Editorial Resources

The Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) and the National Garden Scheme (NGS) have announced the creation of a new scholarship programme for community nurses, the NGS Elsie Wagg Scholarship. The new programme will support five community nurses each year to undertake projects to improve the health and wellbeing of their own community through gardens and gardening initiatives.

The new scholarship was launched at the Queen’s Nurse Annual Meeting on 12th May by the chief executive of the National Garden Scheme, George Plumptre, who said, ‘Elsie Wagg’s name has always been the historic binding of the National Garden Scheme and our founder, the Queen’s Nursing Institute. The scholarship will be a vehicle through which we will together provide tangible evidence of the health benefits of gardens in a series of new projects and I am full of expectation at the exciting projects that I know community nurses are going to come up with.’

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The pandemic has highlighted that speaking up has never been more important, yet some workers who feared for their safety in this challenging time were let down by leaders who were not listening. NHS and key workers, who were applauded as heroes by the public, are now overwhelmed, exhausted, and burnt out.

As general practice nurses (GPNs), you have a key role to play in patient safety, looking after some of the most vulnerable members of society, so you will be well aware of the importance of being able to speak up, whether to raise a concern or with an idea for improvement. Listening and acting upon matters raised means that Freedom to Speak Up helps to deliver on the promise of the NHS as the best place to work.

In the five years since the National Guardian’s Office was set up, much has been achieved. A network of Freedom to Speak Up Guardians has been developed, who are amplifying the voices of those who might otherwise not be heard, breaking down barriers to speaking up, and promoting the use of speaking up as a valuable opportunity to learn and improve. There are now over 700 Freedom to Speak Up Guardians supporting more than 400 organisations.

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Infection prevention and control (IPC) is a fundamental component of all disciplines of health care. It affects the health of both patients and healthcare providers by preventing the occurrence of healthcareassociated infections (HCAIs) (Storr et al, 2017; Cattini and Kiernan, 2020). General practice nurses (GPNs) have a key role in preventing the transmission of infections in their healthcare setting by understanding and adhering to IPC best practice as part of everyday care delivery (Royal College of Nursing [RCN], 2017; Carrico et al, 2018).

In light of the greatest healthcare challenge in recent times, the Covid-19 pandemic, IPC best practice is more important than ever to save lives (Flynn et al, 2020; Peters et al, 2020). A pre-existing challenge for the NHS is HCAIs (Guest et al, 2020). HCAIs are not only confined to hospitals, and while the type and level of risk may be different, GPNs have the same responsibility as those working in hospitals to prevent the occurrence of infections (RCN, 2017).

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Online events, such as webinars and the GPN Facebook Live ones, have become a regular feature in my life now, and it does make balancing both home and work commitments easier. Rather than needing to take an afternoon, evening or even a day or two out of normal commitments, we can just disappear for an hour or so and access a multitude of training at quite literally a press of the ‘join’ button. Meeting people face-to-face is great, but online events are convenient and accessible for today’s busy life.

My favourite webinar recently was one called ‘Just how stressed are you?’ I signed up for it as I was aware life was running at a fast pace with stressors flying in at me from every angle. Donna Booth’s calm, authoritative voice spoke clearly over the webinar, helping me to work out where it was all going a bit astray and to find simple ways to recognise this and adjust. Taking her audience through a careful explanation of what stress is and the different responses we can have to it; fight, flight, freeze and fawn (fawn was new to me, but described as those times when you try to please everyone, which is tricky because you can’t in fact please everyone). Donna explained that we all have an invisible stress bucket and that while some stress is good for us, if the bucket is constantly slopping over with too much we will eventually run into difficulty. To remedy this, we need to make some space for self-care in our lives; small, simple routines that help us relax. It doesn’t need to take long, but building simple relaxing routines back into life can be effective. This awareness has helped to make me more relaxed and my stress bucket is no longer set to overflow. To learn more about Donna, visit: www.vitality-retreat.com.

This issue of GPN has some helpful respiratory articles with Laura King, clinical nurse specialist for children’s asthma, exploring the importance of the post-asthma attack 48-hour review and Karen Heslop Marshall, a nurse consultant, who has written a thought-provoking article about COPD, CBT and self-management. This article has stimulated me to look at including resources for mental well-being, as well as COPD symptom control, within self-management plans. Carol Stonham, a respiratory senior nurse practitioner, encourages us to consider the environmental impact of respiratory healthcare, looking at everything from inhaler choice to how people access their appointments.

The NMC are working on a review to modernise general practice standards and are currently seeking consultation on this. In her editorial, Professor Geraldine Walters CBE, executive director of professional practice at the NMC, explains some of the changes within the new draft specialist standards and encourages us all to get involved with the consultation process.

I hope you enjoy this issue and wish you all a warm and relaxing summer and, as Donna teaches on her courses, remember, self-care is NEVER selfish.

Jaqui Walker, editor-in-chief

Nutrition and Hydration Week has historically taken place every March since 2012. It was even held in March 2020 at the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The challenges of the pandemic on all of us has meant that Nutrition and Hydration Week this year will be held from 14–20 June 2021 — so there is time to get involved.

Some clinical issues never seem to reach the top of clinical or health policy priority lists, and asthma is one of them. The International Primary Care Respiratory Group (IPCRG) has initiated a social movement, Asthma Right Care, to disrupt this. For us, right care means doing the right things and only the right things in the right way for the right people at the right time in the right place, whatever that means in the local context. This piece summarises what we have learnt, what tools we have created, and what progress we have made. It invites you to join the Asthma Right Care movement by committing to have a different conversation about asthma with at least one colleague and person with asthma.

Many of you reading this piece will know that the final project in our five-year programme to review all of our nursing standards is concerned with post-registration qualifications in specialist community and public health nursing.

There are currently five specialist practice qualifications in community nursing, and one of these is the specialist practice qualification (SPQ) for general practice nursing. In renewing the standards, we have updated the standards of proficiency, which describe what people need to know or be able to do to gain the qualification, and the standards of education and training, which describe the characteristics of the educational programmes that universities and their partners must meet to deliver the courses leading to the qualifications.

Recent stories in the media about some patients suffering blood clots after the Astra-Zeneca v accine for Covid-19 has brought into sharp focus the need for information regarding the risks (and benefits) associated with medical treatment, which should be shared with patients.

A vaccination is no different to any other form of medical treatment when it comes to ensuring you have the patient’s informed consent.

Prostate Cancer UK believes that general practice nurses (GPNs) are ideally placed to recognise men at higher risk of prostate cancer. GPNs can help ensure that prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing is delivered to best effect and offer men the opportunity to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the test.

You may ask why, at the height of a resurging COVID-19 pandemic with nursing staff under inestimable pressure, would the British Society for Heart Failure Nurse Forum launch a Heart Failure Specialist Nurse (HFSN) Competency Framework? Well, in the words of Wendy Preston, head of nursing practice, Royal College of Nursing: ‘Despite the adversity, the pandemic gives us a rare insight and offers the opportunity to build back better provision for the future. This heart failure nurse competency framework is a tool which should be used by everybody as it will set the standard for life after CoViD-19’.’