The United Kingdom's largest private hospital healthcare provider plans to roll out its own version of the National Health Service's (NHS) national nursing strategy, the "6 Cs," encouraging nurses to emphasize compassion in all aspects of care, Nursing Times reports.
BMI Healthcare introduced a pilot program for the "I Love the 6Cs" initiative at two of its facilities in Enfield, North London--The King's Oak Hospital and Cavell Hospital--last January, and plans to expand it to its other 64 facilities in the U.K., according to the article. The initiative is modeled on the NHS' 2012 "Compassion in Practice" strategy, which is based around the "6C" values--care, compassion, courage, competence, commitment and communication.
"Coming from an NHS background I always look to it for the latest research and best practice guidelines," said Lorraine Kelly, M.D., director of nursing for both hospitals. "Following on from the publication of the new strategy, I wanted to embed the 6Cs into every aspect of care."
As part of the initiative, the hospitals implemented measures like daily ward visits involving senior managers, peer-reviewed audits, clinical days for motivational and training purposes, and forums involving staff and patients, according to the article.
The initiative also provides a psychiatrist to assist with bereavement counseling or emotional stress issues. This is a concern among U.S. healthcare providers as well, as a recent study from the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine showed that medical students fear becoming desensitized to giving patients death prognoses, FierceHealthcare previously reported.
Additionally, the initiative increased management visibility so that hospital workers are comfortable raising concerns they may have, and streamlined training for incident reporting, according to Kelly. "The 6C initiative has proved to be very popular," she said. "It will empower our nurses, healthcare assistants and all team members."
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