Patients being ‘put at risk’ by untrained healthcare assistants

An investigation by the BBC has found that some healthcare assistants are working without proper supervision or training, and thereby putting patients ‘at risk’.

Junior staff are being asked to insert IV drips and take blood samples, and hospital support workers say that they have been left on wards alone with up to 40 patients.

The Royal College of Nursing has blamed a “woeful lack” of trained nurses.

The BBC has interviewed 32 healthcare assistants from hospitals across the West Midlands, East Midlands, London, the East and South West of England.

According to the Department of Health, there are around 110,000 healthcare assistants in England, whose recommended duties range from feeding, bed making, washing and dressing patients, to looking after wounds and taking blood tests, depending on their seniority.

Catherine Foot, health charity The King’s Fund’s assistant director of policy, said that “it is not always clear” what skills and training support workers have due to the wide range of roles.

She added that the new care certificate, which will be introduced in April, would “provide minimum standards of training and skills”, meaning that in future, support workers will be more unlikely to be instructed to do things that they have not received training for.

She said “It takes a lot of strength, maturity, resilience and confidence for support workers to say ‘no, I don’t know how to do that’”.

A spokesman from the Department of Health has said it is “never acceptable for unqualified staff to be asked to undertake any task for which they are not trained or supervised.

“Staff who raise concerns about patient safety help protect patients, and they have the government’s strong support.”

He went on to say “The Care Certificate, which comes into effect in April 2015, will be a means of providing clear evidence to employers, patients and service users that the healthcare assistant or social care worker in front of them has been trained to a specific set of standards.”

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Posted by Karen Motley, Paralegal, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (karenmotley@chadlaw.co.uk ), Medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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