The Nursing and Midwifery Council has been in the headlines this morning with news of its failings. As registrants we have been aware of the issues facing the NMC for some time now, but the news puts the story firmly in the public spotlight. It will be interesting to see how the NMC shapes up as they make changes and interesting to see that already they have withdrawn the NMC professional advice service so as to avoid confusion relating to their role as regulator. From my perspective, it is not good news for the professions to see the NMC in this situation. It is likely that this story will add fuel to the media fire about standards of care with assumptions potentially being made about the state of nursing itself.
I am sure we all want to see nursing's profile raised positively and as educators (in universities and in practice) we work hard with students to provide them with the learning opportunities that will enable them to operate as professional, caring, compassionate and intelligent nurses. As I've said before on my blog, I am really interested in working towards a situation where we are able to select students who have the potential for all these qualities - I am doing a funded project on a related area. I don't want to give the impression that we haven't been selecting the right people - we have in most cases I think. But there is a need for us to hone our decision-making so that we ensure that we continue to drive up standards of care across all the settings in which we operate.
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