Target culture ‘knocks care out of nursing’ says expert as he warns workers are unable to stand up to abuse

• Professor Keith Brown criticises target-driven workplace culture
• He is currently overhauling training received by Britain’s care professionals
• Said that staff find it easier to ‘turn a blind’ to abuse in care homes
  

By John Stevens

PUBLISHED: 23:48, 1 January 2013 | UPDATED: 08:14, 2 January 201

A generation of nurses and carers have had their compassion ‘knocked out of them’ by a blindly target-driven workplace culture, an expert has warned.

An obsession with targets and jargon is stifling their innate desire to care for patients and care home residents, Professor Keith Brown said.

The professor, who is in the process of overhauling the training received by Britain’s care professionals, said many workers felt unable to stand up to abuse if they saw others mistreating patients.

He pointed to the example of the abuse scandal at the Winterbourne View private hospital in Bristol, which he said showed how those not perpetrating abuse had found it easier to ‘turn a blind eye’.

He said: ‘The vacuum has been in those situations, people lack a willingness to stand up and be counted and to do the right thing at the right time.

‘That might be because they are afraid, or because of the culture, that if you whistle-blow you will be in trouble, or it might be that they just don’t want the hassle.’

Professor Brown, who is director of the National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work, added: ‘I think that most people who come into this line of work – whether it is nursing, social care, or in care homes –  want to care but somehow it gets knocked out of them.

‘They end up in systems and structures that make them feel anxious or nervous.

‘It might be the pressure of work or the culture of the organisation just setting inappropriate targets where you can measure the measurable but not the qualities of what it feels like.’

Professor Brown told the Daily Telegraph there had been a growth in ‘daft’ targets within the care system.

He said: ‘A lot of the leadership development through the whole sector is based on a business school type ideology, because we haven’t got a clear leadership development framework based on social work or social care principles.

‘Instead of being taught how to care for people, they are being taught how to  meet targets.’

He added: ‘Of course you are going to get the odd rogue but the million people involved in social care came in to it for good reasons, we need to switch that back on again.

‘We need to stop it being knocked out of them or crushed so that they don’t exercise it any more.

‘Experience is crushing it but maybe training should give then resilience to stop them being crushed.’