At an European meeting of stoma care nurses in Helsinki a paper was given looking in to the attrition rate of clinical nurse specialists in the UK due to retire in the following five years. It was noted that unless succession planning and innovation in the practice setting was undertaken, the current body of expertise would be lost forever. It was decided that the most efficient way of capturing this expertise was by preparing Best Practice Guidelines(BPGs)for reference for the future stoma care nurses.
BPGs are intended for Healthcare Professionals who care for stoma patients in specialist and non specialist settings, to achieve excellence in their care giving. The Guidelines are written by experts in their field of stoma care that takes the reader from the novice to expert setting. The contributors have bought together the best evidence based on care available to help the Healthcare Professional care for their patient at all stages.
The project was submitted to the Royal College of Nursing Accreditation Unit (RCN AU) for consideration as an accredited resource. The resource is a tool that supports and extends knowledge and is a response to an identified need that focuses on a nursing or healthcare specialism. Following a rigorous review process, which also became the driving influence in the final document format, the Guidelines were granted RCN Accreditation for 3 years.
An audit of the resource in the first year identified that RCN Accreditation lent great credibility to the document,used by a wide variety of healthcare professionals in many different manners. This educational tool is also used in Indonesia, Vietnam and across Europe.
This work audits the document usage 3 years on and explores the next phase and the mode of the future resource.