Being compassionate and caring should be as important as being intelligent when it comes to the recruitment of staff to care for the elderly, experts say. We at Stepping Out, as a care providers, couldn’t agree more.
The recommendation was made by the, ‘Commission on Improving Dignity in Care for Older People’ In order to improve standards in hospitals and care homes in England.
Patronising language
The measures cover issues such as making dignity a priority, encouraging staff at all levels to challenge bad practice and ensuring patronising language, such as “old dear”, is not used.
The report said language which denigrates older people should be as unacceptable as racist or sexist terms. But it is the issue of staff training which there will be most focus on. There have been suggestions in the past that nurse training has become too academic.
One of the authors of the report, Sir Keith Pearson, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that dignity was “the essence of proper nursing”. He also said: “There are pockets within the NHS and the care home sector where we are seeing excellent care. But you can go to hospitals…and you can see a couple of wards where dignity has broken down.”
Care services minister Paul Burstow said the commission had made some good recommendations and he would be looking to work with the group to improve standards.
Stepping Out pride themselves on only recruiting staff who meet high standards of intelligence, compassion and ability. We support service users with diverse ages and conditions, including young people leaving care and dementia care the elderly. We understand that different service users also require a different approach to their support, and this idea is therefore implemented into staff training exercises.
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