Growing number of unregulated healthcare assistants

The chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, Peter Carter, has expressed his concern that the NHS is employing unregulated and untrained healthcare assistants. Some of these employees, who help with basic tasks such as washing and feeding, have started to perform specialist procedures that they have learnt ‘in-house’. Patients may mistakenly believe they are being treated by qualified nurses.

Carter even claimed that a number of newly qualified nurses were not prepared for work, due to a disproportionate time spent in the classroom, as opposed to gaining practical experience on the wards. "What we have on hospital wards, and particularly in domiciliary care and care homes, is an unregulated, untrained workforce who are picking up so much of this on the job as they go along. Frankly, it's nothing short of a disgrace," he said.

He conceded that qualified nurses were not required for every task, but stressed that procedures involving skill such as wound care, nutrition, hygiene and moving people in bed required formal training.

However, a Department of Health spokesman said: "The Government's view is that national statutory regulation must be proportionate and targeted - and we do not believe that this is the case for healthcare assistants.”

The government intends to establish the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (currently the CHRE) to act as the national accrediting body for a system of assured voluntary registers for groups that are currently not subject to statutory professional regulation.

Visit The Times website to read Peter Carter’s interview in full.

Published: Thursday, 22nd September 2011 by Ellen Haggan