The RCN standards of care programme was established in 1987 as part of a wider initiative to improve the quality of nursing care. In the beginning its director, Alison Kitson, worked with groups of nurses to introduce the first concepts of nursing and health quality. Here, she describes how the programme developed.

Context Compassion is not a new concept within healthcare. However, compassion has become the focus of much research and debate during the past 10 years, following reports of lack of compassion within UK healthcare practice. This recent intense focus has addressed many aspects of care practices and education, recognising that compassion is a complex concept. This study adds a further dimension ...

This article presents part of a doctoral study which explored some spiritual aspects of nursing care. It reports how a sample of nurses perceived and reported how they gave spiritual care, and identifies possible influencing factors. The implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for practice made.

The objective of this study was to learn about the production of nursing knowledge in Brazil associated with the clinic theme. This is a qualitative study performed by means of an integrative review. Data collection was performed on the SciELO database using the keywords nursing and clinic, present in the abstracts of articles. It was found that the clinic is seen as an instrument used to estab...

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As part of an initiative to develop evidence-based practice at the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield, a three-part project was undertaken. The aims were to identify barriers to using research in nursing, establish a baseline of nurses' knowledge and its influence on their practice in one essential area of nursing care--pressure damage prevention--and develop a strategy for change which took ...

Despite the well established policy of ‘shifting’ care from hospitals to the community[1], the overall proportion of nursing staff employed to provide general nursing care to people in their own homes has changed little. Specifically, the number of District Nurses is reported to have decreased by 40% in the last decade[2]. In this Policy+, we review data on the district nursing workforce, look ...

This text provides a comprehensive framework for providing culturally competent nursing care to individuals, families, groups, communities and institutions. We begin with a synthesis of transcultural theories, models, and research studies. It is our intent to provide transcultural knowledge that can be useful in nursing care. The text actually began in 1989 as a collegial effort by novice trans...