Nutrition - discover more on nutritional care

This page signposts a range of additional RCN resources which you can use to update yourself on this topic and continue to draw upon to meet your further learning and development needs.

Looking for help with your searching skills?

An RCN Learning Zone area ‘How trustworthy is your information’ can help you in researching topics in support of your day-to-day work or studies. The learning is arranged around the RCN competences for information literacy and guides you through some of the issues and activities involved, including using information legally, inclusively and ethically and applying and communicating the results of your information search appropriately – visit How trustworthy is your information.
The RCN information literacy competences are intended to support the individual and the nursing team’s thinking about information required to inform activities of varying complexity. They are mapped to the Knowledge and Skills Framework – see Finding, using and managing information (PDF 1.4MB) - see how to access PDF files.
There are also pages for each of the information literacy competences which guide you to learning resources that will help you develop the skills relevant to each competence- see the left hand menu at information literacy competences.

Looking for articles and books on this topic?

RCN e-library

The RCN e-library which can be accessed using your membership number provides:

e-journals - access to over 1000 full text journals via databases and an A-Z list, now including some psychology journals
e-books - these searchable collections includes full text titles on nutrition and clinical nutrition
databases - you can use to search for article references and some of these also include full text articles
relevant articles - selected articles from a search done on British Nursing Index, and more information on how you can do the search yourself for a more comprehensive listing
library catalogue - you can search the RCN library catalogue and access a guide to the catalogue.

Each of the e-resources has a short online demo illustrating how to use them which you can access from the pages above.

There is also an RCN Learning Zone area which provides an overview of the RCN e-library together with basic tips for searching and finding information – visit Using your RCN e-library.

For further advice on using the resources and related queries use the Virtual enquiry service.

Looking for web-based resources?

These include agencies, organisations, guidance, policy documents, reports that are freely available on the Web.

Delicious bookmarks

We are using the social bookmarking tool Delicious to share online resources and currently have:

Quality and Safety - Royal College of Nursing’s bookmarks - these are based on the resources highlighted in our RCN Quality and Safety e-Bulletin (see below) with the added advantage of being able to search across the tags (subject headings we assign to every item we add). This includes the tags nutrition, nutritional-care, diet, food.
RCN Information and Knowledge Management (IKM) / RCN Enquiry Desk’s bookmarks - these are useful for a wide variety of topics such as statistics, evidence-based practice, legislation, patient information and more.

Looking for courses and continuing professional development opportunities?

Distance learning through the OU-RCN Strategic Alliance - the Open University (OU) and the RCN have joined forces to encourage greater participation in education and training through flexible work-based learning. Most courses can be studied as stand-alone modules as well as part of an award.

RCN Events - conferences and events across the four UK countries to support both your personal and professional development. See also RCN Accredited events and conferences.

RCN Learning Zone – Provides nurses and health care assistants with easy-to-access learning materials available at any time.

Keeping up-to-date?

RCN Quality and Safety e-Bulletin

Issued fortnightly and organised around key themes such as patient safety, quality improvement tools and techniques, patient focus, and eHealth, the e-Bulletin will keep you up to date with clinical governance news, developments, publications and events across the four UK countries. We aim to include information about any new guidance, tools, patient experience and practice examples relating to nutritional care.

For further information and to register to receive copies see RCN Quality and Safety e-Bulletin.