Nursing associates administering drugs and IVs
Watch the recording of this webinar and hear how employers are enabling their qualified nursing associate colleagues to administer drugs and intravenous (IVs).
This is an opportunity to hear employers share their successes of using the role and the second in our series of webinars celebrating how nursing associates have contributed to the NHS workforce supply.
Speakers
- Wendy Fowler, Nursing Education Adviser at the Nursing and Midwifery Council, provided an introduction to medicine management guidance and how qualified nursing associate colleagues can scale up to do this.
- Lyndsay Murden, Lead Nurse at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, discussed how their trust has implemented qualified nursing associates administering drugs and IVs.
- Julie Bruce-Watt and Maria Smith, job share the role of Head of Professional Education at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust shared the work they are doing within their trust to explore the need for nursing associates to do IV administration and how they plan to implement it.
Download a copy of the slides and watch the recording of the webinar below.
Answers to the questions asked as part of the webinar
Wendy's answers
Lyndsay's answers
Julie and Maria's answers
2023 Update
We spoke to Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in July 2023, to understand how they have developed their nursing associate recruitment since 2021, and how they are supporting them to administer IVs.
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust continue to work with their local provider, the University of Gloucestershire, to recruit and train nursing associates (NAs). They have expanded the programme to cohorts of around 35 to 40 candidates twice per year. There is huge demand for places, with the January 2023 cohort receiving 115 applicants. They have since opened the programme externally. For external candidates, enthusiasm and a strong understanding of the NA role is vital. The trust now has NAs in most clinical areas across all their acute sites, apart from oncology and maternity.
NAs continue to move onto the registered nurse degree apprenticeship (RNDA), which they fund internally as the Health Education England (Now NHS England) funding has been paused. They proactively contact all eligible NAs inviting them to express their interest in the RNDA. However, uptake has been lower than expected for several reasons, including candidates independently starting a Nursing BSc, not feeling they have spent enough time in the NA role or conflicting family priorities.
NAs gave feedback about how not being able to administer IVs is preventing them from offering best patient care. So, the trust is developing IV training for NAs at a considered pace, to ensure they have stayed abreast of legal requirements and good practice across the system. A six-week trial starts across four clinical areas in July 2023, with results being fed into the Nursing & Midwifery group with the expectation that in due course this can be expanded across the trust. If administration of IV’s introduced, it will be proposed that all new NAs will do IV training with the nursing and midwifery cohorts. For current members of staff there is a discussion ongoing for an opt-in process, with the hope that the positive impact for apprenticeship cohorts will impact on the wider workforce.
To ensure that the NAs have a good theoretical training the trust looked at the current learning materials offered by University of Gloucestershire which showed that the NA apprentices had a basic grounding in IV administering, which they then supplemented with content from their adult nursing training. The NAs are supported in this journey by being on a preceptorship programme with allied health professionals and nurses, which helps break down barriers and builds relationships within a multidisciplinary team.
