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Opinion
Our columnists share their perspective on topical subjects relevant to learning disability practice.
Numbering the dead
Estimates of the death toll in the first world war vary according to sources, but the figures of thirteen million civilians and eight and a half million military personnel are close enough to convey the colossal waste of human life.
Living life to the full
Hayley Goleniowska was devastated to learn that her baby had Down’s syndrome, but Natty is reaching her potential .
Why nurses need to network
The Fiona Laws Innovation in Practice Award is an essay competition open to all learning and intellectual disability nursing students in the UK and Ireland.
Wagging the dog
The idea that a university should provide 'knowledge for its own sake' was once popular, but whisper it today and faculty accountants may have a stroke.
Focus on the future
The lives of people with learning disabilities, and the nurses who work with them, have been transformed over the past 30 years, as largely institutional models of care have given way to community living.
Victorian values
Adolphe Quetelet was a 19th century Belgian statistician with an interest in population studies. He showed that, if samples of human populations are big enough, some people would appear to be more 'normal' than others because individual cases display a 'central tendency' to cluster around the midpoint of a graph.
The joy of jargon
There is no area of expertise, from algebra to zoology, that is without its own lexicon.
How to be a specialist
The need for specialist healthcare provision among people with learning disabilities is growing, yet the number of specialist NHS learning disability nurses is decreasing. In the current economic climate, many services are being 'rationalised', and there is an expectation that services should improve while investment is reduced. This means that more clarity about what learning disability nurses do and do not do is necessary.
The next frontier
It was good to hear the director of public prosecutions (DPP) Kier Starmer's announcement earlier this year that prosecuting people committing disability hate crime should be 'the next frontier' for the criminal justice system. Just as interesting is Mencap's research report into hate crime, Don't Stand By, published in June (Mencap 2011).
Going for gold
It was the night before Christmas and I was a first-year nursing student at a large hospital on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
The RCN Publishing Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Royal College of Nursing, the world's largest organisation for nurses. RCN Publishing produces one weekly, eight monthly and two quarterly nursing publications. Nursing Standard, the flagship journal, is the UK's biggest selling weekly for nursing. It is produced by RCN Publishing Company along with a suite of specialist nursing journals - Cancer Nursing Practice, Mental Health Practice, Learning Disability Practice, Nursing Children and Young People, Nursing Management, Emergency Nurse, Nursing Older People, Nurse Researcher and Primary Health Care. RCN Publishing Company also produce the RCN Bulletin, a major source of up-to-the-minute information for RCN members in all specialities, grades and working environments. With the latest nurse vacancies from trusts nationwide, it has become the most cost-effective nurse recruitment magazine available.