Current work

Glove Awareness Week (GAW) 30 April to 4 May 2018

The RCN is hosting a Glove Awareness week to coincide with the updating of its guidance on glove use ‘Tools of the Trade’.  

The aim of the week is to highlight the need for nursing staff to be ‘glove aware’ and promote appropriate use of gloves in the workplace. Over-use of gloves, including the wearing of gloves when not necessary, carries the risk of staff developing work-related dermatitis.  Additionally the wearing of gloves when not necessary risks undermining hand hygiene programmes, particularly when gloves are not changed between patient/person contacts.

What will GAW do?

GAW will showcase work of organisations and individuals on reducing unnecessary glove use and promoting skin health. Additionally for each day of the week we will promote messages on maintaining skin health and best practice for glove use.

How can you be part of this week?

Visit our Glove Awareness Week webpage and download the resources. These have been designed to fit in with any activities you may be undertaking locally to stimulate conversations about glove use and skin care.

We are keen to hear from you if you are doing work locally on promoting skin health or promoting appropriate use of gloves. This might be led by link nurses, infection prevention teams or local areas such as wards/dept’s/nursing homes. To find out more contact Rose Gallagher.

Please complete and return this evaluation form on Glove Awareness Week 2018

Leadership and professional advice

The RCN, through the professional lead for Infection Prevention and Control (IPC), provides visible and clinical leadership in support of Infection Prevention and Control and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). In addition to our strategic activity, we work to ensure that any resources we develop add value to our members and stakeholders, do not duplicate existing available information, complement the work of others and are quality assured.

The RCN hosts a generic IPC Network which supports the delivery of RCN focused projects or resources involving the prevention of infection. A new IPC network to support nurses and others working with Children and Young people (CYP) was launched in 2017.   Additionally, the RCN is actively involved in strategic work programmes and stakeholder or expert reference group meetings to influence and develop policy on Healthcare Associated Infections, and AMR for all countries of the UK. This work closely aligns with RCN activity supporting patient safety, quality improvement and sepsis recognition and management.

Specific examples of current, strategic work we are undertaking or supporting that impacts on the prevention of infection includes:

• Developing a new professional development course to support post-registration and specialist education in infection prevention and control (commences Spring 2018)
• Supporting the Care Quality Commission (England) in the development of its new regulatory framework and inspection programme through its co-production programme 
• NHS Improvement Prevention of Healthcare Associated Gram-Negative Blood Stream Infections programme
• Influencing and supporting the implementation of the Future Operating Model (FOM) in England and procurement of products and consumables – see Small Changes Big Differences
• Membership of the European Network to Promote Infection Prevention for Patient Safety  (EUNETIPS)
• High Consequence Infectious Disease planning.

Antimicrobial resistance

Our work supporting efforts to reduce the risk of AMR is diverse and more detail can be found on our Antimicrobial resistance page.

• Advising the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) on the development and implementation of their AMR strategy 
• Attending the Chief Medical Officer’s (CMO) stakeholder meetings
• Membership of the English surveillance programme for antimicrobial utilisation and resistance (ESPAUR) group
• Activities supporting European Antibiotic Awareness day and World Antibiotic Awareness Week
• Membership of the human and animal health alliance
• Development and implementation of new rapid diagnostics 
• Development of a new BSI standard for antimicrobial impregnated surfaces.