Running faster. Standing still

Recently, I wondered if my and countless other nurses’ entire careers had been in vain. Forty plus years in clinical, education, research and culture change—and for what? What could provoke such angst? Read this new blog post from The King’s Fund (2017a) and you will find out. Chris Ham and Don Berwick may be the Lennon and McCartney of health policy and quality so when they speak, I definitely want to hear what’s being said. Big hospitals, health services and NHS Trusts are fundamentally not working. They have a range of “key challenges” (for normal people, read “serious problems”). The King’s Fund (2017b) has initiated a new research study called Frontline Clinical Care in Acute Hospitals to look into this, but their initial work suggests the following. This is the point where I realized that, like Toto, but in the year 2017, I was not in Kansas anymore either. This is their list of “challenges” that are holding back hospitals, damaging service quality and quite probably harming patients in the process. I am listing these as they do and insisting that you read every one. Do it now!