Nursing times
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A guideline from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and a NICE-endorsed tool on safer nursing care allow decisions on safe staffing levels to be made at a local level. Decisions must be based on sound evidence and factoring in patients' individual needs as well as numbers of patients. ⋯ The tool is easy to use by frontline nursing staff, but must be applied correctly and consistently for data to be valid, and to allow benchmarking against agreed standards. It should be combined with nurses' professional judgement and account for local factors.
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The Patient Blood Management initiative is an evidence-based, multidisciplinary approach to improve the care of patients who might need a transfusion of blood or blood components. It is an international initiative in best practice for transfusion medicine. This final article in our five-part series on blood transfusion outlines the origin and implementation of the Patient Blood Management initiative in England, why it matters, how it works, how it can be put into practice and nurses' role in supporting it.
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Pain in people with dementia is increasingly recognised as both underassessed and undertreated. This review discusses the main barriers to effective assessment and management of pain in this population, strategies to overcome these barriers, and the implications of such strategies for practitioners and researchers. ⋯ More research is necessary to explore barriers and develop further evidence-based strategies to tackle them. Nurses need to be aware of these barriers and become active in overcoming them.
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Some patients need to stop eating and drinking, to be nil by mouth, at certain points in their care pathway for their own safety; their care will vary, depending on individual needs. Nurses need adequate knowledge of NBM guidelines to know how to implement them and be able to educate patients. This article explains how to care for patients who are NBM during pre- or post-operative periods.
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Up to one in 10 neonates are investigated and treated for neonatal sepsis, although most are later found to be uninfected. This review discusses identifying and treating this emergency condition and how implementing NICE guidance could reduce treatment time in well babies and saveonatal sepsis resources without compromising care.