Unqualified carers ‘doing nurses’ jobs’ including taking blood samples, reviving patients and supervising entire wards

By
Sophie Borland

Last updated at 12:27 AM on 11th January 2012

Hospital workers without medical qualifications are being told to help resuscitate patients, take blood samples and – in some cases – are being left in charge of entire wards.

Healthcare assistants are also being asked to give anti-psychotic drugs to the elderly and perform tests to check for heart attacks, a poll has found.

There are now concerns among nurses that patients are coming to harm at the hands of HCAs who are being asked to carry out complicated tasks for which they have not been properly trained.

Responsibility: Healthcare assistants are taking on complicated tasks for which they have not been properly trained because of a lack of nurses

Responsibility: Healthcare assistants are taking on complicated tasks for which they have not been properly trained because of a lack of nurses. (Stock image)

A poll of 2,554 nurses for Nursing Standard magazine found many work in hospitals where these staff routinely step in for qualified nurses, who have done at least three years of medical training.

Some reported that HCAs were being asked to help resuscitate newborn babies or other patients.

Many said they were routinely taking blood, administering insulin and carrying out ECGs, which show whether patients are having heart attacks.

One said HCAs on her ward were asked to give dementia patients anti-psychotic medication – known as a ‘chemical cosh’ because of its harmful side-effects – even though they had no idea what the drugs did.

And another said nurses were so busy doing paperwork that HCAs were being taught how to do many practical tasks instead.

Healthcare assistants are meant to help nurses by carrying out tasks such as feeding patients, helping them to the toilet and answering call bells

Healthcare assistants are meant to help nurses by carrying out tasks such as feeding patients, helping them to the toilet and answering call bells

There are around 300,000 HCAs working in hospitals and care  homes in the NHS.

They are meant to assist nurses by carrying out basic tasks such as feeding patients,  helping them to the toilet and answering call bells.

But understaffed NHS trusts are increasingly asking the workers to carry out tasks normally only performed by nurses or junior doctors.

And unlike nurses or doctors, there is no official register for HCAs, meaning they cannot be struck off for harming a patient or other wrong-doings.

This means if they are sacked from one hospital or care home, there is nothing to stop them getting a job in another.

Howard Catton,of the Royal College of Nursing, said: ‘These findings make it clear that if we want to maximise patient safety, we need to push forward with mandatory regulation of support workers.

‘There is also a clear need for education and training of support staff to ensure we do not separate tasks from the knowledge required for clinical assessment and decision making.

‘Registered nurses need to carry out clinical tasks to maintain their clinical competence.

‘If their clinical skills deteriorate, they will no longer be able to…supervise support workers safely in carrying out clinical tasks.’

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two above don’t know what there talking about, hca’s have the same training as nurses for taking bloods, ECG.s etc. it is the nurses responsibility to ensure any tasks that are delegated to hca’s are within their capabilities and competancies. The press are again bashing the nhs, which seems to be the trend of the month.

There are no standard in the NHS. In my local GP practice, HCA’s carry out blood tests, even though there is a ‘sister’ employed. These uqualified HCA’s draw blood without wearing surgical gloves, and when asked why, they explain that it is hard to find a vein when wearing gloves. As far as scrubbing up goes, forget it, they just make a show of using wipes like flies cleaning their legs!

But surely the NHS is the envy of the rest of the modern world and they all look up to it……don’t they?

This has been going on for years I could write a book the things I have witnessed over the years.

This comes as no surprise to me.. this happened on the ward i was on !! nurses chatting in huddles whilst the healthcare workers did their jobs for them.. i could go on and on about my stay in hospital ELEVEN years ago, but prefer to forget !!!!

If it wasn’t for the ‘Hospital workers without medical qualifications’ many hospitals would have to close.
Many of these workers seem to have the quality’s sadly lacking in many nurses, like caring, helping patients to move, providing water etc.
The nurses station in many hospitals has become the ‘garden fence’ of gossip and should be removed.

Ah the nurses trying to prove their worth. This has been a trend for the last 20 years and many of these HCA’s were trained to do these tasks considered mostly menial by the very RN’s who are now complaining. this new ‘concern’ is an attempt to head off the recent bad press nurses have received.

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