Reforms to the NHS following the passing of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 have created new purchaser organisations with responsibility for planning the configuration of healthcare services in their geographic areas. If a community multiple sclerosis (MS) nursing service is to survive in this environment, it must demonstrate its ability to contribute to achieving the purchaser organisations’ objectives. Evaluation data, such as hospital admission avoidance and patient satisfaction, will be crucial in demonstrating the community MS nursing service’s clinical and economic effectiveness. A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis of the issues facing a community MS service in this environment is provided.
In the first Practice Profile to be published in Nursing Standard, Debbie Quinn demonstrates how studying a Continuing Education reader helped to develop an area of clinical practice – the prevention of pressure sores. Continuing Education Readers are made up of between four and six CPD (previously CE) articles and Debbie based her Profile onone of these. We will be publishing further Practice Profiles related to CPD articles.
