Article Text
Abstract
Introduction Ten of the community palliative care nurses working out of St Barnabas House Hospice in Worthing have previously attended a physical examination course. Some nurses have attended this very recently, but others less so. Informal feedback from these nurses suggested they lacked confidence performing examinations in their clinical practice and needed assistance in maintaining their skills. The inpatient unit often has stable patients with respiratory signs. Many of the doctors staffing the unit have an interest in teaching and have recently passed the clinical examination for membership of the Royal College of Physicians (PACES). A teaching programme was designed to share knowledge and address educational needs of the community team.
Methods Nine of the ten nurses signed up to a programme of 6 one-hour sessions in this pilot. Each session is limited to three nurses and is run by a ward doctor on the inpatient unit. The sessions are tailored to the attending community nurse specialists’ needs and involve examining patients on the inpatient ward with respiratory signs. Attendees are required to fill in a short survey before attending the first session and after attending the last session to assess their subjective confidence levels in performing the respiratory examination and finding signs. The number of examinations performed during clinical practice per week before and after the course will also be measured as an assessment of behavioural change.
Results The project is currently in progress, results to be presented at the conference.