Viewpoints Resources

The last 12 months have highlighted the vital contribution that nurses have made in treating and caring for patients across the globe during the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, clinical research has been placed in the spotlight, as breakthroughs in treatments for, and protection against, Covid-19 have only been made possible due to pioneering and innovative clinical research trials. This dual focus on nurses and clinical research creates a real opportunity to highlight the research that nurses are undertaking within their own areas of clinical practice to raise the profile of research within the nursing profession.

The Covid-19 pandemic has put the UK health and care workforce under unprecedented pressure. For nurses, the pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated many issues that predated the pandemic, including inequalities, inadequate working conditions and chronically excessive workloads. The recent King’s Fund report, The Courage of Compassion: Supporting nurses and midwives to deliver highquality care, investigated the key changes to working environments of nursing and midwifery staff needed to enable them to flourish and thrive at work (West et al, 2020). This piece draws out some of the key findings from the research and asks what needs to be done to better support nursing staff working in the community, now and into the future.

In 2020, the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) was funded by NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSE/I) to create a resource to support nurses working in the community who are caring for people in recovery after being infected with Covid-19 — Living with Covid-19 (Long Covid) and Beyond (www.qni.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2020/12/Living-with-Covid- 19-Community-and-Primary-Care- Nursing-Resource.pdf).

As the number of people over the age of 65 years increases, so will the number of people with age-related neurological conditions, such as dementia. It is predicted that by 2040, this figure will rise to over one and a half million people in the UK (Arvanitakis et al, 2019). In clinical practice, before the dementia strategy was launched, it was not uncommon to see a case presented to a ‘fast track’ continuing healthcare funding panel, an urgent funding request for end-of-life care, of a person in the advanced stages of an undiagnosed dementia. This meant that their needs for care and support, as well as those of their family members, had been unrecognised and unmet throughout their condition. Timely diagnosis of dementia can lead to several benefits, including access to a pathway of care and a network of services.

With the mass Covid-19 vaccination roll-out beginning in earnest, JCN talks to Simon Browes about the challenges facing his vaccination programme team.

When the first lockdown hit in 2020, the founders of #mhTV quickly realised that activities to celebrate the Year of the Nurse and Midwife and highlight the amazing work done within nursing were not going to go as planned. They could feel the energy start to slip away and wanted to do something to keep communities of learning and practice connected and tackle the isolation they saw developing through the possibilities of social media. Together, they created the plan for #mhTV, an online programme for conversations on mental health, which was launched in May 2020 with a discussion on kindness in health care to celebrate mental health awareness week.

Providing compassionate care to those who are sick and suffering is considered by many nurses as not only a privilege, but also an incredibly rewarding experience. Unfortunately, this emotionally, physically and intellectually demanding work can overwhelm a nurses’ psychological resilience to tolerate patient distress (Gilbert, 2009), making them more vulnerable to compassion fatigue (CF).

Emollients are products that are applied to the skin to rehydrate and provide comfort. They are key therapeutic products for skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis, but they may also be used to soothe itchy skin (particularly in the elderly). There are a plethora of emollients available on prescription and many more on the market that can be bought over the counter. Most emollients (often also known as moisturisers) contain paraffin in some format, usually either liquid or white soft.

We are living through a global pandemic, which has affected us all. It has changed the way we work and think. In the midst of this awful experience, a deeply sad picture is emerging — that BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) people and communities are being massively hit by Covid-19, and a BAME person is more likely to die from Covid-19 (Public Health England [PHE], 2020).

Have you ever felt confused by the wide range of products available for managing incontinence and toileting problems? How do you help your patients decide which products might suit their needs? And, how can you be sure that you are basing your clinical decisions on the best available research evidence? The Continence Product Advisor (CPA) aims to be the answer to your problems.