The Nursing and Midwifery (Amendment) Order 2008

[Guest guest]

Changes planned to the NMC go to Parliament to be approved on Monday next week; the draft Order can be downloaded from http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2008/draft/ukdsi_9780110813837_en_1The major change will be to the way the Council is constituted, i.e. it will be smaller and will consist of appointed rather than elected members, and  there will be an equal balance in numbers between lay and professional members.  There will no longer be equal representation across the four parts of the UK, but Council will have to have a regard for practise in the different jurisdictions.  There is a new power, designed for civil emergencies such as a major flu epidemic, to allow the Council to annotate 'suitably experienced' registrants to be able to prescribe specified prescription only medicines as a temporary measure.  The Order refers to 'registrants', not just 'nurses and midwives' as they had planned, which is excellent and down to CPHVA lobbying that this would cause problems for health visitors.  Also, a change from the consultation draft, Council will still need to have 'proper regard' for the different categories of registrant, which was not present in the draft.  Well done Cheryll and team!The lack of trust in NMC came across in the report of the consultation exercise, which went across all health professions (changes to other regulatory bodies are also anticipated).  It is reported in the quite lengthy  'explanatory memo' that accompanies the statute:"Page 18Q14: Do you agree to allowing the NMC to determine who should sit on its practice committees The overall response to the consultation is in support of this provision. However, among the nurse respondents the level of support drops to 36%, with 57% disagreeing.  Many of the respondents disagreeing have raised concerns about the part of the register for Specialist Community and Public Health Nurses, and have suggested that there should be a separate SCPHN committee, as well as a Midwifery Committee. The government has made note of these concerns. However, it considers (as noted above) that regulatory bodies must be independent of Government, and should have greater responsibility for determining how it delivers its statutory functions. These proposals are consistent with this policy Page 19Part 3 of the NMC register A number of respondents, including the Union UNITE raised concerns about the part of the Register for Specialist Community and Public Health Nurses (SCPHNs), and the rules around continuing professional development. Some have suggested that there should be a separate committee for SCPHNs, similar to that provided for Midwives. The Government has noted these concerns. This Order is part of a programme of section 60 Orders that will take forward the amendments put forward by the White Paper. The Government will consider the comments in the context of these further orders.   So, it looks as though there is still time and talking to be done around the statutory regulation that allows the kind of fiasco that is telling us about.  At some point, the government needs to ask why it is that health visitors are asking the government to protect regulation of their profession from the vagaries and ineffectiveness of the NMC best wishes sarahcowley183@...http://myprofile.cos.com/S124021COn