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PIP complaints against Nurses, Infomation
PIP COMPLAINTS AGAINST NURSES NOT BEING PROPERLY INVESTIGATED
Hardly any complaints by claimants against nurses carrying out PIP assessments have been properly investigated, a watchdog has found.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is the body responsible for looking into complaints against nurses.
Yet out of 83 complaints about PIP assessment nurses in 2017-18, just two led to a full investigation by the NMC. Almost all the rest were dismissed at the earliest possible stage.
It was these figures that led to the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) looking into the matter.
They sampled 28 of the complaints and found a catalogue of failures by the NMC, including:
a refusal to consider all the issues raised by complainants;
relying on the findings made by Atos and Capita to justify closing cases;
failure to consider crucial documentary evidence;
ignoring evidence from complainants;
failure to ask complainants for further evidence.
The PSA came to the conclusion that the handling of 24 out of 28 cases “might undermine confidence” in the NMC.
They also found that the NMC’s failure to properly do its job in two of the cases “might not be sufficient to protect the public” and it was unable to reach a conclusion on public protection in no fewer than nine of the other cases.
The NMC claim that since 2018 they have taken action to improve training and the way that they review cases.
Whether this will result in more PIP assessors facing sanctions for producing utterly misleading reports remains to be seen.
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