Resources

In This Together (ITT) is an informative magazine, now in its sixth year, for people with conditions that require long-term  management with compression therapy. We are excited to also launch the In This Together website so that we can offer more frequent education, resources and updates in between issues of the magazine.

The Queen’s Nursing Institute has been working for the past two years on a project to encourage more internationally educated nurses to look at community nursing roles in England. The project is supported by NHS England, hence the geographical focus on that country.

Last November I was proud and privileged to be joined by over a thousand nurses, speakers and leaders across the country for the live launch of the new nursing version of our ShinyMind mental health and wellbeing app — available now, free of charge to all NHS nurses, midwives, nursing associates, and healthcare support workers in England.

There is a wealth of evidence to demonstrate that racial inequalities persist in the UK in health, housing, employment, and the justice system. Some of this evidence is presented on the government’s ‘Ethnicity facts and figures’ website, which provides experience and outcome data for people from a variety of backgrounds (www.ethnicity-factsfigures.service.gov.uk/).

The second part in our series on pressure ulcer prevention and management looks at
risk assessment tools or scales which can be used across all clinical settings in primary
and secondary care. It presents the case of Mrs Smith and how the different tools can assess her risk of pressure ulcer development. The scores and risk levels  vary according to the scale used so an explanation of how her risk level was assessed
is given.

Delivery of health care is undergoing unprecedented changes. There are increasing requirements for care which are not matched by a comparable increase in resources. Services are frequently under pressure and at times overwhelmed; wound care is no exception. 

Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a devastating, progressive disease of the skin which is poorly understood and often misdiagnosed (British Dermatological Nursing Group [BDNG], 2022; Moloney et al, 2022). It affects the hair follicles and is characterised by recurring inflammatory nodules, abscesses, draining lesions and tunnels (World Union of Wound Healing Societies [WUWHS], 2016; Moloney et al, 2022)

Chronic wounds are complex by nature and require thorough assessment and carefully planned management. Part of that management often includes preparing the wound and periwound skin for healing, for which debridement is frequently required. While there are several methods of debridement available, often requiring specialist referral, there are some that can be used by generalist nurses and patients and carers  themselves. This article describes one of those methods, mechanical debridement,

Moisture-associated skin damage (MASD) is a term used to describe skin damage that is caused by prolonged exposure to moisture, such as incontinence-associated dermatitis (IAD), intertriginous dermatitis, periwound moisture-associated dermatitis and peristomal moisture-associated dermatitis. MASD is a hugely prevalent issue in hospitals and long-term care facilities (Voegeli, 2019). Studies have shown that skin tone bias exists in the diagnosis and treatment of MASD, the impact of which this paper discusses as well as how to prevent such bias while assessing and diagnosing MASD.

Despite advances in knowledge, understanding, risk factors and treatment, cervical cancer continues to be a cause of death in women around the world. The disease is the fourth most frequent cancer type in women, with an estimated 342,000 deaths in 2020, with the majority of these (approximately 90%) occurring in low and middle-income countries (World Health Organization [WHO], 2022).