Captain Fearless is a nine-year-old girl who battles Wheeze Monsters with just her inhalers, spacer, bicycle bell and her magic goggles. The Big Bad Wolf has developed asthma and needs children’s help to know which inhaler to take and when, to blow the piggies’ house down.
I’m a nurse that tells stories with a health message. And I’m writing this editorial to encourage you to do the same and to explain why you should.
On 18th November 2019, the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) launched a new initiative — the International Community Nursing Observatory (ICNO). The purpose of the ICNO is to gather and analyse robust data to support the QNI’s policy, communications and campaigning around the
October played host to UK Malnutrition Awareness Week (MAW), and with it a real opportunity to focus on the realities of this often underplayed issue within health and social care.
Wound care costs are rising in the UK. Therefore, improved systems of care to address the clinical and economic burden on our healthcare provision is needed (Guest et al, 2015). It is reported that most chronic wounds contain biofilm. With an increasing understanding and acceptance of the role of biofilm within non-healing wounds, it is now widely recognised that wound treatment plans should incorporate methods to address the potential presence of biofilm (International Wound Infection Institute [IWII], 2016). The longer a wound remains open, the greater the risk of a biofilm developing and infection risk increasing (Percival et al, 2017).
Managing chronic oedema has a significant impact on NHS resources, especially in the primary care setting. As services continue to focus on care closer to home, and the population continues to age, this is only going to create more challenges for primary care teams in terms of resources, managing complex conditions and supporting older people in their own homes. Primary healthcare professionals come across older adults with chronic oedema more frequently than other healthcare professionals, and often have no formal training in the management of the complexities of the condition. Adapting to meet the growing needs of this patient group will require a change to current thinking and practice. This article discusses the management of chronic oedema and how using current evidence relating to inelastic compression devices can aid practitioners to be more efficient and effective in meeting these challenges, i.e. managing patients with chronic oedema and compression therapy, and provides case studies to support the use of these devices in primary care.
Chronic wounds are a growing problem in the UK, impacting on patients quality of life as well as vital healthcare resources. Preventing and managing biofilms is fast becoming a primary objective in wound care treatment. Poloxamer-based surfactants, which target biofilms, are emerging as an effective treatment of chronic wounds. Surfactants have been shown to play an active role in cleansing, desloughing, debridement, prevention, disruption and removal of biofilms. This article explores the role of biofilms in wound development — how to prevent, identify and treat them. It also looks at surfactants, such as poloxamer, which is showing promising results in the management of wound biofilm. One particular poloxamer-based surfactant, known for its anti-biofilm capabilities and contained within the UCS™ debridement cloth, is discussed in this article.
Caring for patients in a community setting continues to offer challenges to nurses and therapists because of the complexities of patients’ intricate and complicated conditions. The demand on district nursing is increasing as more patients are being cared for in their own homes with no additional resources to support nurses. Management of lower leg wounds dominates the workload. Compression bandaging has historically been the treatment of choice to reduce oedema and heal venous leg ulcers. However, there are safe and reliable alternatives to assist community nurses in their practice. Getting compression therapy right first time achieves many positive aspects: it improves patient quality of life, reduces costs, and enhances staff morale and job satisfaction. This article explores some of the challenges nurses face, and offers solutions with the use of the juxta range from medi UK.
The 2014 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines for the assessment and management of psoriasis were updated in 2017. There is little of note in relation to the previous articles in this series, however since the development of more biologics and cheaper forms of biosimilars, the guidelines were amended to reflect these readily available treatments (NICE, 2017a). The seventh and final article in this series provides an overview of systemic non-biological and biologic therapies. It looks at how these treatments target and treat psoriasis, as well as side-effects, contraindications and monitoring recommendations of certain drugs.
Patients at high risk of malnutrition include those who have recently been discharged from hospital, those with chronic diseases, progressive neurological disease, acute illness, frailty, social issues, undergoing rehabilitation or end of life/palliative care (Holdoway et al, 2017). Community nurses are often the first-line of care for these patients and can play an important role in ensuring that they get the best nutritional care. This article discusses some of the areas for consideration when assessing malnutrition risk and outlines a number of new resources designed to assist nursing teams in identifying, monitoring and managing patients at risk of malnutrition.
Throughout 2019, JCN has been continuing to run educational sessions via Facebook Live and is delighted, together with Essity and Mole Productions, to have won the Pharmaceutical Society Digital Award 2019 for healthcare professional education, training and support for these events.
This piece covers a recent Facebook Live event, which looked at antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the implications this has on wound care (coinciding with World Antibiotic Awareness Week). The session was presented by Dawn Stevens, medical education manager, Essity, who was joined by Alison Schofield, tissue viability service lead and clinical nurse specialist. Throughout the event, a poll was taken to capture real-time data as to the audience’s views on AMR — the results of which are presented here.
