Andrea Sutcliffe: Nursing urgently needs to rediscover its humanity | David Brindle

The new head of the Nursing and Midwifery Council on how to regain trust and the need to call out poor care

Would you be happy for your mum to use this service? That’s the basic test that Andrea Sutcliffe has instilled in England’s social care inspection system, which she has led since 2013. Now Sutcliffe is moving on to the world of nursing – and she thinks the same kind of yardstick must apply.

Sutcliffe takes over in January as chief executive of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the regulatory body for 700,000 members of the two professions across the UK. It has been a troubled time for the regulator: its previous chief executive, Jackie Smith, quit in May just ahead of the publication of an excoriating report by the Professional Standards Authority on the NMC’s handling of midwifery failures in the Morecambe Bay scandal, where up to 19 deaths at Furness general hospital’s maternity unit were linked to practice errors. The PSA found the NMC had “undoubtedly put at risk” the lives of mothers and babies by ignoring urgent warnings from Cumbria police over the actions of some midwives.

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2C2RR88