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District nursing

District nursing using neighbourhood care principles in practice: reflecting on our experience

The Buurtzorg organisation uses a two-pronged approach to improve patient and staff experience. The first principle is a patient-centred model of care, described as the onion model with the patient at...

The challenges homeless people face when accessing end-of-life care: what district nurses need to know

Homelessness is often thought of as ‘rough sleeping’, yet a wider definition is generally used that HCPs should be aware of. Crisis (2022a) defines homelessness as:.

Sublingual apomorphine therapy as an alternative to complex continuous infusion pumps in advanced Parkinson's disease treatment: a district nurse-led intervention

The usual route for apomorphine delivery has been subcutaneous, and it is licensed for treatment via administration of injection or infusion in the UK (Table 2). The indication for subcutaneous...

Dietitians: roles in the community and contribution to patient care

It can be easy to overlook the ‘pandemic’ of malnutrition in the UK. With the abundance of shops, restaurants and fast-food outlets in the country, and with the media focusing often on obesity-the...

The role of the district nurse in managing blocked urinary catheters

When dealing with catheter-related complications, it should first be ascertained if the catheter is indeed required (Thompson and Browne, 2019). Nazarko (2019) argues that 30-50% of people with...

Achieving congruence in ‘being and doing’ community nursing

The author's doctoral work revealed two aspects of the DN role: the clinical expertise and the leadership/management aspects, impacting the ability to be person-centred (Dickson et al, 2018; 2020)....

New workforce standards for district nursing launched

‘Workloads are far exceeding the capacity of services. From the qualitative data we have collected over the last 7 years, there appears to have been a shift towards district nursing teams acting as...

Creating sustained and positive changes to patient safety: reducing insulin administration errors in a district nursing service

Effective change is best implemented by ensuring that those affected by the proposed changes have a voice as part of the whole process. A sense of shared purpose is thus created, which focuses on why...

Dressings and dignity in community nursing

Community nursing is not appreciated outside the professional group (Drew, 2011); therefore, this study adopted an ethnographic methodology, because it offered potential for community nursing culture...

Referral criteria: perceptions and experiences of district nursing students in Northern Ireland

Participant demographics are summarised in Table 1. Data analysis yielded four emergent themes: referral criteria: insight and inconsistency, task versus patient-centred care, role transparency and...

Personal protective equipment training team: a community nursing initiative

Due to the concerns raised in care homes regarding appropriate PPE attainment, the author was authorised to lead a team to provide direct education and support to all residential and nursing care...

Promoting health and wellbeing across community nursing teams: role of the specialist practitioner district nurse

Public Health England (PHE) highlighted that mental health and wellbeing promotion should be advocated by all healthcare professionals. One-in-six adults will experience some form of mental health...

Challenges and complexities of discharge planning from a district nursing perspective

The Queen's Nursing Institute (QNI) (2013) reported that previous acute care only delivered in the hospital is now being offered by DNs. In concordance with this, NHS England (2015) acknowledged the...

Impact of stress on nurses working in the district nursing service

The PICOT tool was used to aid in formation of the research question (Aveyard, 2019). Systematic searches were conducted in six databases: British Nursing Index (BNI), Cumulative Index of Nursing and...

District nurses' experiences with a caseload profiling tool: a service evaluation

Within the Scottish context, the method to measure, monitor and resource DN caseloads is based on the principles of workload analysis, and workload is measured on the basis of subjective...

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