Nursing for long term health: joint student-staff publication success

Congratulations to Kerry May who, with Dr Janet Scammell, has just had a journal article published in the International Journal of Palliative Care.

Kerry is now a staff nurse at Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, with a passion for improving care quality for those living with dementia.  She developed this paper when a third year adult nursing student from her assignment submitted for the Reviewing Literature for Practice (RLIP) unit.  

Kerry was aware that healthcare professionals sometimes struggled with end of life care for this client group given the communication difficulties that are sometimes evident.  Her literature review focused specifically on nurses' experiences of pain management in end of life dementia care.  She followed the literature review process systematically and concluded that for those providing end of life care for people living with dementia required more specialist education in order to improve care quality at this important life stage.

"Kerry's passion showed through in her writing and will really 'speak' to fellow nursing colleagues," said Dr Scammell, "I feel very proud of Kerry and thank her for making the effort to share her work more widely."