The urgent need to make NHS mental health care safer

‘Mental health problems represent the largest single cause of disability in the UK. The cost to the economy is estimated at £105 billion a year—roughly the cost of the entire NHS.’ .

Patient advocacy: a skill students can learn and practise before qualification

Rethinking clinical placements

Developing a digital wound care course for student nurses

Identifying the need for the wound care course defines a clear rationale for the proposed development in terms of time and use of resources. For the development team, consisting of a clinical nurse...

T.I.M.E to improve patient outcomes: optimising wound care through a clinical decision support tool

Although classically described as a continuous timeline of discrete events, wound healing is actually a highly dynamic process with wounds progressing, stagnating and regressing through three...

Negative pressure wound therapy for skin graft closure in complex pilonidal disease

A 40-year-old man was referred by a district hospital for a consultation regarding plastic surgery at the authors' department for multiple fistulas at the sacrococcygeal region. The patient was a...

Opportunities and surprises

Properties and use of a honey dressing and gel in wound management

Revamil wound dressing (polyacetate sheet dressing impregnated with pure honey) and Revamil gel, a hydrophilic wound gel consisting of 100% honey that is marketed as enzyme rich with a low pH of 3.5,...

A nursing metaparadigm perspective of diabetic foot ulcer care

A metaparadigm can be described as ‘a set of concepts and propositions that sets forth the phenomena with which a discipline is concerned’ (Miller et al, 2003). Historically, three domains of the...

Evidence-based research is key to challenging and improving practice

Evidence-based practice (EBP) incorporates placing research evidence, clinical expertise and patient needs into the context of modern-day healthcare practice and it remains a cornerstone on which we...

Pressure ulcer prevention in hospitals: a successful nurse-led clinical quality improvement intervention

Between 2010 and 2014 there was a focus on prevention of adverse events and patient safety at hospitals in Denmark. The Region of Southern Denmark—one of 5 regional health authorities—and OUH had...

Well-funded prevention is indeed better than cure