PRSB: Nursing Care Needs Standard

Summary

Nurses are at the heart of care across a wide range of services, with people and other professionals often reliant on their expertise. The Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB) worked with the NHS and social care to create a new nursing standard for use across different health and social care settings.

Content

The Nursing Care Needs Standard aims to improve the quality and safety of care in key nurse-led areas, including care planning. It reflects best practice and standardises documentation across different nursing settings, to free nurses and give them more time to care. For example, it standardises information that a nurse in a care home or community setting can access and share in the same way as a mental health or hospital nurse, with a focus on the person’s overall wellbeing.

Patients tell us that nursing care documentation is an important source of information about their health and care needs, their strengths, and the goals they want to achieve. It describes their quality of life and how this can be improved given their health and care circumstances and underlying conditions. This standard will enable more personalised care provision and enable better self-care.

A standard that allows the exchange of information between IT systems will also enable sharing of standardised information between nurses and other health and social care professionals in the persons’ circle of care for continuity and more timely care delivery.