An evaluation of educational requirements for community nurses treating dermatological patients

Abstract

In a questionnaire to community nurses treating dermatological patients, 14 out of 69 (20%) either treated children or gave advice to parents regarding childhood eczema, 35 (51%) treated adult eczema, 11 (16%) treated psoriasis, 55 (80%) treated leg ulcers, and 30 (43%) treated other dermatological problems. Specific questions regarding confidence to treat or educate were analysed in relation to the tasks being performed. All but 15% (8/55) treating leg ulcers were confident about their ability to apply four-layer bandaging. However, 8 out of 11 (72%) respondents treating psoriasis were not confident about their ability to treat scalp scaling, 11 out of 14 (79%) of those treating childhood eczema were not confident about applying body suiting, and 26 out of 36 (72%) of those treating eczema (any age), were not confident about ability to recognize infection as a cause or complication of dermatoses. The favoured educational modalities were visits to the local dermatology department (60/69, 87%), availability of a dermatology Nurse Practitioner or Liaison Nurse, or access to a hospital nurse-run dermatology clinic (both 44/69, 63%), or attendance at courses (36/69, 52%). Community nurses have an important role in treating and educating patients who may not require or be able to attend hospitals for treatment; they will achieve this best by provision of relevant locally based education, with allocation of adequate study time.

A review of the impact and effectiveness of nurse‐led care in dermatology

“…Of the 69 practice nurses who received questionnaires, 62 (90%) responded. As in Cox and Bowman's (2000) study, over half of the respondents saw between 1-5 dermatological patients a week. Eczema was one of the conditions most commonly treated.…”

“…Two further studies (Cox & Walton 1998, Jackson 2000 provide additional evidence in support of the conditions identified by Cox and Bowman (2000) and Smoker (1999). Jackson randomly distributed 395 questionnaires to members of the British Dermatological Nursing Group (BDNG).…”

“…Cox and Bowman (2000) conducted a small survey to assess the type and number of dermatological patients treated each week by community nurses, the nurses' level of expertise for the condition treated and their education and training needs. Sixty-nine responses (30 from practices nurses and 39 from community nurses) were received.…”

“…The survey conducted by Cox and Bowman (2000) also assessed nurses' level of expertise for the condition treated and their education and training needs. Although the need for education was recognized by respondents, nearly a quarter of the sample claimed they had received no such support.…”

Patient Education in Chronic Skin Diseases: A Systematic Review

“…Twenty-four of them were retained after filtering duplicates. After reading the remaining articles in full, four were excluded because their intervention was mainly non-educational (10)(11)(12)(13), five on the grounds of absence of a QoL outcome parameter (14)(15)(16)(17)(18), and a further five because they turned out to be non-randomised studies (19)(20)(21)(22)(23). Searching the references used in a systematic review on atopic dermatitis by Errser et al (24) yielded one additional publication (25).…”