With all nurses being required to keep up to date with their continued professional development (CPD) and to revalidate every three years, it is important to think about different learning styles and what works best for you to help you learn effectively. In addition, it is essential to recognise how others learn. Consideration of this will facilitate us to adapt our approach when supervising student nurses and to provide individualised, effective learning environments for them. Recently, I have experienced difficulties recruiting registered nurses and know this is not an isolated issue. To build and support our future workforce, it is vital that we focus time and energy to share our wealth of knowledge and encourage pro-active learners. By adapting teaching to cater for different learning styles, we can assist student nurses to optimise the learning opportunities available to them and support them to feel comfortable in recognising their own development needs and becoming competent nurses. Do take a look at this issue’s ‘community matters’ piece (pp. 10–16), which looks at different learning styles and introduces Microworld, a new animated and accessible way to learn about wound care (www.mymicroworld.online).

And, while on the subject of wound care education, the National Wound Care Strategy Programme (NWCSP) has also identified how crucial this is for all nurses with its recently published National Wound Care Core Capabilities Framework for England, which sets out the skills and knowledge needed to care for a person with a wound in whatever setting (pp. 18–19). The capabilities in this resource come in three tiers to accommodate your level of knowledge and skills and help you develop a person-centre approach to care.

I was especially pleased to read Sarah Hamilton-Fairley’s editorial on the work of the UK Sepsis Trust and their campaign for everyone, both public and healthcare professionals, to be ‘sepsis savvy’ (p. 31), as this is a condition we should all be continually on the look out for. Other editorials also flag up initiatives which might be useful for you and your patients, such as Urology Awareness Month (pp. 24–25), the new Leg Club^® exercise classes with Mr Motivator (p. 26), as well as the Primary Care Respiratory Society’s (PCRS) new pathway to help us think about the environmental impact of respiratory healthcare (pp. 28–29).

Such pieces, together with the clinical articles in this issue, brought home to me yet again the sheer diversity of community nursing and myriad of skill sets needed to work with individuals, families, children, and carers. So, I hope you find the articles helpful — and remember, your students are our future.

Annette Bades, editor-in-chief, JCN