The Future of Nursing.

As part of my incredibly interesting work experience at Health Service Journal, and I’m not being sarcastic, I attended ‘The Future of Nursing’ conference today.

It was actually fairly interesting, with a lot of big-wig types from the industry making presentations about the challenge of nursing, the opportunities it offers and the need to develop educational resources for example.

And then there was David Cameron…

In his address to the conference, Mr. Cameron asserted that the Conservatives would be making the NHS a political priority.

Nurses are the NHS he said, and if the government can get nursing right, then they will get the NHS right.

Healthcare in Britain is constantly changing and nurses play a huge part in every aspect of that change

Cameron said he believed that past governments have tended to approach the NHS like a machine, thinking that it can be reorganized without consideration for the people.

The conservatives will pledge “no more pointless reorganizations. No more restructuring at the expense of the people who work in the system.”

Currently, there is disillusionment with target culture which is endemic within the NHS, he said. Healthcare workers should focus on patients and not on government targets

Despite this, Mr. Cameron also said that he wants the NHS to exceed European averages in survival and recovery rates. Surely this is a political target, even though he said that he wants to take the politics out of the day-to-day running of the NHS?

Cameron also had some interesting things to say about employment in the nursing field, which can be seen at BBC online.

So to conclude, today was fairly interesting. David Cameron is a good public speaker and really engaged my attention. He was also wearing a nice tie. It was green.