Angels of Mercy – Eileen Crofton
The author, Dr Eileen Crofton, had a long and distinguished career as a doctor and medical researcher, notably helping to found Action on Smoking and Health, under the auspices of the Royal College of Physicians. In her retirement, she wrote this book, published in 1997 and originally titled “The Women of Royaumont: A Scottish women’s hospital on the western front”. This well-researched book was edited and reissued as a 2nd edition in 2012 by Eileen Crofton’s son, Ian. It tells the story of a Scottish Women’s Hospital of the First World War. The Hospital was the inspiration of Dr Elsie…
Anticipatory Care – Blog on the QNIS Chair in Community Nursing’s Inaugural Lecture
On 23rd November, QNIS Chair of Community Nursing at Robert Gordon University, Professor Catriona Kennedy, gave her inaugural lecture on Anticipatory Care. Janette Barrie, the National Clinical Lead (Nursing) for Anticipatory Care with Healthcare Improvement Scotland, attended, and has provided us with our latest guest blog. What an honour it was to attend Professor Catriona Kennedy’s Inaugural Lecture at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. Linking in with the QNIS to raise the profile of research within Community Nursing, Professor Kennedy took up post earlier this year. The lecture focussed on Anticipatory Care Planning: A fundamental skill in nursing, and I couldn’t…
Anticipatory Care Planning: gives people greater choice and control over their future care and support
Janette Barrie, from NHS Lanarkshire, discusses Anticipatory Care Planning. In Lanarkshire, we started developing anticipatory care planning a few years ago. Our initial brief as part of the Scottish Government’s Long Term Conditions Collaborative programme, was to present an example of an anticipatory care plan (ACP) used within the care home environment. Although there was a plethora of different care plans, nothing fitted the Scottish government’s criteria of an ACP, so our journey began. Our first steps involved searching the literature to clarify the concept, identify the ACP process and the core content of supporting documentation and resources. Unfortunately there…
Asking Women What They Want and Nurses/Midwives What They Know
Michele Stranger Hunter was the Founder and National Program Director for One Key Question in the USA. Her work on reproductive and preconception health is respected internationally. OKQ has become ‘best practice’ and successfully implemented in more than thirty states. Scotland must create its own approach and solutions based upon our cultural, policy, and professional contexts. As a consultant to QNIS’ new Healthier Pregnancies, Better Lives programme, Michele will share lessons from decades of experience, as well as her insights, to help create a bespoke Scottish strategy. Growing up in an American town where the norm was ‘another year, another baby’, questions about pregnancy were…
Becoming a Queen’s Nurse – Lyndsey’s story
Lyndsey Forsyth is an ADHD Nurse Specialist in Fife. She worked on a children’s ward for five years before taking up her current role in 2005 before the service moved to the community in 2011. Here, Lyndsey talks about what it is like to become a Queen’s Nurse after completing the development programme in 2018. Becoming a Queen’s Nurse was, quite simply, life changing. Like many of you reading this, I had not heard of the programme until my line manager mentioned she was keen to nominate me. I did some research, spoke to one of the previous year’s Queen’s…
Being a Catalyst for Change
Elizabeth Smith is Breastfeeding Advocacy Lead for Scotland within the Scottish Government, she is also a Queen’s Nurse. In 2017 she was Community Infant Feeding Nurse at NHS Ayrshire and Arran and received QNIS funding through Catalysts for Change. Here, she tells us about her journey through Catalysts. Read more about her project, here. My role covered a lot of different areas – staff training, policy and guideline development, and the provision of specialist support for the Health Visitor Team for any infant feeding issues. Protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding was also a part of my job. I’d known for a while that…
Being Mindful of the Carers
This award-winning project aimed to pilot a Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy programme to carers of people with dementia and assess its effectiveness.
Book Review – The Social Leadership Handbook by Julian Stodd
Ian Hall is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner in the Orkney Islands, and a Queen’s Nurse. He has provided a review of the book which was the basis of Susie Boyle’s presentation at our Conference in April 2019. This is the introductory book that was offered by Susie Boyle during her talk at the Murrayfield conference recently. I admit that during her talk I struggled to understand some of the language that she was using as it was fairly fast and furious and on subject matter that I had never heard before. At times it sounded like a foreign language, but…
Buurtzorg – Neighbourhood Care
“It is an ethical imperative for neighbourhood nurses to make themselves irrelevant.” Jos de Blok In 2015 I met Jos de Blok, a man who advocates humanity over bureaucracy, and I was absolutely inspired by his extraordinary vision of person centred care in the community. I have been asked by the team at the Alliance, to reflect upon the principles that underpin his work in relation to the Health and Social Care Academy’s rather marvellous Five Provocations. I believe that Jos de Blok’s vision and approach beautifully encompass all 5 of the ‘provocations’ as he elegantly describes in this presentation…
Call for action on advanced dementia
Dr Debbie Tolson is the Alzheimer Scotland Professor of Dementia at the University of the West of Scotland. She is a long-time friend of QNIS and a member of The Fair Dementia Care Commission. In this blog, she highlights the Commission’s new recommendations; its call for action on advanced dementia; and, its implications for community nursing. It is not a coincidence that the Alzheimer Scotland Centre for Policy and Practice is led and staffed by people with a background in community-based nursing. Whether providing care and support in people’s homes or in residential settings, community-based nurses know a great deal…