Nursing staff taking the lead.

Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust employs over 30 matrons with the responsibility of improving professional practices and patient care.

One of the matrons is leading a project making changes to wards to free up more time for nurses to care directly for patients. The opening of the new Queen Alexandra Hospital offers a great opportunity to put this 'Releasing Time to Care' programme into practice.
 'Releasing Time to Care' looks at empowering staff to make changes on wards, particularly improving environments and layout, to free up more time for nursing staff to spend with each patient.
 Early trials have seen a reduction in the number of patient falls and pressure ulcers and resulted in patients spending less time in hospital; improving patient care and patient experience.

What do matrons do?

• Lead by example, showing other nurses the high standards of care NHS patients can expect.
• Make sure patients get quality care, by taking responsibility for driving up standards and leading work to improve professional practice.
• Ensure patients' nutritional needs are met, by ensuring patients get the right meals, at the right time, and that they are able to eat them.
• Prevent healthcare associated infection, by ensuring control measures and properly applied by all staff.
• Improve the ward for patients, by overseeing spending of wards budgets.
• Empowering nurses, by enabling them to undertake a wider range of clinical responsibilities to speed up patient care.
• Make sure patients are treated with respect, by making sure their privacy and dignity are protected.
• Resolve problems for patients and relatives by acting quickly to deal with problems when they happen and working closely with the Patient Advice and Liaison Service.
• Ensuring staffing is appropriate to patient need by working with ward sisters and charge nurses.