The urgent need to improve health professionals' communication skills

In a healthcare context these basic expectations of how the communication process between health professional and patient should proceed will take on an increased significance because of the power...

The role of community pharmacies during the COVID-19 pandemic

Pharmacies have played a vital role during the pandemic, not only by ensuring a stable supply of key medicines, but also in becoming an information hub regarding the virus. Many pharmacies are now the...

What it means to be an ally

Promoting mental health among farming communities

What are nurses worth?

The Government announced in its March budget a reduction in NHS funding and no allocation for a pay increase for nurses. We then found that the Government's recommendation to the Pay Review Body was...

The management of urinary tract infections in older patients within an urgent care out-of-hours setting

UTI is defined as an infection of the urinary system, involving lower tract, upper tract or both (NICE, 2020a). The pathogens responsible for UTI include Escherichia coli (E. coli), which accounts for...

COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine administration

COVID-19 is an infectious respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Transmission is primarily via respiratory (droplet and aerosol) and...

Critiquing a published healthcare research paper

For those embarking on a higher degree such as a master's, taught doctorate, or a doctor of philosophy, the relationship between research, knowledge production and knowledge utilisation becomes clear...

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: a more common condition than you may think

Pulmonary fibrosis is a form of interstitial lung disease that causes fibrosis (scarring) in the lungs. The most common type of PF is IPF (ALA, 2020). ‘Idiopathic’ is defined in the Cambridge...

A narrative review of preventive measures for postoperative delirium in older adults

An initial search of two databases, CINAHL and PubMed, sourced 309 articles. Keywords included ‘delirium’, ‘acute confusion’, ‘intervention’, ‘nurs*, ‘patient’’, ‘preoperative’, ‘intraoperative’...

Dispelling anti-vaxxer misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination

Following the launch of mass vaccination programmes against COVID-19 in a number of counties, after timely development of safe, effective vaccines, the conundrum now is how to tackle anti-vaxxers and...

Patient safety: tensions, challenges and opportunities

Another contender for one of my favourite influential patient safety reports is emerging: the NHS Patient Safety Strategy (NHS England and NHS Improvement, 2019). A 2021 update has recently been...

Championing clinical research as an integral part of the service

My vision and motivation is for clinical research to be a common thread running through all allied health professionals' job descriptions and integrated through every MDT, avoiding the patient...

Nurses' role in curbing the pandemic affirms their wider remit in disease prevention and promoting vaccination

Vaccination is a routine element of NHS universal health care, which starts before birth and has proven success in improving key health outcomes. For example, rubella vaccination prior to conception,...

Academic essays part 9: Use of your own experience

As discussed in previous articles in this series (Fowler, 2020), the foundation of an assignment should be the critical appraisal of relevant evidence-based literature. This is something that the...