Under cover.

Law at Work, Health and Safety Law EMPLOYMENT AND health and safety law underpin good management practice, yet many nurses who manage staff have little training in these two key areas. They may have covered areas such as equality and diversity, basic health and safety, moving and handling, and recruitment and sickness absence management but not much else.

WITHDRAWN: Antibiotics / anti-inflammatories for reducing acute inflammatory episodes in lymphoedema of the limbs.

Background: Lymphoedema is a chronic, progressive condition and one area of debate is the optimum management for infective/inflammatory episodes (AIE's).

Objectives: To determine whether antibiotic/anti-inflammatory drugs given prophylactically reduce the number and severity of AIE's in patients with lymphoedema.

Search Strategy: We searched the Cochrane Breast Cancer Group register in September 2003, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (The Cochrane Library, Issue 4, 2003), CINAHL, MEDLINE, PASCAL, SIGLE, UnCover, reference lists produced by The British Lymphology Society, the National Research Register (NRR) and the International Society of Lymphology congress proceedings.

The mind map book.

Mind mapping is a thinking technique that nursing leaders can use to improve their decision-making and problem-solving abilities, and to better organise their ideas.

Who cares? one family's shocking story of 'care' in today's NHS Amanda Steane Who cares? one family's shocking story of 'care' in today's NHS.

EVERY YEAR, around 34,000 people die and around permanently due to clinical negligence in the NHS.

Leadership role of Consultant Nurses working with Older People: a co-operative inquiry.

Aims: The aim of the co-operative enquiry undertaken was to explore how the leadership component of the Consultant Nurse for Older People role was reflected in day-to-day working.

Background: Leadership is one of the four key elements of the Consultant Nurse role and is the key mechanism for achieving and embedding transformation in practice. However, within the role of the Consultant Nurse this area has not been explored in detail.

The 'year of the HCA'.

Around this time last year, there were said to be about 40,000 managers in the NHS, and questions were asked in the media about what they all did. More recently, managers at several NHS trusts have been blamed for losing patient records.

Presence: Exploring profound change in people, organizations and society Presence: Exploring profound change in people, organizations and society Senge Peter et al [Formula: see text].

In considering issues such as globalisation, sustainable communities, learning and change, the text of this compelling book links many of the challenges facing the world, including poverty and inequality, the finite nature of resources, and the role of individuals and communities in bringing about change.

Under cover.

A Leader's Legacy is not only readable, it is meaningful, and I found myself nodding my head and agreeing.

Practice-based assessment: strategies for mentors.

The reader is encouraged to investigate what is involved in the practice-based assessment of students and to consider how it might be improved. The author suggests that students should be assessed on their performance during episodes of care rather than by continuous assessment.

User involvement in the development of a research bid: barriers, enablers and impacts.

Objective: To involve users in the development of a research bid to examine parents' experiences of having a pre-term baby, and to examine the barriers, enablers and impacts of user involvement.

Design: A mainly collaborative approach to user involvement was adopted, although different types of involvement were evident at different stages of the project. Users' experiences and perspectives provided the focus for the regular meetings which underpinned the writing of the research bid.

Professional development opportunities in changing times.

At a time when jobs are in jeopardy and budgets for educational courses and study days have been cut, it is tempting for nurses to neglect their professional development. This article aims to inspire nurses to look for ways of enhancing their professional expertise so that they can continue to improve patient care and take advantage of future career opportunities.

Challenges in delivering safe patient care: a commentary on a quality improvement initiative.

The specific aim of this commentary is to identify the challenges identified by nurses in the delivery of safe patient care. In reporting, some of the messages emanating from the research and policy literature, the paper highlights the importance of taking a system approach to the investigation of patient safety failures, the conflicting evidence relating to patient deaths as a result of failures in safety, and the underlying importance of culture. The paper outlines the reasons why patient safety has become so prominent, and provides a brief description of some of the definitions and terminology in current use.

At the centre of practice.

IN THE CURRENT climate of change, nurses need to respond quickly and appropriately to emerging challenges and to acquire rapid information about issues that affect quality of care.

Evidence review on older people's views and experiences of falls prevention strategies.

Background: A systematic review was undertaken of qualitative and quantitative studies and reviews that focus on older people's views and experiences of falls prevention. The review was undertaken to provide an additional dimension to the clinical effectiveness evidence provided by a Cochrane review on falls prevention (Gillespie et al. 2003) to inform the development of a national guideline on falls prevention in older people.

Strategies to explore innovation in nursing practice.

This article examines different types of innovation and explores how they can be applied to health care. It provides information on strategic that can be used by nurses to incorporate innovation in their practice.

Wandering into the future: reconceptualizing wandering 'A natural and good thing'.

There is still significant scope for improvement in knowledge on wandering in dementia and in the care of persons with dementia who wander. Although progress in research-derived knowledge is evident over the last 15 years, the current state of practice is influenced by an immature research base where the clarification of what wandering is still needs to be achieved. This is fuelled by research which to date, has framed wandering as a problem behaviour and generally starts from the premise that it needs to be prevented or severely controlled.

Patient-reported outcome I: measuring what matters in musculoskeletal care.

Patients have an important role to play in communicating the impact of disease and the effectiveness of health care. Well-developed patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) can provide a clinically relevant and scientifically rigorous resource for including the patient perspective in decisions about health care and subsequent evaluation. This article will introduce readers to the field of health outcome assessment, and specifically to patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs).