“We're entering a very exciting age in technology that can support us in our professional practice,” says Susan Osborne CBE, the recently-appointed joint national clinical lead for nurses at NHS Connecting for Health.
“The new technology will enhance nursing practice and research. Nurses and midwives will be able to get evidence more quickly to do nursing better. We’ll also be able to benchmark things more easily, use our time more effectively and ultimately have more time for direct patient care.”
Susan replaces Heather Tierney-Moore who has moved to take up a post in Scotland. She is sharing the clinical lead role with Barbara Stuttle CBE and together, building on the work already set in train by Heather and Barbara, they are working to improve the engagement of nurses and midwives in the work of NHS Connecting for Health, the agency delivering the National Programme for IT (NPfIT).
Susan brings a wealth of experience in acute medicine and nursing management to the role, while Barbara’s background is firmly rooted in community nursing.
Their focus is very much on enabling nurses and midwives to understand the National Programme and what it can do for them and their patients.
Susan, director of nursing services at St Mary’s NHS Trust, London, says: “Barbara and I are determined to preserve the uniqueness of nursing and midwifery care. Technology can’t replace the art of nursing, the human touch.
“Patients will still need washing, feeding, looking after, speaking to, that’s the art of nursing and that will not change. But computerised solutions are being designed that will help nurses and midwives in their roles to deliver better patient care and better patient safety.
“A big dimension of the National Programme is what it will bring to research and development. Nurses audit records for research but often the data is incomplete. With the new NHS Care Records Service, the data will be complete which will help make research easier and enable more nurse-led research, as well as contribute to nurses’ own professional development.
“The National Library for Health will mean nurses can easily access evidence online which will make life so much easier for them, and other health professionals, and they’ll be able to use the latest information and best practice evidence in their own nursing care.
“The Do once and Share (DOAS) programmes are enabling the patient’s journey to be mapped out across the various boundaries of care in a multi-professional way that includes the views of patients. This will help create electronic care pathways that will provide individualised and safe care for all patients up and down the country.”
Engagement with nurses is being built on the foundations established by the National Advisory Groups (NAGs) which include a separate group dedicated to the nursing and midwifery professions.
“We're strengthening this group and want it to be a steering group which can advise us on nurse and midwifery involvement in the National Programme,” says Susan.
A number of nursing programmes are also underway in NHS CFH which provide further opportunities for nurses and midwives to help shape how new technologies will enhance working practices. Projects include the development of a nursing knowledge toolkit to support evidence-based practice and another exploring the benefits of mobile technologies for nurse prescribers.
Essential to enthusing nurses and midwives about how they can take advantage of the new technologies will be the showcasing of best practice where benefits are already being achieved from local IT innovations and from which NHS CFH can learn and potentially extend to the rest of the NHS.
Susan says: “It's evident that there's a lot of best practice out there already and we need to capture that. Our aim is to create a database of projects that we can share with the nursing professions across the NHS and arrange visits to best practice sites so people can have a look and get a real idea of what’s going on and what’s going to be available.
“This a complex programme, it’s growing rapidly and even though it’s a 10-year programme it will take off very quickly in the next five years.”
Susan points to cases around the country of where IT is enabling nurses to adapt and improve the way they work to the benefit of patients. Mobile technology in Portsmouth, for example, is saving time in an acute setting, and community nurses in Huddersfield are able to input information on the spot rather than back at base.
“It’s helping them tremendously,” says Susan. “They can tap all their information into a computer and hand over to a colleague, which provides much more seamless information and so improves continuity of patient care.”
At her own hospital, St Mary’s, wireless technology is being trialled which records a patient’s vital signs via a barcode on the patient’s wristband. “It takes seconds and the information can be added straightaway to the patient’s electronic record. The information is up to date and accurate and is another way of improving patient safety.”
New technologies would also facilitate the move to provide more care in the community, away from hospitals, enabling patients to be more independent and avoid unnecessary hospital stays, as set out in the new White Paper, ‘Our health, our care, our say: a new direction for community services.'
Susan and Barbara are also reaching out to the nursing professions through regular contact with the Department of Health’s chief nursing officer, Christine Beasley, and organisations such as the Nursing and Midwifery Council, Royal College of Midwives and Royal College of Nursing as well as Unison.
They are furthering the two-way communication process to ensure the voice of nursing is heard within NHS CFH. “This will help us identify and resolve any issues quickly,” says Susan.
“Through NHS CFH’s email and directory service for the NHS, every nurse in the country can now register for their own email address. Among the benefits of email are the ability to send and receive communication about progress with the programme.
“We realise that not every nurse switches a computer on first thing in the morning, so we'll also be using conferences, paper-based information, staff bulletins and the media to inform nurses and encourage them to feed back to us.”
Susan already has her ear very much to the ground when it comes to keeping in touch with the front line.
She is plugged into a variety of networks and groups, both within her own hospital community and further afield. Her portfolio at St Mary’s is broad: she also leads on the public and patient involvement agenda, is the trust’s children’s champion, and is heavily involved in staff engagement events.
“It all helps me in the role of being a national clinical lead. I’ve got the input from staff and I can give a reality check to what’s going on within NHS CFH.”
Susan trained as a nurse and then midwife before moving into intensive care nursing. She held a variety of nurse management posts before becoming chief executive of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital NHS Trust and then director of nursing services at Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust. She has been at St Mary’s for six years.
Susan’s priorities for the coming months, with her colleague Barbara, include building engagement with nurses and midwives, encouraging them to work with NHS CFH and highlighting the good work already being done in the NHS.
“And we need to be positive about this too. There’s been a lot of negative Press about the National Programme but it’s an incredible programme and we will have better patient care because of it, and we should remember that.”
