Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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409. To ask the Minister for Health to address the serious concerns outlined in a recent Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation report on community nursing entitled Missed Care-Community Nursing in Ireland (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6531/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Report to which the Deputy refers identifies elements of 'missed care' in practice, it also acknowledges that several positive findings some of which are related to activities that are legislatively mandated for and clinical activities such as injections and dressings. The report captured a snapshot of practice and does identify that there are many areas of practice that have not been included in the report that are not deemed as 'missed care'. This includes many areas of the practice that have been innovative and population health needs focussed. The report also identified the reduced practice in health promotion activities because of the increases in work mentioned above. In order to address this issue my Department has tendered for a literature review into community models of integrated care to assist in the development of a policy paper to examine models of practice in the community to deliver integrated models of care.

The INMO report is of relevance as a starting point in this area of practice. Further research would be required to more robustly report on instances of missed care, to definitively examine the relationship between missed care and its relationship to staffing adequacy. The current work of the Taskforce on Staffing and Skill Mix for Nursing focused on acute, general and specialist medical and surgical wards has included in its report a recommendation for ongoing reporting, monitoring and escalation of missed care as one of the indicators of staffing adequacy. This recommendation, along with the others, will be tested as part of a pilot throughout 2016. It would be anticipated that the development of future Frameworks in other clinical settings, will have included within it, missed care reporting, and therefore this research report, will add to the evidence on the approach to missed care reporting specific to community nursing and midwifery practice.