Many of the articles listed below are available full text with your NHS Athens Account alternatively contact the Library & Knowledge Service to have any of these articles emailed or posted out to you.

New opportunities? Community nursing and the Five Year Forward View.
Hudson, Bob. British Journal of Community Nursing; 12/01/2014
Health-care policy and practice has been thrown up in the air once again with the publication of the Five Year Forward View by the CEO of NHS England, Simon Stevens (NHS England, 2014). The report says there is now a wide consensus on future direction:

• Managing networks of care rather than working in organisational silos
• A much larger role for out-of-hospital care
• Services integrated around the patient.

‘Community’ is the watchword, with no fewer than 34 mentions in the slim 40-page document—yet the term ‘community nursing’ itself barely raises a ripple. What are we to make of this?

Whither evidence? Young, Stephen. British Journal of Community Nursing; 12/02/2014
Evidence-based practice describes an approach to decision making that is used at virtually every level of the health-care system. However, in chronic wound care, evidence is extremely difficult to gather and the evidence base for interventions is weak, with the field of wound care being dominated by the polarised debate around whether randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are the ‘gold standard’ of wound care evaluation (Gottrup, 2008) or whether case evaluations are the most appropriate.

Maggot debridement therapy: a systematic review.Shi, Eric; Shofler, David. British Journal of Community Nursing; 12/02/2014
Maggot debridement therapy is used extensively in the UK in both community and hospital situations, but remains a potentially under used modality in many wound care markets. It promotes wound healing by performing three key processes: debridement, disinfection and growth-promoting activity. It can be used for the debridement of non-healing necrotic skin and soft tissue wounds, including pressure ulcers, venous stasis ulcers, neuropathic foot ulcers and non-healing traumatic of post-surgical wounds. With the increase in chronic diabetic foot wounds, maggot debridement therapy is a promising tool for health professionals dealing with difficult wounds. This article presents an overview of the research evidence surrounding maggot debridement therapy that serves as a guide to health professionals who may be users of this form of treatment now and in the future

The role and organisation of community palliative specialist nursing teams in rural England. Leadbeater, Maria; Staton, Wendy. British Journal of Community Nursing; 11/01/2014
This article describes a study that used a qualitative approach, purposive sampling and semi-structured telephone interviews conducted with specialist palliative care nurses from six rural community teams in England. The study investigated how services were organised and the issues of delivering specialist palliative nursing care in a rural area. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings showed many similarities in that the majority of patients in rural areas were not accessing hospice services and there was a greater reliance on care at home. However, the challenges in delivering care ranged from managing patient expectations, geographical distance, lack of technology to support remote working and education for the specialist palliative care teams. The study makes specific recommendations for rural community specialist palliative care teams.

Interpreting guidance on prosecution for assisted dying for district nurses.Griffith, Richard. British Journal of Community Nursing; 11/01/2014
Following a ruling by the House of Lords in 2009, the Director of Public Prosecutions issued guidance setting out the circumstances that would be likely to lead to the prosecution of a person for encouraging or assisting suicide under the Suicide Act 1961, section 2. In that guidance, a district nurse assisting a person to commit suicide would be one of the circumstances that would lead to prosecution. The Director of Public Prosecutions recently unexpectedly amended her guidance in relation to health professionals. This article discusses the implications of the amendment and argues that it will cause confusion among district nurses and give rise to an unrealistic expectation about the role a district nurse can lawfully take in assisting a person to die.

Where is the recognition of community nurses? While, Alison.  British Journal of Community Nursing; 11/01/2014
So few community nurses and the work that they do are recognised, both in the media and the professional press. Of the names in the recently published Health Services Journal (2014) ‘Clinical Leaders’ fist, just 12 were nurses and midwives, and Viv Bennett (Public Health England , Laura Serrant-Green (University ofWolverhampton) and Cheryll Adams (Institute of Health Visiting) are the only ones with a community nursing background. Similarly, the Nursing Times (2014) list of 44 leaders included only four community nurses. Thus, at a time when there is an urgent need to develop primary care services, encourage health professionals to make the community their work setting of choice and promote selffcare and consultation with primary care practitioners when necessary, there is a successful public relations exercise that promotes the excellence of hospital services with no mention of the alternatives. And while one can understand the mass media and its need to ‘sell’ its news, it is sad that the professional press is also a promoter of hospital-based services and staff. At worst, new entrants to nursing will not be able to identify national nurse leaders from community nursing, and for those who are community nurses, the subliminal message is that it is very hard to receive professional or other recognition. Thank goodness the Queen’s Nursing Institute champions nurses working in primary and community care. Perhaps the media and professional press will turn their attention to out-of-hospital services and the health professionals running them in the coming year.