Older patients let down by shortage of nurses, says Royal College of Nursing Many nurses said comforting and talking to patients either was not done or was done inadequately during their last shift because there were too few staff. Photograph: Montgomery Martin / Alamy There are not enough nurses on hospital wards to ensure elderly people get helped to eat, walk again and have someone to talk to, the union representing 400,000 nurses has claimed. Older patients are being let down by the NHS because lack of staff means nurses often do not have the time to look after them properly, warned the profession's leader, who is calling for guaranteed minimum numbers on wards. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), the nurses union, said research it had conducted showed that each nurse looks after about nine elderly patients, whereas the right ratio to provide good, safe care is one to seven, and ideally it should be one nurse for between five and seven older people. An RCN survey of 1,700 nurses, including 240 who work on wards caring for the elderly, revealed that 78% of them said comforting and talking to patients either was not done or was done inadequately during their last shift because there were too few staff. Similarly, 59% said patients did not receive enough help with their mobility, 34% were not available to assist patients with eating and drinking and 33% could not do as much as possible to help patients with their toileting needs. Patients on older people's wards are being let down by systemic failings in our hospitals. Despite working tirelessly to provide patients with high quality care, nurses in these settings have repeatedly told us that they are unable to do this because of pressures caused by short-staffing." said Dr Peter Carter, the RCN's general secretary. Elderly wards have fewer nurses than other wards, the RCN survey showed. Adult general wards have an average of 6.7 patients per nurse while on children's wards it is one nurse to every 4.2 patients. Safe staffing levels and mandatory patient-to-staff ratios are fundamental safeguards to provide quality patient care. Now is the time for the government to provide a guarantee that older people will get safe care," Carter added. But Jo Webber of the NHS Confederation, which represents hospitals, said that while lack of staff may be an issue on some wards "we should avoid leaping straight to the simplistic solution that we need more nurses everywhere"" It was also necessary to "trigger a major cultural shift in the way staff approach their work so they see the person, not the task. NHS organisations need to be much stronger in requiring staff to challenge practices they believe are not in the best interests of the people in their care," she added. Dean Royles, director of NHS Employers, also rejected the RCN's plea. Mandatory staffing levels can not guarantee safe care. We do not believe that imposing a crude system of staffing ratios is the right way to tackle poor care," he said. Paul Burstow, the care services minister, said that the ratio of nurses to beds was improving and that strong leadership by nurses on wards was known to be vital in ensuring patients received good care.