Some reflections from Suzanne Watts, this year’s Marjorie Simpson New Researcher Award winner I suspect that the 2013 RCN International Research Conference will be remembered by the delegates for two things. The first being the breadth and scope of the outstanding presentations and the second the weather. For some of the delegates the blizzard conditions […]
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Patient-centred care: harmonising patients and professionals perspectives
Last week I was debating with a group of second year pre-registration child field of practice nursing students what concepts such as ‘family-centred care’ and ‘patient-centeredness’ meant to them and how these concepts informed their practice. Overwhelming the students felt these concepts were implicit when working with children, young people and families and a central […]
Narrative Practice
I heard an interesting lecture today. It was about narrative analysis. I won’t delve into detail about this qualitative analysis approach. Rather I would like to focus on the comment made by the professor who teaches medical students. He teaches ‘narrative medicine’. Narrative medicine occurs when a physician moves beyond simply attending to a patient’s […]
Challenges of incorporating evidence within clinical practice
I am passionate about developing nurses skills in relation to accessing and using the best available evidence to inform clinical decisions. Consequently, joining the editorial team at Evidence-Based Nursing was an exciting start to the year. New roles are often associated with a mix of emotions, from excitement to apprehension and having the skills to […]
Skills for evidence-based nursing
In the last few weeks, following the publication of the Francis report there has been a lot of discussion in the UK nursing press about why the nurses at Mid-Staffs did not whistle blow about the poor practice that was taking place in the hospital. We will probably never understand this completely but I think […]
A Call for the Return of Therapeutic Relationships
As I approach becoming an ‘older adult’, I’m increasingly worried. Although I am healthy and do not foresee needing acute care, home care, or long term care services in the near future, I do realize that needing these services will likely come sooner than I would like. This frightens me because of what my home […]
Sciatica update :(
The sciatica I described recently didn’t settle down. Instead it got worse and the pain intensified. I initially visited the physio and although the first session seemed to help the second two didn’t and the pain continued to a crescendo where walking was almost impossible and I required urgent medical intervention and IM analgesics. Eventually […]
The Francis Inquiry of Mid Staffs – why do we ignore the obvious and the evidence?
It has been a grim week for nursing in England. The long awaited Francis Inquiry into failures of care at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust (known as Mid Staffs) between 2005-2009 made swingeing criticisms of the whole of the NHS, drawing conclusions that patients were “routinely neglected by a Trust that was preoccupied with cost cutting, […]
Patient centered care and the electronic medical record
On a recent trip to hospital with a family member I happened to be present on the day before the introduction of a new electronic medical record (EMR) system. The system was about to ‘go live’ in less than 24hrs and the anxiety was palpable. Everyone appeared to be nervous and unsure about what this […]
Managing my sciatica
This blog will be short! I am at home on my back with acute sciatica – I have never felt pain like it and am extremely limited in what I am able to do. Standing is virtually impossible and the most comfortable position is lying flat where I can just about manage to balance my […]