QNI calls on district nurses to complete national survey | Nursing Times

The Queen’s Nursing Institute has issued a call to district nurses to help it benchmark the current challenges facing those working in community settings.

In 2009 the QNI published a major report on the future of district nursing, titled 2020 Vision, which formed the basis of its current strategy and campaigns.

Five years on, the QNI said it wanted to “revisit the report to assess the current state of district nursing”.

“In 2009 we invited all nurses working in district nursing teams to complete a survey,” the institute said last week.

“We are repeating this survey along with some additional questions and would again like to invite all members of the nursing team who visit patients in their homes to complete it – whether

or not you hold an SPQ in district nursing.” 

The QNI said it was “crucial” that the views of district nurses were heard in order to inform its “future priorities and the policy-influencing work”.

Most recently, in June, the institute released a report on the alarming fall in the number of district nurses being trained.

It found 21% of district nursing courses in England did not run a cohort in 2012-13 and of those that did at least 67% had 10 students or less – and 13% had only five students or less.

The institute warned the numbers being trained were “nowhere near the ‘replacement level’ required to maintain the district nursing workforce”.