A team of people with an interest in COPD, including two experienced respiratory nurse specialists, met to discuss the range of emotions that people and those around them typically experience when coming to terms with COPD.
The aim was to explore how a sufferer reacts to a COPD diagnosis and how their changing emotional state affects their ability/ willingness to self-manage their condition and develop a care pathway.
The team also considered the emotions of the carer along the pathway and their role in helping their loved one to change. The learnings from this work could help general practice nurses (GPNs) provide appropriate support to COPD patients to help them get to a stage where they are motivated and able to effectively self-manage.
Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in the UK, affecting 40,000 people (Patnick and Atkin, 2011). It is likely therefore that general practice nurses (GPNs) will encounter patients at risk of, or with the disease during everyday practice. This article gives GPNs a brief understanding of colorectal cancer, including identifying patients who may be at risk of developing the disease and who may benefit from screening and health promotion. GPNs can play an active role in managing patients with colorectal cancer, providing clinical interventions, while also offering advice and support.
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