Nursing in Practice May/June 2020 (issue 114) | Page 7

Nurses seek guidance
on advice to refuse
treatment
eak’
The Royal College of Nursing helpline said it had
received more than 100 phone calls and emails
by the start of May, asking for guidance on
refusing to treat patients.
The RCN had said in April nurses without
appropriate personal protective equipment, who
have ‘exhausted all other measures’, can refuse
to treat patients.
‘No nursing staff should be put in the position
where they feel their safety will be at risk if they
provide care for a patient with Covid-19,
whether that’s because they don’t have
adequate PPE, are in a high-risk group, or
for any other reason,’ an RCN spokesperson
said.
They added around 70% of all contact with
the RCN Direct advice centre recently had been
about refusal to treat.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council also
assured in mid-April it would ‘consider context’
if nurses, midwives and nursing associates
refuse to work because of a lack of PPE.
It explained in a statement: ‘[In these
instances,] we would consider the context of the
current pandemic, including the risks that the
individual registrant was exposed to and how
they exercise and recorded their professional
judgment in line with the Code.’
Care
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Online
Read more about
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‘Healthcare workers
with Covid symptoms
should stay off work
even if test is negative’
Nurses and other NHS staff who have tested
negative for Covid-19 should not return to work
if they still have symptoms, NHS England
advised.
The guidance was issued in an NHS England
webinar at the end of April, during which the
organisation said that ‘most’ negative test
results will be accurate, though the positive test
results are thought to be less precise, as
reported by Nursing in Practice’s sister title
Pulse.
During the webinar NHS England’s testing
cell incident director Keziah Halliday said: ‘If
somebody has symptoms of any description
then normal rules about illness apply – if
someone is unwell, they should not be returning
to work, irrespective of what their test result
says.’
But NHS England officials acknowledged
there will be some people who do produce false
negative test results – due to either a poor swab
sample or them only ‘shedding’ the virus in their
lungs, rather than nose and throat, where the
swab is placed.
Despite this, NHS England said the
coronavirus testing system had so far helped
20% more staff return to work.
It came as the Government confirmed it has