BackgroundIn April CNO Jane Cummings launched #70nursebloggers and #70midwifebloggers with her blog post "Celebrating 70 years of innovative care" The initiative aims to get 70 nurses and 70 midwives blogging to celebrate 70 years of the NHS - you can read more about #70nursebloggers and #70midwifebloggers and how to get involved HERE. The initiative is off to a flying start with lots of nurses and midwives, from all over the world,  sharing some fantastic blog posts about the work they do.  We have collated the blogs published so far into 2 Twitter moments:       #70nursebloggers... the blogs so far!#70midwifebloggers ... the blogs so far!      And we have collated the bloggers so far into two Twitter Lists:     #70nursebloggers Twitter Li ...

June 18th to 24th is LearningDisability Week, and it’s got the @WeStudentNurse team thinking – In the other fields of nursing (adult, mental health, child), do we get enough education around learning disabilities and how to care for people who have one? Come and join us on Wednesday 20th June at 8pm to discuss!This year Mencap launched the Treat Me Well campaign, which aims to transform the way the NHS treats people with a learning disability in hospital. Their report states that 37% of healthcare professionals think that having a learning disability results in someone receiving a lower quality of care, and many of those surveyed felt that the health inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities could be lessened by more tra ...

The 18th June marks the start of #CatheterCare Awareness Week – a week that aiming to raise awareness of the risks of CAUTI (catheter-associated UTIs), reduce harm, fight stigma and improve general catheter care. As part of the week #WeNurses in collaboration with the Health Innovation Network (@HINsouthlondon) will be hosting a tweetchat. The tweetchat will be based around the care of Betty and Harold – the video below gives some background information:         The first 30 minutes of the tweetchat will be about Betty:Betty has recently been discharged from hospital and is being cared for by a district nurse at home. Betty has been sent home with a urethral catheter but she is unsure when it should be removed.  Betty starts to feel unwell ...

At the 2017 Chief Allied Health Profession’s Conference, Prof Helen Stokes Lampard, chair of the Royal College of General Practice, spoke on the future of General Practice. Her key message however wasn’t the practicalities and future vision for doctors, but rather how as healthcare practitioners we seek out joy in daily practice. “When work is a pleasure, life is joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.” Maxim GorkyCounteract the culture of cynicismSickness absence is reported to cost the NHS £2.4billion a year – around 2.5% of the overall budget of the NHS. Of this, NHS employers reports 30% is stress related. Constant changes to structure, a barrage of negative headlines relating to Healthcare, and an overwhelming sense of cynicism and ...

When I joined St Wilfrid’s Hospice, Eastbourne in May 2016 we were doing a lot of things right on social media.We had great engagement, a fun and compassionate brand voice and excellent stories about a diverse group of people. What we didn’t have was much variety in our voices.We had one voice. Our brand voice. This brand voice was kind, compassionate, understanding and ‘everyone’s friend’. But it was still just one voice. One voice in an organisation of 200 staff and 600+ volunteers. One voice in a catchment area of 235,000 people. It wouldn’t work to just speak in one voice any longer for a variety of reasons. Staff were worried that their professional skill was lost in all the caring adjectives and fluffy stories. Volunteers concerned th ...

Pre chat information written by Derek FisherEveryone knows and realise that working on a hospital ward, no matter what the ward is, can be a very busy, hectic and a rushing around job.Every nurse and member of staff hare a role to play and they all do their part brilliantly. They have patients to attend to who are in dire need of medical attention. They need to do paperwork and have countless tasks to perform whilst on duty.Now just for one moment put yourself in the patient’s place. You are in pain or in a medically unfit state and you require medical help asap. You have been waiting in A&E forever, I won’t go into that issue, but know you are on a ward. Its noisy and its hectic. You need help but the staff do what they can and when they c ...

Join author Josie Dixon to explore her open access publication:Dixon, J. and Knapp, M., 2018. Whose job? The staffing of advance care planning support in twelve international healthcare organizations: a qualitative interview study. BMC Palliative Care, 17(1), p.78.https://bmcpalliatcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12904-018-0333-1 Background:Advance  care planning (ACP)  involving a facilitated conversation with a health or care professional is more effective than document completion alone. In policy, there is an expectation that health and care professionals will provide ACP support, commonly within their existing roles. However, the potential contributions of different professionals are outlined only broadly in policy and guidance ...

...