Press Release
Achieving Dignity In Care Means Ensuring Quality Of Care
18 June 2008
Help the Aged has today responded to news of plans for nursing quality to be measured for compassion of care. The charity has highlighted the link between quality of care provision and the dignity of patients.
Charlotte Potter, Senior Policy Officer at Help the Aged, said:
"Help the Aged has long campaigned on the need to measure quality of care in relation to dignity. Patients, in particular older people, cite dignity as a primary area of concern for them when accessing healthcare.
"The NHS needs to be held to account when it puts the dignity of its users at risk. Incidents of older people left in pain, ignored, or distressed by a lack of privacy in hospitals emerge with such frequency they cannot be dismissed as isolated cases.
"Help the Aged therefore welcomes the Secretary of State's recognition of the need to measure quality of nursing care and not just numbers of people treated and discharged.
"However nurses are only one piece of the puzzle. Ensuring the dignity of patients will depend on many other factors including the behaviour of all staff, from doctors to porters, and the ward environment. If the Government is serious about tackling the issue of dignity in care, they must take all these factors into account."
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