Hydration practices in residential and nursing care homes for older people.

Aim: To scope and explore hydration practices in care homes.

Background: Older residents do not regularly consume adequate fluids to support health. Achieving this is difficult with residents who have coexisting health, sensory and functional problems, as well as challenging hydration habits.

Integrated Working for Enhanced Health Care in English Nursing Homes.

Background: The increasingly complex nature of care home residents' health status means that this population requires significant multidisciplinary team input from health services. To address this, a multisector and multiprofessional enhanced healthcare programme was implemented in nursing homes across Gateshead Council in Northern England.

Study Aims: To explore the views and experiences of practitioners, social care officers, and carers involved in the enhanced health care in care home programme, in order to develop understanding of the service delivery model and associated workforce needs for the provision of health care to older residents.

Benchmarking: implementing the process in practice.

Government guidance and policy promotes the use of benchmarks as measures against which practice and care can be measured. This provides the motivation for practitioners to make changes to improve patient care. Adopting a systematic approach, practitioners can implement changes in practice quickly.

Mucosal immune responses to meningococcal conjugate polysaccharide vaccines in infants.

Background: Serogroup C meningococcal conjugate polysaccharide vaccines have been reported to induce significant serum IgG antibodies and immunologic memory in infants. Because meningococcus is a mucosal pathogen colonizing the nasopharynx, local mucosal immune responses may play an important role in host defense against infection and carriage. We have investigated the mucosal IgA and IgG antibody responses to two meningococcal C conjugate vaccines in the saliva of healthy infants.