Welcome to the third issue of the Journal of General Practice Nursing. This summer has been incredibly busy, and has featured lots of great news. In this issue, we’ll be sharing information about our exciting new workshop with Diabetes UK, a heart-warming graduation ceremony, and changes to inhaler device colours.
The coming months will see us holding the first study days for our new modules, and introducing our brand new Virtual Learning Environment, which we’re sure you’ll love!
We hope that you, too, are excited about this issue’s update and it gives you cause to join us in working towards our vision: Everyone living with a Long Term Condition receives high quality care and is empowered to manage their condition.
Practice matters: In each issue of the Journal of General Practice Nursing we investigate a hot topic currently affecting our readers. Here, Binkie Mais looks at patient participation groups (PPGs) and asks the question...Are clinicians taking patient involvement seriously enough?
Last year 80,000 people died prematurely because they smoked. Today it will kill 200 people (Health and Social Care Information Centre [HSCIC], 2015). Despite progress in driving down smoking rates, it is still the leading cause of preventable death. For every person who dies from smoking, 20 more are living with life-limiting illnesses (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Recent Action on Smoking and Health (ASH, 2014) research estimates that smokers need the care of friends, relatives or social services on average nine years earlier than a non-smoker.
A childhood immunisation programme like no other seen before.
Pauline MacDonald gives her views on the groundbreaking national programme to vaccinate more children against flu.
If you don’t protect your vaccines, they won’t protect your patients.
Vaccines save lives — but the cost procured by the Government is over £300 million a year. Last calendar year, vaccines wasted through incidents in primary care had a value at list price of £3.7 million. This figure represents vaccines that were disposed as a result of both avoidable and non-avoidable incidents, including failure to store them properly. This does not include any flu vaccine wastage (other than vaccines from the children’s programme), or any other centrally procured vaccine which Public Health England (PHE) supply and do not collect data on (e.g. rabies vaccine) (personal communication with Chris Lucas, vaccine supply team, PHE).
Stephen Gaduzo explains how the PCRS-UK can help you deliver high value patient-centred care and support professional development.
Nurse revalidation is now likely to start in less than six months’ time and it has never been more important for general practice nurses (GPNs) to ensure that their skills and knowledge are up to date.
Leg ulcers present a common clinical problem for general practice nurses (GPNs). The need for assessment and maintenance can take up a great deal of time and issues such as pain, exudate volume and poorly applied compression bandaging have a serious effect on patients’ quality of life. The ‘gold standard’ treatment for venous leg ulcers has long been multilayer compression therapy (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence [NICE], 2012). However, as with any other technique, expertise can vary, meaning that clinicians sometimes do not apply the necessary sub-bandage pressures. Patients can also find multilayer compression ‘bulky’ and uncomfortable, and thus may not concord with treatment (Wicks, 2015).
Diabetes care takes up around 10% of the total NHS budget (Diabetes UK, 2015), and as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) makes up around 90% of all diabetes, it could be argued that prescribing for this largely preventable condition is the main culprit responsible for these costs. However, most of the money spent on treating diabetes is for managing its complications (Kerr, 2011). The key to preventing these complications is through effective prescribing aimed at reducing them. Possibly as a result of more clinicians thinking this way, prescribing costs for diabetes have been rising steadily (Health and Social Care Information Centre [HSCIC], 2014). So, how can clinicians be sure that newer and more expensive therapies are both clinically and financially effective? And crucially, how do clinicians ensure that patients are kept at the centre of all consultations and are fully involved in the decision-making process?
