Report into nursing may drive people to private medical cover

More people may be tempted to seek private medical cover following a report into nursing in the NHS.

Called High Impact Actions for Nursing and Midwifery: The Essential Collection, the report reminds nurses that it is part of their jobs to feed frail patients, check if they have bedsores and carry out other basic duties, reports the Daily Mail.

It discovered that 70 per cent of patients with malnutrition in NHS hospitals are never identified by nurses as having the condition, ten per cent suffer bedsores and there are more than 200,000 falls a year on NHS property.

The report, by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, has been sent to hospital staff around the country and advised them many such cases can be avoided with better care.

For example, it says that about 40 per cent of hospital food is wasted, but a quarter of patients are malnourished as they are not properly fed.

"Most patients, carers, healthcare professionals, commissioners, senior managers and chief executives do not realise how common it is in the UK and so it goes unrecognised and untreated," states the report.

A recent survey by Nursing Times revealed that more than a quarter of nurses are prepared to strike if their working conditions deteriorate due to NHS budget-saving measures.

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