcare is vulnerable.
Safeguarding is a range of activity aimed at upholding an adult's fundamental right to be safe. It is of particular importance for people who, because of their situation or circumstances, are unable to keep themselves safe (From No secrets: Guidance on developing multi-agency policies and procedures to protect vulnerable adults from abuse (Department of Health and Home Office 2000).
One of the NMC's objectives is “to safeguard the public's health and wellbeing”. Safeguarding, then, is every UK nurse and midwife's business. For me, first and foremost, it's about embracing the shared values of the professions as laid out in The code: Standards of conduct, performance and ethics (2008).
As well as being central to the code, safeguarding has close connections with all of the NMC's standards, guidance and advice. Its links with our work on the care of older people, on dignity and compassion, and on raising and escalating concerns (guidance due this autumn) are obvious. It's integral to the Mental Capacity Act, and to the concept of human rights.
In other words, safeguarding is best practice. More specifically, it's about your best practice. The responsibility you have to maintain high standards of practice in support of the patients in your care.
Across the UK good work is being done on safeguarding, but progress is more advanced in some areas than in others. As I say, part of this project will be about identifying and sharing this learning and these resources. The NMC is in a good position to share these things.
Progress in Kent
Resources such as this presentation from Tricia Bennett, Safeguarding Lead for East Kent Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. I attended Tricia's workshop for trust employees recently, and we spoke afterwards.
“Safeguarding is a pro-active, ongoing commitment by our trust to look after our patients at all levels. It's about holistic care, and the responsibilities that all staff share for protecting patients.” Tricia went on to describe how she has been involved in developing staff training, systems and procedures, and multi-agency networks to develop best practice.
Tricia's workshop was thought-provoking. Protection from abuse – of all kinds, overt and indirect – featured heavily, and she peppered her presentation with a range of case studies, drawn from her own experience. They brought to life what failure to safeguard patients can mean.
Everyone's responsibility
Poor practice, in all its forms, constitutes a failure to safeguard. It might be:
- the neglect of an individual's personal care needs
- poor record keeping, such as inadequate discharge summary notes
- failure to take action when you suspect a person has been abused
- maladministration of consent forms by staff who don't fully understand the meaning of consent post-Mental Capacity Act
- neglecting to follow up a woman who fails to attend her antenatal appointment
That list could go on and on. It's your job, and ours here at the NMC, to make sure it doesn't. Let's work together to promote the understanding of safeguarding, and the high standards of practice that flow from it.
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Created date :
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20/07/2010
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Modified date :
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20/07/2010