Six Cs

As I was driving into work today I was listening to the Today programme and our Chief Nurse Jane Cummings talking about the new  nursing strategy which focuses on the 6 Cs :

care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment.

I have never really liked catchy headlines and feel sometimes we spend too much time thinking them up rather than doing anything about them but these words struck a chord.

I found myself thinking that these should be true for everyone working in the NHS not just nurses, but doctors, managers, porters, receptionists everyone. It needs to be the culture of the NHS not just for nursing.

Sadly there are many many stories where care got lost in “management”. We all have our own stories. I do. My Mum, My daughter. Contacts with the NHS at time of acute personal stress and vulnerability when nothing terribly bad happened but that vital human acknowledgement of the needs concerns and values of person inside the medical problem are ignored, brushed aside. Working in the NHS myself hearing these stories makes me feel embarrassed and apologetic. And there are worse of course. WE await the Francis Report which we know will be as hard to read and the previous reports have been.

Those 6 Cs seem so obvious don’t they? The blindingly obvious. Why do we need to spell them out?  

To many outside the NHS it may seem strange to have “courage” in there but to those of us who work within it…we understand. It is the courage to stand for what is right, to always keep the patient at the centre of everything we do even when the pressure is on. . It is wrong though to focus on individual alone. Yes everyone who works in health care has a responsibility to do their best but It is about growing systems that support people to work to do just that.  And pressures come from many different places.

 Organisational cultures can sap personal strength make staff feel powerless and even bullied  Front line  staff working with patients every day need to work in supportive environments. In fact the environments need to have those same 6Cs as their guiding principles. We all work best when we are treated with care, and compassion, by a competent management team who communicate well and lead with courage and commitment.

I hope things can change. There mustn’t be  about a tick box approach to implementation of change. We have lived through “named nurses” who were never there, lip service to individual care plans. This needs to be deep fundamental cultural change through the NHS from top to bottom and side to side… where everyone believes this is more important than short term financial issues and process targets.What could be more important than this?