Nursing and Midwifery Council progress review

Introduction

In April 2010, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) invited the Professional Standards Authority (previously the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence - CHRE) to undertake a review of the progress that it had made in its fitness to practise work. The NMC asked us to consider its progress since our Special Report to the Minister of State for Health Services on the Nursing and Midwifery Council published in June 2008 (‘our Special Report’) and our Fitness to Practise Audit Report published in February 2010 (‘our Audit Report’). We had reported the results of that audit to the NMC in September 2009.

In both of these reports, we expressed concerns about the standards of casework. Our concerns fell broadly into the following areas:

• Case handling
• Decision making
• Customer care
• Timeliness
• Record keeping
• Overall management of the fitness to practise function.

In response to both reports, the NMC produced action plans to address the identified areas of deficiency. We have already reviewed the NMC’s progress in implementing these plans as part of the performance review 2008/09 and 2009/10. These highlighted that we still had serious concerns about the NMC’s performance particularly in relation to customer care, timeliness and the recording of decisions. At the request of the NMC, this progress review looks more widely and in greater detail at the issues identified in our Special Report and in our Audit Report and assesses the NMC’s efforts to address the areas of concern.