Continuing professional development in children's nursing: identifying needs and delivering quality assured activities.

Continuing professional development (CPD) for nurses is intrinsically linked to quality improvement, improved patient safety and outcomes, career progression, and recruitment and retention, as well as being integral to nurses' lifelong development. However, despite these advantages, there is no framework to develop, accredit, deliver and measure the outcomes of CPD in the UK. This article outlines the elements of a CPD framework for excellence for children's nurses that was developed by the lead for excellence in nursing practice at Nottingham Children's Hospital, England, in collaboration with lead educators and facilitators of CPD activities. To develop the framework, they scoped existing CPD activities and mapped the content to a quality standards framework. Each of the 39 CPD activities identified were then submitted to the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust Institute of Care Excellence for accreditation, with the aim of providing quality assurance. The framework for excellence aims to support the delivery of credentialed high-quality, evidence-based information that meets the needs of children's nurses, with the future capability to measure learning outcomes.

Improving the uptake of medical device training to promote patient safety.

Safe and effective patient care is dependent on the appropriate use of medical devices, so it is necessary to ensure that all nursing staff are competent in their use. This article describes how one urology ward in a large acute NHS trust has supported medical device training for its staff. AIM: To explore the potential benefits of introducing a ward time out training day to improve staff competency in the use of medical devices. METHOD: A training programme was introduced for the urology ward staff, which involved ward time out training days that covered medical device and mandatory training, alongside evidence to support nurses' revalidation and a forum for peer support. FINDINGS: Since the ward time out training days were introduced in 2015, medical device training competency among the urology ward staff has risen from 65% to 97% across all staff groups, including nurses and healthcare assistants. CONCLUSION: The ward time out training days were beneficial for the urology ward staff, and increased their medical device training competency. Additional benefits of the ward time out training days included team integration, improved knowledge and competency among staff, and nurses undertaking continuing professional development hours that contributed towards their revalidation.

Divisional review of the nurse specialist role.

Nurse specialists have been described as providing an optimal return on investment for income generation, patient safety, cost savings, and improvements in patient care and experience. However, there is often a lack of understanding of the nurse specialist role and how such nurses support improved patient outcomes. To assess the effect of the nurse specialist in a division of one large NHS trust, a review of the nurse specialist role was undertaken within eight specialties. This review profiled nurse specialists' roles in terms of their activity, income generation and quality, with the aim of producing specialist job plans to accurately reflect their roles. Nurse specialists were provided with a job-planning template and face-to-face sessions on how to complete it. The returned job plans were reviewed by a panel consisting of nursing management, lead clinical nurse specialists and representatives from finance. The results were used to generate three generic nurse specialist job plans that recognised the core elements of the role. The division intends to undertake a further review of nurse specialists, which aims to explore the role in further detail, including identifying their development needs. Having examined the effects of the nurse specialist role, the division needs to ensure that nurse specialists are resourced to reach their full potential.