nursing - regulating the regulators
WORKERS, DECEMBER 2003 ISSUE
NURSING AND MIDWIFERY unions recently overturned proposals from the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) that every nurse and midwife should take out personal indemnity in case they were personally sued.
The climbdown followed opposition from all the nursing and midwifery unions, who argued that it was up to employers to provide that indemnity.
Now the NMC has made another unpopular proposal. It wants to double the fees that individual nurses pay the NMC when they re-register every three years.
Why such a high increase? Have the costs of maintaining the register and dealing with misconduct cases rocketed? No. The real reason is that the NMC has been gambling on the stock market - with devastating consequences.
Running costs have always been funded from the interest on assets accumulated from years of donations from generations of nurses in order to have an independent statutory body.
But none of the assets were in more secure government bonds or other types of savings. So the historic savings of nurses have been squandered and the next generation have been asked to stump up the running costs.
The increase will not be sufficient to build reserves, so this year's hike in registration fees may be the first of many.
As with the attack on pensions in other areas of the economy this financial scandal has been presented as something beyond the control of mere mortals.
Around a century ago nurses decided they needed to take control of their own professional standards and regulate the profession. Now the task is to regulate the body that has the responsibility for regulating them!