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Does a nurse have to be registered?
pamela1962
Member Posts: 32 Connected
Good afternoon everyone
I recently had a assessment for PIP and the nurse told me she was an A&E nurse. It turns out that she is not registered, as I have checked with the nurses council .
Do they have to be registered to carry out assessments?
Thank you
I recently had a assessment for PIP and the nurse told me she was an A&E nurse. It turns out that she is not registered, as I have checked with the nurses council .
Do they have to be registered to carry out assessments?
Thank you
This discussion has been closed.
Replies
It may be that when she said that she 'was' an A&E nurse that is correct - she used to be one but isn't now!
But you are probably right that they don't have to be.
Thank you for sharing this with us. I believe so, but I may be wrong. Some of our members may be able to help you with this.
HCPs must "be fully registered with the relevant licensing body (doctors must have a licence to practise)"
Put the DWP in the dock with the Tattooist Brendan McCarthy I say.
You say that but we don't know that for sure. The one thing I do know for sure is, he HCP report I got had no name on it, I think one of the reasons for that is, the HCP is not registered with the GMC or nurses council, she is a physiotherapist. Now what qualifications does a physio have to assess medical conditions? none whatsoever!
So don't tell me the DWP uses "fully qualified" medical staff, if anything they use the least medically qualified staff and in my case a physio with no medical qualifications at all.
Then along comes someone to assess you who believes your GP is simply repeating what you told your GP, the assessor ignores the mountain of medical letters you sent in, or does not see them as they are often removed from the ESA50, and you are left scratching your head wondering why you got 0 points.
I doubt it. He doesn't see me except at the surgery maybe 3/4 times a year so would have no idea about how my life is impacted UNLESS I tell him.
Than that becomes 3rd hand information - my patient says...…...not worth the paper it is written on as it is not based on something that he has seen evidence of it happening first hand.
Finally having a diagnosis means nothing to anybody - in fact you can get a PIP award and have no diagnosis.
I didn't put anything from my GP when I started my claim..... for the very reason the @poppy123456 has just said which is he would be telling you what i'd just told him.
More useful - in my case and I suggest in most cases- was a report from a specialist Occupational Health consultant. he made no diagnosis - he accepted the word of other clinicians - but he did explain exactly why I could no longer carry out certain functions and, consequently, why I could not continue in employment.
Interestingly his report has very little mention of "He told me this" because it is based almost exclusively on his own examination and opinion.....
Lets put it another way, don't be silly, GP's have real jobs, they are not lackys for the DWP.
Correct, now do I qualify?
@ilovecats I can't find any trace of you on any of the professional registers.
Is it the usual spelling of "lovecats" or have you changed it slightly??
Or are you not registered at all?
The descriptors were chosen to represent what the majority of disabled people have problems with. They were as a result of a whole host of recognised agencies and charities that specifically work with the disabled. So you are right and everybody else is wrong!
I will also take you up on one more point. Pulmonary Fibrosis is not a deadly disease. I have had it along with Asthma for a few years now. No one including my GP has said that I am going to die from it. Yes it is something you have to live with but taking the right medication you should live for a normal life span.
Yes you get out of breath, but you are not going to keel over any time soon. In fact I didn't even mention either of those on my PIP2 forms as they are not important in the grand scheme of things.
Assessors know it all, they can tell if you are fit for work by looking at descriptors. It takes up to 16 years to become a GP, and 3 to 4 years to become a nurse. Is it any wonder why people like me think the whole system is corrupt, nurses who think they know more than GP's, you couldn't make it up.
Well said Freckles, I couldn't agree more. Now you see what we are up against, nurses who have the cheek to belittle GP's who are eminently more qualified that they will ever be. Actually I will leave that last comment out, it might not fit in with the descriptors.
No-one is belittling GPs.
They are highly trained
They are not trained in how conditions which they diagnose (because they are highly trained!) impact on a patients day to day life
The evidence that they submit a lot of the time (but not all the time) is of limited value because it relates to a diagnosis, not a patient's consequent loss of functionality (which, for PIP purposes, is the important bit)
GP's have an opinion and that is why they issue a sick note, but they are not in a position to test that opinion against the descriptors that make up ESA and PIP.
It's like saying that you have cancer without identifying the particular type of cancer it is.
PF by itself is not a life threatening condition - the type of condition you have within that general diagnosis may well be life limiting (rare) to just a mild irritation that you can live with.
I was presented with 14 reasons in my assessment reports as to why I did not gain one point for any impact that had a mental issue behind it. There can be no denying that a claimant may well have a diagnosed mental health problem. What the assessor has to gauge is how it should manifest itself when considering the descriptors.
In my case I also have a lifelong DWP disability award (IIDB) - lost 40% of my normal mental health capabilities due to an acquired physical brain injury and PTSD, this was assessed by a doctor appointed by the DWP as far back as 1995 to start with and lately reviewed in 2011. However the issues that plague me due to this disability do not fit neatly into any of the PIP descriptors.
As has been said many times you may well have some very serious disabilities but if they do not fit perfectly with enough descriptors you will not get an award. On the other hand someone with mild disabilities that do impact on their life AND fit enough descriptors they will get an award.
All the assessor has to do is (a) are the issues and impact you have written about reasonable given the circumstances/diagnosis (b) if so how do those issues and impact fit with any descriptors.
I checked on three family members who are on various medical registers...the result - I can find one easily, the other two are a bit more difficult (don't know exactly why ..might be something to do with Capital letters or something?)
Might be worth considering if you can't find someone on the register - I would have assumed that my daughter wasn't registered...if i didn't know for a fact that she is......
I am totally amazed that you think GP's do not know how conditions impact a patients life when half their daily workload involves home visits to patients who can't get to the surgery.
Sham assessments have no place in a civilised society, read the UN report, all these assessment do is cause hardship and despair for the poorest people in society.
OMG! what a thing to say because it does not fit in with your narrative. My GP spends more than half her time out of the surgery on home visits, I know that for a fact because I have often had to wait for an appointment. She would always apologise for being late due to her rounds. It was not unusual for her to work very late in the evening, regularly past 6.30pm and on one occasion I was seen at 7.15pm.
Also perhaps you could explain to me why my assessor felt it necessary to alter a full A4 sheet i.e. the whole lot of my Muscular Skeletal Examination results from what I actually did and she made up results for the one's I wasn't asked to do? This gave her an argument to then say I didn't need help with most of the personal care activities because and I quote straight from my report "The MSO showed she had slight reduction in power bilaterally to her legs and a slight reduction in spinal flexion. All upper limb movements and power were normal." An example being that I just touched the top of my thighs wwith difficulty, her result stated I was able to touch my knees.
You can tell us till you're blue in the face how the job of an assessor should be done and even how you did it but to those of us who've been subjected to a report that is very different from what was said and done in the assessment room you can't expect to be responded to with "how nice" or "yes you're right" type of comments.
Latest post at http://secretassessor.co.uk "Don't believe the Hype", contains all the medical training material provided in my time. Just explained to a chap who enquired about Crohn's, that's when the assessor is on Wikipedia 10 mins before your assessment.
You hit the nail on the head. Medical letters are the only evidence a claimant can present, the fact that people like ilovecats disregards GP letters and passes them off as patients opinions is disgraceful, but it gives a glimpse of what goes on in the mind of an assessor who is paid to parrot the party line, which is to ignore medical conditions and base the results on how well you think a claimant can move.
When being assessed, you are not patients, you are claimants and must be assessed accordingly.
My GP surgery knows absolutely nothing (other than what I may have told them in passing) about how I manage to live my life. No idea how far I can walk reliably, how I manage in the bath, how I manage whilst on the toilet, how I manage to dress and undress, how I get into and out of bed, how I struggle daily with face to face communication.
To be truthful all of the above have nothing to do with a GP. Yes I had involvement with Social Services and their OT's but that was 7 years ago. That and other relevant evidence was sent in but the DWP decided against using it as it was clearly out of date.
People should take responsibility for their failings before blaming everybody and anybody else including the assessors.
Precisely, the government took no notice of it whatsoever and continue with their punitive regime, attacking the most vulnerable members of our society.
I see you are still persisting with the line that GP's know nothing about how conditions affect you, but people with far less medical experience know more than GP's.
It's a bit like saying a private outranks a general, good luck with persuading people to believe that line.
You can believe what you want to but no matter what argument you put up it will hold no water. PIP assessors are there to assess what points they can or cannot award you. You may not like the system but you must remember that the vast majority of claimants receive the correct award first time round - so somebody must be doing a good job.
I’m not an assessor but I started posting on here in the vain hope that I might be able to help others to not make the same mistakes as I did when making a claim.
If you take nothing else from this topic you must try to understand that It’s important to make a clear distinction between diagnosis and functionality. If you don’t understand this then your claim will go nowhere as that's what PIP is about. Unfortunately, nearly every other post on here starts with a long list of ailments followed by “why did I only score x points”
The fact that a GP/Consultant has diagnosed a particular condition will rarely be disputed - certainly not by @ilovecats or any other assessor but it has little impact on functionality. My daughter has epilepsy. Can she claim PIP? No - because her condition has next to no impact on her carrying out daily tasks. She's incredibly lucky.
Finally I don't believe that people are fully understanding what ilovecats is saying about the evidence from GPs. - some are fairly obviously being a little bit mischievous in feigning ignorance.
We now know that a GPs opinion about a persons functionality, based on an examination is very valuable (and very rare). We also know that a report that says "he tells me that he can't stand up for long periods" etc is just about worthless. I have dozens of pages of medical reports written by a top neurologist - valuable as a diagnosis but worthless as regards functionality (mainly because he never mentions it)
In order to try and make this into a positive post I wonder if there is any sense in suggesting the following?
Why not approach your GP and ask if he/she if they could examine you and give an opinion about how your condition affects you in specific area. Something along the lines of, “I examined MR X and found that his arthritis in the left knee prevents him bending it more that xx degrees. This means that he will be able to bend sufficiently to put his socks on”
My GP is almost certain to say that he’s too busy. And you’ll have to pay I imagine. But worth considering surely?
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Another suggestion if you have that sort of cash hanging around is to have a private assessment with an OT for a full report on what you can and cannot do. You must be careful as to not put words in their mouth.
https://www.livingmadeeasy.org.uk/scenario.php?csid=89
https://rcotss-ip.org.uk/
The average cost for an assessment is in the region of £600 and any further reports/work is charged out at about £90 an hour.
Ouch!
Speaking for myself, I could not ask my GP such a question, it is not her job to determine to what degree a condition might affect me. My GP will treat my condition and if that doesn't work, she will refer me to a specialist who will confirm the diagnosis. From that point on, I am treated by a specialist. Such evidence is not good enough for the DWP because they do not care how poor your health is or even if you are at death's door, they are only interested in knowing how you move your arms and legs,
I think it would be far better if the DWP used ALL the medical evidence presented to them, rather than using a sham examination process to deny illness exists.
How about some constructive advice ? Have you got anything positive to help people through making a claim?
Unbelievable! and what you have just posted is what exactly...... positive? It wouldn't surprise me if people like you were paid to go on forums like this to silence people like me.
We should all hail this wonderful system that causes nothing but suffering and hardship.
I recorded my assessment and it was invaluable. The assessment wasn't done well and i used the recording to force Capita to correct all of the errors. Without the recording I doubt that my claim would have been successful...
Neither do I fully understand your comment about "swearing black is white" but if you are referring to my race I would be grateful if you would withdraw that part of your insult. I'm proud of my heritage.
Have you never heard that phrase before! it has nothing to do with race. Anyway I copied this from google for you, that's a search engine by the way. Just to put your mind at ease, we can't actually see each other on here, but if you want people to see what you look like, you can post a picture of yourself.... if you like.
swear black is white
swear (that) black is white
Aw c'mon, can't you see your question has been lost. This happens sometimes when dealing with the DWP.