Partnerships

Examples of successful partnerships

The 'Wipe it Out' campaign

Launched at RCN Congress 2005, this campaign is a partnership between Nursing Standard magazine, Kimberly-Clark and the Infection Control Nurses' Association. The campaign’s aim was to provide health care staff, employers, patients and visitors with resources to promote better and safer practice around MRSA and health care associated infections.

Some of the work we’ve done on this partnership campaign includes:

  • lobbying government, independent health care organisations and the NHS to accept ten minimum standards for infection control
  • attending regional and national conferences to influence nurses and the nursing world
  • developing an MRSA website, which received 99,000 visits and 173,000 information downloads in the first six months
  • producing educational packs that have been distributed throughout hospitals via RCN activists.

We achieved mass communication through the RCN networks and our publishing company, RCN Publishing, which carried 20 full-page adverts that reached 1.1million nurses. Adverts also appeared in specialist journals, reaching a further half million readers. All RCN newsletters carried a MRSA front page carrier sheet, which was also included in the RCN diary for 2006.

This led to an increase of more than £100,000 worth of publicity to the campaign value – reaching an overwhelming number of people in the nursing world. This campaign continues to be a major success story.

Promoting ‘Safe Glove Use’

The RCN Learning Zone developed a clinical skills learning module on safe glove use, written by Regent Medical and accredited by the RCN. The new module was launched by the RCN and is available to all RCN members.

We used many networks to promote the module through activities such as :

  • promotional inserts in three RCN newsletters with a combined distribution of more than 15,000 nurses
  • web adverts on our specialist zones, such as Acute Intervention, Primary Care and Public Health, Clinical and Supportive Care and Womens’ Health
  • editorial in specialty newsletters.