Compassion is a constant

Compassion is a powerful word that describes an intense feeling of commiseration and a desire to help those struck by misfortune. Most people know intuitively how and when to offer compassion to relieve another person’s suffering. In health care, compassion is a constant; it cannot be rationed because emergency nurses have limited time or resources to manage increasing demands.

The Compassion in Practice strategy, which was launched by England’s chief nursing officer Jane Cummings in 2012, is being revised. Since May this year, the main areas for discussion about the strategy have been: sustaining the workforce, improving safety and staffing, increasing productivity and transforming services, as well as population health, personalisation, and innovation and improvement.

A new draft strategy is to be presented at the chief nurse’s annual two-day summit, entitled Leading Change and Creating Value, to be held in Birmingham. It is likely to benefit from attempts to accommodate views from across community-based urgent and emergency services.

Nurses who are close to patients on a daily basis are especially well placed to voice their opinions on how services can be adjusted because they have a realistic and pragmatic sense of what does and does not work.

Tamsin Newton Snow’s analysis in this month’s issue of Emergency Nurse brings together the thoughts of a range of such professionals, all of whom are committed to improving services.

It is important that urgent care practitioners working across acute and community services express their concerns and aspirations for future nursing delivery. So please, take time to consider your practice concerns and contribute to this debate to ensure that the emergency nursing voice is clear and strong.

Take part in the debate by emailing england.ourvision@nhs.net or nick.lipley@rcni.com, or by posting your comments on the RCNi Hub at rcni.com/hub