Effective hand hygiene—wash your hands and reduce the risk

The role of the healthcare environment in the acquisition of infection

‘Mind the gap’: the importance of managing malnutrition in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Malnutrition is associated with a wide range of serious and potentially life-threatening conditions and complications, particularly in patients with conditions such as COPD (Box 1)..

Communicating with patients using a new vitamin B12 deficiency leaflet

To devise the processes to test nurse compliance in providing educational information to patients and the solutions to improve this, it was considered important to understand why educational...

Choosing coaching frameworks for promoting diet modifications

Pound and Campbell (2015) proposed a process of synthesis preparation; extracting, clarifying and summarizing the parts of the aforementioned theories/models that are most relevant are described...

Acute kidney injury: a risk scoring system for general surgical patients

It has been suggested that worldwide up to 20% of people admitted to hospital either have or will develop AKI (Susantitaphong et al, 2013). Although the incidence in the UK may be lower, it can have...

Assessing and managing patients with leg ulceration and oedema

Arterial ulcers develop as a consequence of reduced arterial blood flow to the leg, the main cause of which is peripheral arterial disease (PAD). PAD affects up to 20% of the population aged 60 years...

A service evaluation of specialist nurse telephone follow-up of bowel cancer patients after surgery

This service evaluation is designed to assess patient satisfaction and the cost saving realised for commissioners by use of the telephone follow-up service. There is an emerging evidence base that...

BJN Awards 2019: gastrointestinal/IBD nurse of the year—runner-up

The challenges facing the NHS nationally in terms of funding and the logistics of running a range of diverse services are not in question..

Observation of inadvertent tube loss in ICU: effect of nasal bridles

A review of critically ill patients fed via an NI tube identified a higher incidence of tube removal of those secured with tape compared with those secured with nasal bridles, 48% versus 13%...

BJN Awards 2019: nutrition nurse of the year—runners-up

ENPLUGs are silicone plugs inserted into the gastrostomy tract to prevent it from closing when a tube comes out unexpectedly. They are multicoloured, according to French gauge (10-20 Fr) and shaft...

BJN Awards 2019: infection prevention nurse of the year—runner-up