The use of WhatsApp in district nursing practice

The author is the team leader who triages referrals and is responsible for ensuring the safety and wellbeing of staff on shift. It often became frustrating when staff did not answer calls, if mobile...

Supportive periodontal therapy for maintaining dentition in adults treated for periodontitis

The review described in this article (Manresa et al, 2018) aimed to determine the effects of supportive periodontal therapy (SPT) in the maintenance of the dentition of adults treated for...

Caring as a source of death anxiety in palliative care

Ideally, society at large needs to shift its view of death and accept it as natural part of life, with children becoming involved with dying and the funeral rituals of close relations. This shift...

Autonomy in district and community nursing

To do something autonomously is to do it unbidden by others. Autonomy has shades of independence and self-governance, of not being interfered with in the making of a decision and even, in some cases,...

Raising the bar in asthma management

England and Wales are facing the highest death rate from asthma seen in the last decade, with 12 700 people dying from asthma in the last 10 years—an increase of 33%, according to an Asthma UK...

Reset for health creation

‘Demographic changes and the burgeoning population with long-term conditions necessitate that the neglect of health creation is addressed urgently to avert the inevitable consequences for both the...

What the SPQDN taught me

The Sheffield Caseload Classification Tool: testing its inter-rater reliability

The purpose of the present study was to test the inter-rater reliability of the SCCT to ensure that the tool was robust..

Giving clinicians and patients the remote control

Fundamentally, the single biggest priority in the NHS is patient safety. Six years ago, in the wake of the Francis Report (Francis, 2013) and the Berwick Review (Berwick, 2013), a range of policies...

Enacting evidence-based practice: pathways for community nurses

This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews (n=9) and focus groups (n=2), involving 17 community nurses. The indicative topic guide was piloted and developed from feedback gathered using...

Employers' duty of care to district nursing team members: health and safety concerns with lone domiciliary visits

‘A huge number of staff are working in, frankly, unacceptable and unsafe conditions. I believe that must impact particularly on nurses, because of their role in the front line, being professionally...

Medication-related pruritis in older adults with long-term conditions

Certain medication for long-term conditions causes this distressing side effect, for example, ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers taken for hypertension, angiotensin-II receptor antagonists, and...