British journal of community nursing
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Br J Community Nurs · Oct 2016
ReviewRecommendations to support informal carers of people living with motor neurone disease.
Informal carers are increasingly providing specialist care at home for people living with motor neurone disease. The carers may experience significant deterioration in their quality of life as a result of the physical and psychological burden they undertake. This systematic review seeks to provide evidence-based recommendations to enable healthcare professionals to support carers appropriately to maintain their wellbeing and to continue providing care at home. ⋯ Twenty-three studies were included and a thematic analysis was undertaken. Four key recommendations were identified: providing support, early access to palliative care, information regarding availability of services, and offering carers training for using specialist equipment. These recommendations offer healthcare professionals practical, cost-effective suggestions to improve existing services.
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Br J Community Nurs · Jul 2014
Review Case ReportsDoes paracetamol help or hinder healing in bacterial infections?
Community nursing teams, alongside other primary care services and nurses in working in community hospitals, are caring for people who are older, sicker and require more complex care. The nurse's ability to use evidence to make informed judgements is vitally important to patient care. ⋯ This practice is supported by guidelines from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence and the British National Formulary. This article reviews the evidence and suggests that the administration of paracetamol in people with pyrexia should be reconsidered and given on an individualised basis rather than as a routine.
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Community nurses are likely to encounter people with a stoma, most commonly a colostomy. An appliance is used to collect and contain the stomal output. There are various appliances available, each designed to specifically care for a particular type of stoma. ⋯ There are many accessories available, which can make choice difficult. However, an understanding of why accessories are used can assist in the assessment and treatment choice. It may be necessary to request the assistance of the stoma specialist nurse.
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With the increasing prominence of the patients' involvement in the care they receive, the assessment of outcomes based on the patient's perspective using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), are increasingly accompanying the traditional clinical ways of measuring health and the effects of treatment on the patient. This article provides an overview as to what PROMs are and the different health constructs they are purported to measure. ⋯ Examples of the application of PROMs are given together with some of the methodological approaches to interpreting PROM data. Finally, issues on maximizing the benefits of using PROMs are briefly discussed.
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Br J Community Nurs · Jan 2010
ReviewConsent to organ donation part 2: alternative modes of consent.
In the December 2009 issue of British Journal of Community Nursing Richard Griffith and Cassam Tengnah reviewed the system of consent for non-beating heart organ donation at the centre of the Human Tissue Act 2004. This article considers the benefits and risks of alternative systems of consent being proposed to overcome the United Kingdom's poor organ donation rate that is the worst in Western Europe.