Professional nurse (London, England)
-
Nurses have a fundamental role in ensuring the safety of patients in their care. Judith Chamberlain-Webber outlines current policy measures aimed at removing the blame culture and encouraging the reporting of incidents and near misses without fear of reprimand, so that lessons can be learned.
-
Managing surgical wounds healing by primary intention is likely to become less problematic with the development of more effective advanced wound dressings; increasingly effective methods of medicated pain management; education; and advances in minimal access surgical (MAS) techniques. Future research is likely to focus on management of patients with surgical wounds healing by secondary intention. ⋯ Theatre practitioners, clinical nurses and surgical practitioners, working as part of the multidisciplinary team, are ideally placed to undertake this work and to include multimodal, holistic approaches to caring for surgical wounds and controlling surgical wound pain (Gould, 1999). Patient support and education is likely to become an increasing priority, particularly in view of the significant move from inpatient care to short-stay and day-case surgery.