23 March 2023

Driving improvements through harm reduction
To help Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (GWH) achieve its vision, the senior management team has set out the four ‘strategic pillars’ detailed in Figure 1, with the goal of driving improvements across the Trust.
A key metric within the ‘outstanding patient care and quality improvement’ pillar is Total Harms, and the Trust target is to achieve zero avoidable harm within 5-10 years. The Trust’s calculation for ‘total avoidable harms’ aggregates monthly incidences of; pressure ulcers/harms; Falls; Hospital acquired infections (including COVID-19); Medication incidents; Serious incidents; Never Events.

20 May 2020

Kate Upton, registered adult nurse and fellow of the Higher Education Academy; representative for Nursing Professions on the Crisis, Disaster and Trauma Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society; independent nursing/medical tutor and medical writer; PhD student at the University of Birmingham

28 February 2023

As healthcare professionals, our purpose is to deliver treatments and interventions to patients to aid recovery and prevent deterioration in health. But what does that look like when patients do not wish to follow advice, do not want treatment or interventions, even if that means significant consequences such as loss of limbs, sepsis or death — where do we legally stand in these situations and how do we work with patients to achieve the best possible outcomes for them? Over years of clinical experience, the authors have found that working with those who self-neglect can be complex. This is due to a range of factors, such as risks to the individual and sometimes others. Other issues involved include healthcare professionals’ views and moral conflict between respecting patient autonomy and their duty of care, challenges in trying to engage patients who may not want services involved, attempting to assess and being clear on the patient’s mental capacity, working within task-orientated systems which may not always be conducive to building rapport, and working with the patient’s socio-economic factors which impact upon their health (Research in Practice, 2020). 

23 March 2023

Background and Aim

• Annual cost to UK healthcare system alone reportedat £2.1 Billion¹
• Average treatment costs per patient range from £1,400 to >£8,500 (Category 3, 4 PUs)²
• Adds 5 to 8 days to patient’s length of stay³
• Sub-epidermal Moisture (SEM) is the established biomarker to detect microscopic tissue damage even before visual skin assessments (VSA)^4,5
• This health-economic evaluation describes the costeffectiveness of implementing SEM assessment technology* in the standard of care for PU prevention

21 February 2020

Libby Gray asks can technology help to standardise the collection and documentation of wound measurement data?

23 March 2023

Actively involving patients in their own care is a key aim of healthcare provision [Coulter, 2008]. The SARSCoV-2 pandemic increased the need for many patients to become
more actively involved in their own management, including wound care. A significant decrease in community nursing visits, limited outpatient appointments and few face-toface
appointments accelerated this change, [Blackburn, 2021].

26 October 2021

Karen Harrison Dening, Lisa Ashworth, Annemarie Brown, Teresa Burdett and Anne Williams discuss the different ways that nurses learn and how new technologies can help to engage all learners.   

21 March 2023

Exomphalos (also known as omphalocele) is a condition that occurs very early in pregnancy, usually between 3 to 8 weeks of gestation. During early pregnancy the intestine develops outside of the abdominal cavity in the umbilical cord and is supposed to return to the abdomen by 10 weeks. Exomphalos is a defect in the development of the abdominal
wall that allows the intestine, and frequently the liver, to stay outside of the abdominal cavity in the sac of the umbilical cord(1).

21 February 2019

The National Wound Care Strategy Programme (NWCSP) has been developed to address the use of sub-optimal wound care. Here Una Adderley outlines how the NWCSP works, progress to date and how you can become involved as a stakeholder.

21 March 2023

Implementing SEM assessment technology* is being recognized as a routine practice in pressure ulcer (PU) prevention care. Clinical data and real-world evidence support the implementation of SEM assessment technology to achieve consistent PU incidence reductions in multiple care settings.^1,2