Peter Carter (nurse)

Peter Carter in September 2009

Peter Carter, OBE, MCIPD CCMI (Companion of the Chartered Institute of Management) is the general secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal College of Nursing, the world's largest professional union of nurses and health care support workers. The RCN has a membership of 400,000 nurses, midwives, health visitors, nursing students, cadets and health care support workers.

CNWL

Before assuming the post of RCN general secretary and Chief Executive in January 2007, Carter spent almost twelve years as the Chief Executive of the Central and North West London Mental Health NHS Trust, one of the largest mental health trusts in the UK with an operating budget of over £180 million and a national reputation.

CNWL was awarded three stars by the Healthcare Commission, and, in Carter's final year, was awarded a rating of "excellent" for quality of care and "good" for use of resources. The Trust received several awards related to standards of patient care and innovative staff initiatives. In January 2007, the CNWL was voted in a poll by readers of the Nursing Times as the best mental health trust to work for in the entire United Kingdom. However, no Trust was immune to the serious shortage of frontline clinical posts and CNWL was no exception.

Background

Peter Carter commenced his career by training as a psychiatric nurse at Hill End Hospital in St Albans for six years. He moved on to work at the then regional adolescent unit at Hill End Hospital where he undertook further training in family therapy and crisis intervention. Carter is also a general nurse and trained at St Albans City Hospital and the Institute of Urology in London. In addition he has held a number of clinical and managerial posts in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and London.

Education

He is a graduate and a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. He has a Masters Degree in Business Administration and a PhD, both from the University of Birmingham.

Other

Peter Carter also has medico-legal experience in a wide range of health-related litigation issues, specialising in bio-mechanical injuries, homicides and suicides. He was co-author of an inquiry report into the homicide of a young woman in east London. His PhD thesis was entitled Understanding reasons why nurses abuse patients in their care. He has lectured extensively on this issue and on leadership issues in general.

In July 2013, Carter was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Edge Hill University.^[1]

Order of the British Empire

Carter was awarded the OBE for services to the National Health Service (NHS) in the 2006 New Year's Honours list.

Royal College of Nursing

Carter succeeded Beverly Malone as General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing in January 2007. Since becoming the general secretary and Chief Executive of the RCN, Peter Carter has restructured his top team and re-focused the organisation to address outstanding issues and the ongoing reforms of the NHS. Under his leadership, the RCN has established itself as a leading voice on nursing and health in the UK political arena. In 2013, Peter Carter and the RCN were criticised in the Francis report, which examined failures in care at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust. The campaign group, Cure the NHS, led calls for Carter's resignation which were rebuffed.^[2]

He was said by the Health Service Journal to be the 28th most powerful person in the English NHS in December 2013.^[3]

Notable moments

Carter has led the RCN through a number of important milestones, taking it from an organisation that represented 390,000 members in January 2007, to around 420,000 in January 2012. His internal re-structures and drive to focus on a corporate approach to human relations and employee engagement led to the RCN joining the list of organisations in the Sunday Times Top 100 employers.^[4] Entering at 51, having never appeared in the list before, marked a significant victory for the RCN. In terms of other influential lists, Carter also led the RCN back into the HSJ Top 100 most influential people in health, having been absent in the years prior to his arrival. In 2011, Carter was listed at 19,http://www.hsj.co.uk/home/hsj-100/ having moved up from 23 in 2010. In recent times, Carter has presided over an organisation that has been heavily criticised in the Francis report into the failure of care standards at Staffordshire hospital and has faced down calls for his resignation.^[5]

In 2010 Peter assumed the position of Honorary Colonel to 203 (Welsh) Field Hospital in Cardiff. The Hospital has deployed on Operations as a formed unit in 2008 to Afghanistan, additionally many of its personnel have seen active service on Operations in the Balkans and Iraq. Dr Carter is a keen supporter of Military Nursing and has hosted Tri-service events at Cavendish House.

In 2013, Peter Carter and the RCN were heavily criticised in the Stafford Hospital scandal inquiry report into the failure of care at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. Carter had previously used a newspaper interview to praise standards at the hospital and there were calls for his resignation from the campaign group Cure the NHS and from several prominent media outlets. Carter refused to resign and also ignored calls in the Stafford Hospital scandal inquiry report for the RCN to be split into two component organisations covering Trade Union activity and professional regulation.^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9]

References

External links

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