Attendees

Agyness Daylan

Student nurse, Anglia Ruskin University

"I won the student nurse of the year award for reporting poor care, but you shouldn't have to win an award for doing something like that."

Antony Sumara

Former Chief Executive Officer, Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

"I joined the NHS as someone who joins the NHS, not a building with walls. The NHS has gone in the wrong direction in terms of focusing on providing excellent patient care for everyone, regardless of whether they are in one hospital or another."

Baroness Emerton

Nurse and Peer in the House of Lords

"The correlation of theory to practice is something we neglect at our peril. If we don't have the correlation between what is being taught and the actual practice, we just will fail."

Brenda Somerfield

Staff nurse, Mere Ward, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital

"We wanted matrons back and we got them back in droves, but they do administration and management, we don't see them on the wards. I think we've lost our figure heads."

Christina Patterson

Journalist, The Independent

"I've had six operations in the last eight years, I've had breast cancer twice, and the area that has let me down spectacularly has been the nursing care. I felt utterly abandoned; I felt I did not have a single ally in the hospital or anyone to stand up for me. I felt more lonely then than I have ever felt in my whole life."

Ciarán Devane

Chief Executive, Macmillan Cancer Support

"The best friend of nursing is economics. Redeploying or getting rid of specialist nurses does not save money, it costs a fortune in readmissions, and we need that proof."

Cristina Odone

Journalist, The Telegraph

"What has changed in the training of nurses in 2011 that is so different from ten to fifteen years ago? I would love to go through a day's training and do cheek-to-jowl with a nurse because I want to understand. Do they feel they can get away with not having compassion?"

Gay Lee

Semi-retired Bank Staff Nurse (palliative care)

"Hospices get very good press because we have a better staff to patient ratio meaning we can actually give better care. It's not rocket science."

Gill Heaton

Director of Patient Services/Chief Nurse, Patient Services Department, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

"Public confidence really is shaky at the moment. We owe it to the public, as well as our organisations, families and friends, to restore that."

Jane Ball

Deputy Director, National Nursing Research Unit, King's College, London

"Good staffing levels don't necessarily mean you get good care, but poor staffing levels pretty much guarantee poor quality care."

Jane Brookes

Ward Sister, Nottingham University

"With the financial constraints, ward sisters are taking a caseload of patients every day. You can't do that, and supervise and monitor as well. It's a huge amount of work and a massive role."

Jean Gray

Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Director, RCN Publishing

"We have a huge number of readers who have invested in their practice, and their ability as nurses to do a good job. We want to provide a platform where we can discuss these very difficult issues in a way that is ground breaking and takes us forward."

Professor Jill Maben

Director, National Nursing Research Unit, Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, King's College London

"Elderly care is really hard, difficult work, and that is why it is stigmatised in nursing. Nobody wants to be an elderly care nurse, it's not valued, essential care is not valued."

Professor June Andrews

Director of the Dementia Services Development Centre, University of Stirling

"Are there too many people working in nursing who think the sorts of things you are going to have to do for old people are just not interesting enough to be nursing? Is that the real issue?"

Katherine Murphy

Chief Executive, The Patients Association

"Sadly, the concerns that come to us from our helpline are around the essentials of care. We're talking about communication, dignity, and compassion."

Margaret Haywood

Freelance healthcare trainer and famous nurse whistleblower

"I got struck off for blowing the whistle, for breaching patient confidentiality. I know confidentiality is important, but it's a secondary issue if we're talking about abuse and neglect."

Matthew Trainer

Head of Public Affairs, Care Quality Commission

"Culture and leadership are really key. What we saw wasn't just about individual nursing practice, it was about the support that nurses had on the wards to actually deliver the care they wanted to."

Quote is in regard to the CQC inspection of 100 hospitals.

Martine Price

Head of Patient Experience, Musgrove Park Hospital

"Patient shadowing can get people to really think about their practice and how they can change it. It's extremely powerful at board level and ward level."

Professor Melanie Jasper

Executive Member of Council of Deans of Health and National Representative for Wales

"Students spend fifty per cent of their time in the practice environment. If they are experiencing poor care, what are they learning? If you learn poor care, and imitate what's going on, it all gets repeated."

Nicola Ranger

Deputy Chief Nurse, Head of Nursing for Medicine Board, University College London Hospital

"Let's not write a script or a strategy, let's genuinely bring it back to recruiting the right ward sister and make it a high calibre post. Give them the empowerment to actually challenge poor performance."

Dr Phil Hammond

Vice President, The Patients Association

"Medicine, nursing, and all health and social care is founded on humanity. It's like a thread that weaves through everything, and we need to remind people of that."

Sir Richard Thompson

President, Royal College of Physicians

"I think the ward sister should be a really important person, paid as much as a consultant so she doesn't have to go off into management."

Rosemary Cook CBE

Director, The Queen's Nursing Institute

"Leadership and culture is really important. We have seen a regular decline in the number of people who are qualified to work in the community, and that's something we must address. We need a much richer, stronger, workforce."

Roswyn Hakesley-Brown CBE

Chair, The Patients Association

"I spent six months in the field comparing two paediatric wards. One ward sister was very task orientated - the patients actually got in the way as far as she was concerned - while the other was very patient orientated. Individual needs were very present on that ward, the ward sister was a very positive role model for the ward team and she got much better outcomes."

Ruth Chauhan

Clinical specialist and elderly care expert

"I think the time has now come to reassess the amount of paperwork nurses have to complete, and take a whole new look at it."

Sam Foster

Deputy Chief Nurse, Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust

"I'm not in denial about the state of the issue around nursing, but I don't think it stops at nursing. The culture extends beyond that."

Steven Hams

Deputy Chief Nurse and Head of Quality, East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust

"Senior nurses have a responsibility to be visible and provide good clinical leadership. We need to get our uniforms back on and get out onto the wards."

Sue Moody

Chair, District Nursing Forum, RCN

"I get fed up hearing about seamless care. There isn't seamless care - it's an anomaly, or a nice word that goes into every PCT or acute document. If one of my complex patients goes into hospital, I need the nurse that cares for that patient to talk to me so I can give them oodles of information to help them get that patient back home quickly. But it's never the same person twice, and that's the difficulty."

Sir Stephen Moss

Chairman, Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

"As a profession we've got to stop denying that a problem exists. We can't argue against the evidence. I'd rather we show our maturity by moving from denial and putting some of that real energy into making things better."

Steven Jamieson

Head of Nursing Department, Royal College of Nursing

"Ninety-five per cent of us who come into nursing come in to care for people and do a good job. We have to bottom out what it is that changes people from being caring nurses to uncaring nurses."

Dr Win Tadd

Reader, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University

"Not only are nurses reluctant to raise concerns, they're going off duty late, they're in tears at the end of their shift because they cannot give the care they know they ought to give."

Wilma MacPherson

Nurse Subject Matter Expert, NHS London

"Values have changed fundamentally in the health service - you have to limbo dance with the numbers to get through the magic hoop. This detracts from what we're about, which is helping well people to stay well, and helping sick people to get better."

Also in attendance

• Theresa Shaw, chief executive of The Foundation of Nursing Studies.
• Jane Farrell, Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer, Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust
• Sharon Atkinson, Director of External Affairs, Nursing & Midwifery Council
• Almie Mngadi, Ward Manager, West Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust
• Wendy Spencer, Nursing Advisor within the Nursing and Midwifery, Policy and Standards directorate, Nursing & Midwifery Council
• Nursing representatives from the Department of Health were invited but did not come.