An inspiring new campaign — We Are Undefeatable — has just been launched to support the one in four (15 million) people in England who live with one or more long-term health conditions (Department of Health [DH], 2012).
In 2017, UK expenditure on health care reached £197.2 billion pounds (Office for National Statistics [ONS], 2018). Many publicly recognised health challenges have been associated with estimated costs, for example, direct cost of diabetes treatment are £9.8 billion, while dementia care consumes £4.3 billion, and healthcare associated infections £1 billion annually (National Health Service, 2012; Alzheimer’s Society, 2014; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence [NICE], 2017).
Exudate is produced as part of the inflammatory phase of wound healing and assists the healing process by providing essential nutrients to the wound, promoting moist wound healing and naturally debriding the wound bed. However, exudate can also be detrimental to the healing process and managing excessive exudate in clinical practice is often challenging. The key to managing exudate is accurate assessment and identifying the underlying cause of excessive production. Accurate diagnosis and assessment will assist general practice nurses (GPNs) in selecting appropriate treatment options and strategies that can help in managing exudate efficiently. This article discusses what exudate is and its function in wound healing. It also explores the causes of excessive exudate production and what GPNs can do to manage high volumes to prevent skin damage and improve patient quality of life.
When undertaking patient assessment, including assessment of the respiratory system, it is important that general practice nurses (GPNs) use all their senses. Expensive equipment and multiple investigations are useful when assessing a patient’s respiratory function, but the initial assessment can often be undertaken using the senses — hearing, sight and touch — as well as basic equipment, such as a stethoscope. This article, the first part of a two-part series on respiratory assessment, looks at history-taking. The information given should be used as an adjunct to any face-toface teaching of respiratory assessment skills and may provide the novice nurse with an idea of what to expect when undertaking an advanced clinical skills course. The second article in this two-part series will focus on the physical aspects of respiratory assessment.
Influenza is an important vaccine preventable infection, which is an annual global health threat. Huge advances have been made in our knowledge of the influenza virus and as a consequence the ability to produce more effective influenza vaccines. In the last few years, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has considered newly licensed influenza vaccines for use in the UK population. The UK now has a differentiated influenza immunisation programme with different vaccines being advised for different risk groups. Currently, the various vaccines are differentiated by age, but in the future may also be differentiated by risk group. General practice nurses (GPNs) need to understand how these various influenza vaccines differ, what are their advantages in terms of the increased protection they offer to patients, and, in turn, be able to explain these advantages to patients.
Clinicians working within primary care services tend to do so in isolation and without direct access to investigative resources. This places emphasis on the clinician’s abilities to perform a focused clinical examination and employ sound clinical decision-making processes to reach a definitive diagnosis. This article looks at the case history of a patient presenting to a GP out-of-hours service with an acute, undifferentiated illness, and explores the decisionmaking processes used by the author, a trainee advanced nurse practitioner at the time, to support a working diagnosis and justify a clinically suitable management plan.
Medio-legal issues apply to each and every patient interaction that we have as registered nurses and healthcare professionals. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Code of Conduct (2018) is concise on how we should keep up to date, document carefully, and work within our scope of practice — just to name a few pointers. Here, Kirsty Armstrong, advanced nurse practitioner in out-of-hours and urgent care, provides a crossword containing some further items that nurses need to consider when working with patients, with explanation provided with the answers. The list does not encompass everything that nurses need to be mindful of, but hopefully is a starting point for further reading, for which a list of resources is provided at the end of the article. This crossword has a focus on immunisation practice.
Welcome to this latest issue of GPN. We are delighted to share the latest news in the world of Education for Health, and present opportunities for you to get involved with us as a student or partner. We have dedicated this issue to just four stories dealing with the future, the past, and stories from recent education and training, and as always, we hope that you
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