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The article focuses on electronic patient records and the role that they can play in helping health care facilities become paper-light. In the article the author offers his opinions on the benefits of electronic medical records and on an electronic health program policy statement which was released in June of 2008 by the Royal College of Nursing.

In order to fully understand and appreciate today's drug problem in the UK, the foundations of drug legislation and the history of drug evolution require exploration. This paper critically examines the history of drug policy and the growth of heroin addiction from the perspective of a novice researcher who works closely with intravenous drug users in relation to leg ulceration and wound care in the acute setting. Today's drug policy has come a long way in understanding the problems of heroin addiction and establishing services to meet intravenous drug users' needs and the needs of society. This paper highlights the early warning signs of drug addiction and growth within the UK from an early stage with key areas such as who the early users were and how addiction grew so rapidly between 1920 and 1960. Current policy and decision makers as well as clinicians and researchers in this field must understand the impacts of past policy and embed it within their decisions surrounding drug policy today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuity of care, in the author's opinion, is synonymous with quality care. The benefits of developing relationship continuity are highlighted as beneficial to patient, department, trust and the NHS. An in-house audit revealed that the care provided in the author's stoma care department was fragmented and how a change in strategy was required to bring about the necessary changes. This paper explores the benefits of patient/relationship continuity and outlines the changes made for over 250 new ostomy patients annually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of a care bundle approach to delivering fundamental care in practice is now a recognised and effective way of translating research into practice, offering consistent care with resulting positive outcomes for the patient. A care bundle consists of a relatively small number of interventions for every patient to whom the bundle is applied. However, there must be evidence behind each individual intervention to indicate, if delivered, how it will reduce the risk to the patient. This paper reports on a strategy for developing and implementing a pressure ulcer (PU) combined prevention care bundle/care plan into practice. The effectiveness of the care bundle can be measured when it is in use in the practice setting with an audit tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Safety Express programme is a national workstream within the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) programme that is designed to improve health outcomes and quality care, as well as reduce costs associated with the following four patient harms: pressure ulcers, falls, urinary tract infections in patients with catheters and venous thromboembolism (VTE). NHS London developed a pilot project to implement Safety Express across London. This paper presents case studies of the outcomes of the Safety Express pilot in three locations in London. Findings from the pilot showed that the proportion of patients who were harm-free from pressure ulcers, falls, urinary infections (in patients with a catheter) and new VTE compares favourably with the national average, with an overall decrease in all four. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The path that nurse education in the UK has taken since it moved into the higher education (HE) system in the early 1990s has been directly influenced, not only by Department of Health policy, but also by changes to the way in which HE is structured and managed. The White Paper Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System (Department for Business Innovation and Skills, 2011a) outlined the coalition Government's plans to encourage better standards of teaching in HE and greater responsiveness to student experience. The reforms promote competition and contestability between HE institutions to attract students and recommend removing barriers for new providers to enter the market. The decision to introduce a strong business model for HE has a number of implications for nurse education, both in the way that it is delivered and how student nurses are positioned among their peers. There is a potential conflict of interest between the student as a source of income for the HE institution and the student nurse as a member of a professional organization dedicated to ensuring the safety of the public. The decision to make it easier for alternative providers to obtain degree awarding powers could also encourage providers to take greater ownership of healthcare qualifications in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a research paper titled "Involving Patients in Improving Safety" which was released in 2013 by Great Britain's Health Foundation. In the article the author offers his opinions on several points which are raised in the research paper and on the role that patients can play in improving medical care and safety in health care facilities.

The rise of the electronic record now allows nurses to access a large archive of patient information that was more difficult to obtain when records consisted of manually held paper files. There have been several instances where curiosity and, occasionally, more malicious motivations have led nurses to access these records and read the notes of a celebrity or a person they know. In this article, Richard Griffith considers whether nurses' accessing and reading of the record of someone who is not in their care is in breach of their duty of confidentiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Andrew Bird, Lead Stoma Care Nurse Specialist, Colorectal and Stoma Care, Surgery Division, Queen's Medical Centre Campus, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Andrew.Bird@nuh.nhs.uk [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]