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Shape of caring review
The Shape of Caring review (Raising the Bar) published in March 2015, aims to ensure that throughout their careers nurses and care assistants receive consistent high quality education and training which supports high quality care over the next 15 years.
The Shape of Caring review sets out 34 recommendations under eight themes:
- Enhancing the voice of the patient and the public
- Valuing the care assistant role
- Widening access for care assistants who wish to enter nursing
- Developing a flexible model
- Assuring a high-quality learning environment for pre-registration nurses
- Assuring high quality, ongoing learning for registered nurses
- Assuring sustainable research and innovation
- Assuring high-quality funding and commissioning.
The review was led by an independent Chair, Lord Willis of Knaresborough and overseen by a Sponsoring Board, co-chaired by Professor Lisa Bayliss-Pratt, Director of Nursing, HEE and Jackie Smith, CEO, Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). The Chair was assisted by, and received expert advice from, the HEE Nursing and Midwifery Advisory Group and HEE Patient’s Advisory Forum.
HEE has since responded to the Shape of Caring review. The report can now be downloaded from related documents below.
Response to the Shape of Caring review
HEE has published its response to Raising the Bar - Shape of Caring: A Review of the Future Education and Training of Registered Nurses and Care Assistants. The foreword is written by Professor Lisa Bayliss-Pratt, Director of Nursing and Deputy Director of Education and Quality for HEE and Jackie Smith, Chief Executive and Registrar Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). this can be found in related documents below.
Care matters newsletter
Care Matters aims to keep stakeholders updated on progress to deliver Shape of Caring review recommendations and features comment from our nursing policy team. Download the latest issue from this page.
Raising the Bar – illustrating the vision
Shape of Caring encourages us all to think differently about how we recruit, train and develop our nursing and care workforce, across health and social care in England. To help us visualise these issues, we have developed some short animations found below to showcase our direction of travel set out in our response to Raising the Bar - Shape of Caring.
People who use our services are at the heart of all our work, it is important they are involved with curriculum design, delivery and assessment. We need the voice of people who use our services to be valued and linked into each part of the learner’s journey; from recruitment to assessment of competence in the care environment. Gareth Davies, a member of HEE’s Patient Advisory Forum, worked with us to develop the script and provided the voice for this animation. View the video.
Valuing the role of the care assistant and providing a career framework has been a consistent message received during our journey with Shape of Caring. To illustrate the journey from being recruited, to undertaking the Care Certificate and further opportunities available through apprenticeships, Kazembe Yusufu from the Renal Dialysis Unit at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust narrated the story and demonstrated the aspirations of many care assistants including progression into registered nurse training. View the video.
Clinical academic careers are an important part of both personal and nursing practice development – nurses do not necessarily need to leave the clinical environment they work in to pursue one. Jack Whitehead from The Heart of England NHS Foundation NHS Trust helped us to illustrate the support and encouragement available in the workplace for nurses to undertake academic studies alongside their clinical work and how his dream has become a reality. View the video.
Despite the myths to the contrary, newly qualified nurses can start their registered nursing career in primary or community care and do not need to have any experience of working in a hospital before they do.
Shape of Caring supports the policy direction and the fact that patients tell us that they prefer to have their health outcomes met at or near to where they live and care is therefore increasingly being delivered in community and primary care settings. Sarah O'Donnell from the Manor Medical Practice in Bradford illustrates the challenges faced by nurses when considering options for their first destination as a newly qualified nurse and demonstrates that career pathways are available in both of these settings. View the video.