Quality improvement - RCN support

Publications

The following are selected publications from the RCN and are the more generic publications relevant to improvement activities. The RCN also publishes many guidance documents for specific areas of nursing and procedures, so please also refer to the list and search tool at RCN publications.

You may also find it useful to look at the RCN patient safety resources.

This list of publications was last updated on 3 December 2012. Most of the publications listed are in PDF format - see how to access PDF files.

Clinical guidelines

This section of the RCN website lists the clinical guidelines which have been developed by the RCN. This includes the guidelines developed by the National Collaborating Centre for Nursing and Supportive Care (NCC-NSC) for NICE. The guidelines are available as downloadable PDF documents and there is information about related resources.

View the clinical guidelines.

The following list is arranged firstly by publication date order (most recent first), and then alphabetically by title.

Essential practice for infection prevention and control (2012) (PDF 669.4KB)
This provides an overview of the core elements and rationale for infection practice and associated activities and is applicable to all nurses, midwives and health care assistants, regardless of their practice setting. It also highlights why other issues, such as hydration and nutrition, should be viewed as an essential complementary component of nursing practice.

National Earl Warning Score online training resource (2012)
The Royal College of Nursing has joined forces with the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) to launch the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) which is being introduced across the NHS and which provides national guidance in standardisation of critical signs for patients in the acute setting. NEWS consists of a standardised bedside chart and uses universally recognised terminology to make it easier for clinical staff to recognise and respond to a patient whose condition is deteriorating. The system can be used in both acute and community care settings. This e-learning portal provides training on how to effectively operate the system.

Nursing dashboards – measuring quality (2012) (PDF 1.1MB)
This report summarises key messages from the nursing dashboard summit held by the RCN on 3 June 2011. The objective of a clinical dashboard is to provide a realtime, or near realtime, measure of nursing quality. Feedback from the summit also helped to detail how the RCN's Principles of Nursing Practice can be used to align and underpin dashboards, as they are applicable to all nursing staff across all four countries.

Patient outcomes of specialist nursing services (2012) (PDF 1.2 MB)
This report describes the implementation of Phase 1 of a quality improvement project to develop a range of measures to assess the quality of specialist nursing services. Phase 1 was the development of a patient evaluation measure to assess the impact of the specialist nurse on patient outcomes, as determined by patients. This work is closely linked to the development of the RCN’s Principles of Nursing Practice launched in 2010. See also: Views from advanced and specialist nurses on national, regional and local nursing measures: an RCN survey.

Putting quality into the Care Quality Commission (2012) (PDF 604.8KB)
This report details the findings from a recent survey of more than 5,000 RCN members around the health care regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC). It found that although nurses support the CQC and welcome the improvements it has recently made, there is more work to do to fully understand issues such as staffing levels and skill mix when undertaking assessments.

Views from advanced and specialist nurses on national, regional and local nursing measures. An RCN survey (2012) (PDF 841.3 KB)
This document reports on the results of a survey undertaken in October 2011, exploring the advanced and specialist nurse views of current national, regional and local nursing measures. The survey was completed as part of a nursing measurement workstream. The findings indicate room for improvement across a number of factors, not least a greater understanding of which measures are being used, where, and why. The findings also support the conclusions of an appraisal of nursing metrics (Griffiths et al, 2008), which recommends that nursing measures must be sensitive to nursing, recognise the nursing contribution, and must lie within nursing’s area of responsibility and authority. See also: Patient outcomes of specialist nursing services.

Ward rounds in medicine: Principles for best practice (2012) (PDF 2MB)
This report produced jointly with the Royal College of Physicians calls for ward rounds to be “restored to a position of central importance in how we collectively care for and communicate with patients”, and underlines the crucial role that nurses have on ward rounds in the communication processes with other healthcare professionals and between patients and healthcare professionals. The guidance sets outs core recommendations and principles for best practice for conducting medical ward rounds, reflecting best available current knowledge of multiprofessional working.

Commissioning health services: a guide for RCN activists and nurses (2011) (PDF 658.9KB)
This publication aims to help nurses understand the commissioning process, how it works, what it aims to achieve and how they can become involved. It underlines the increasing importance of nurse involvement in influencing commissioning decisions and protecting the interests of patients, particularly in the current economic climate.

Health care service standards in caring for neonates, children and young people (2011) (PDF 424KB)
This RCN guidance document outlines standards to promote the highest level of care and wellbeing for all children, young people and their families in health care services wherever they are in the four countries of the UK.

Infection prevention and control: information and learning resources for health care staff (2011) (PDF 397.2KB)
This resource provides guidance on how to search and find relevant evidence-based information and guidance to help keep infection prevention knowledge and practice up-to-date.

PROMS: Patient Reported Outcome Measures. The role, use and impact of PROMS on nursing in the English NHS (2011) (PDF 74.2KB)
This briefing from the RCN Policy and International Department describes what PROMs are, why they are important to nursing and the key issues for nursing in relation to PROMs.

Standards for the design of hospital in-patient prescription charts (2011) (PDF 136KB)
A new report has defined the standards guiding the design of prescription charts. It is hoped the standards will be used by hospitals to benchmark local charts. The report, jointly published by the RCN, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and commissioned by the Department of Health, is part of a range of high level multidisciplinary initiatives that inform the medicines safety and safe prescribing agenda.The standards can also be used to inform the development of a national UK prescription chart; a move supported by the RCN, a number of medical royal colleges and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Principles of Nursing Practice poster (PDF 635KB) (2010)
This Principles are a core resource for nursing practice and quality improvement. They describe what everyone can expect from nursing practice, whether colleagues, patients, their families or carers, and provide a framework for care and quality improvement. This poster describes the eight Principles. There is also a pocket sized card version (PDF 849KB). Also available is an online resource which introduces the Principles of Nursing Practice and describes how they relate to other publications about the quality of nursing care. Stories are used to illustrate the Principles in practice and there are examples of how the Principles are being used – see Examples of how the Principles are being used.

Infection prevention and control minimum standards (2009) (PDF 3.2MB)
These are the minimum standards the Royal College of Nursing and the Infection Prevention Society believe should be accepted and mandated by governments, the relevant UK departments of health and, where applicable, all independent health care organisations.

Measuring for quality in health and social care. An RCN position statement (2009) (PDF 67.9KB)
This information sets out the RCN’s position in relation to quality and its measurement, and outlines the RCN’s input on this issue. Designed to be of value to those for whom quality and its measurement is integral to their day-to-day work, it will also assist the wider health and social community to understand the contribution that nursing makes in this arena.

Small changes make a big difference: how you can influence to deliver dignified care (2008) (PDF 3.1MB)
This resource has been developed primarily for unit, ward or team leaders and managers and aims to provide nursing teams with ideas about how to influence and to maintain and improve dignity in practice areas. It provides explanations, examples of good practice and opportunities to identify and develop skills and strategies. It is one of a number of resources published as part of the RCN Dignity Campaign. Details of these resources can be found in the Dignity resource.

Principles to inform decision making: what do I need to know? (2nd ed 2008) (PDF 282.1KB)
The principles in this document reflect the values that underlie the RCN definition of nursing. These principles - quality, accountability, equality and partnership - offer a framework within which actions and outcomes can be tested.

Developing and sustaining effective teams (PDF 663.5KB) (2007)
This publication brings together learning from the Clinical Teams Programme and provides a series of guides which are designed to be used by anyone who works in a team and who wishes to improve the ways in which a team operates.

Workplace resources for practice development (2007)
This publication brings together resources that can be used as part of your practice development work either as an individual or as part of collaborative and team work. The resources could also be used as part of your wider professional development, for example contributing evidence to your portfolio. This is not available online but copies can be ordered directly from RCND Publications publications@rcn.org.uk. They are available in CD format (publication code: 003534, £20) or paper format (publication code 003533, £60).

Changing patients’ worlds through nursing practice expertise: exploring nursing practice expertise through emancipatory action research and fourth generation evaluation (2005) (PDF 580KB)
The Expertise in Practice Project began in May 1998 and continued into 2004. The project makes a significant contribution to contemporary understanding of what constitutes expertise in the practice of nursing. It provides insight into what occurs between expert practitioners and their service users.