Kate Hollern – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Hollern on 2016-03-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what guidance NHS England provides on training district nurses in inserting nasogastric feeding tubes.

Ben Gummer

NHS England has not provided any specific guidance on training district nurses on the insertion of nasogastric tubes.

The “Framework for commissioning community nursing”, published by NHS England, states that providers of community nursing should “ensure staff achieve the competencies to deliver the service”. This is to provide a quality service for the population. The Framework is available at:

www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Framework-for-commissioning-community-nursing.pdf

NHS England would expect providers to take account of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines Nutrition support in adults: Oral nutrition support, enteral tube feeding and parenteral nutrition, published in February 2006 and available at:

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg32

These provide guidance for patients that require nutrition support, including patients receiving home enteral (tube) feeding. The guidelines recommends that all healthcare professionals who are directly involved in patient care should receive education and training, relevant to their post, on the importance of providing adequate nutrition.

NICE has published a Medtech innovation briefings advice in January 2016, on the CORTRAK 2 Enteral Access System for placing enteral feeding tubes, available at:

https://www.nice.org.uk/advice/mib48

The advice aims to improve the accuracy of enteral feeding tube placement to help lower the risk of complications associated with the procedure.