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Cambodia has one of the highest death rates for children under five years of age in Southeast Asia. The high mortality rate of children under five years of age, especially the neonate is 35 per 1,000 for the period zero to four years. There are no neonatal nursing standards of practice to guide nurses providing neonatal nursing care. Some general guidelines are currently being implemented for both doctors and nurses. The Minister for Health officially launched the Cambodian Council of Nurses’ Guideline for the Standard of Nursing Care in December 2015. In the absence of specific neonatal nursing standards of practice, the purpose of this paper is to develop the Neonatal Nursing Standard of Practice for Cambodia.

The Delphi technique was selected as being appropriate for this study. The snowball with purposive sampling was used. The identified experts were located across Cambodia so the e-Delphi approach was considered appropriate and applicable according to the study context. Four experts preferred to be interviewed face-to-face, while 16 experts were confident to use e-mail to respond to the questionnaire in Round 1. In total, 19 experts provided responses via e-mail to the Rounds 2 and 3 questionnaires.

A Standard for Neonatal Nursing Practice for Cambodia which consists of ten standards was found as a result of this study: assessment, nursing diagnosis, planning, implementation, evaluation, ethics, evidence-based practice and research, health teaching and health promotion, continuing education, and communication.

All items and sub-items achieved consensus as either being at the most significant level and therefore, could be key indicators for neonatal nursing standards of practice. The results of this study can be incorporated into a focused discussion led by the Nursing and Midwifery Bureau of the Ministry of Health to develop national standards of practice for neonatal nurses in Cambodia.

There is increasing evidence in the literature that patient outcome is strongly linked to the quality of nursing care. In practice, the process of measuring the quality of nursing care is complex and multifaceted as it is dependent not only on the skills and practices of the individual nurse, but also on the professional and organisational structure that is practised within. The expert panel concept was developed to address clinical standards and practice at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. The Nursing Expert Panel's purpose was to evaluate nursing practice, identify practice deficits, highlight areas of clinical innovation and excellence, and make recommendations where appropriate to improve patient outcome. The aim of this paper is to investigate this.

A pilot programme to evaluate eight clinical areas was developed and implemented. The key areas of evaluation included clinical care as well as the managerial and professional practices that support patient care. The Expert Panel, consisting of predominantly nursing staff, was recruited from within the organisation. During the evaluation, the panel collected qualitative and quantitative data using a variety of data collection tools. Data were then analysed and recommendations developed.

Five common themes of practice deficit were identified during the pilot period and the development of strategies for practice improvement is in progress.

Following successful implementation of the pilot phase, the Nursing Expert Panel process is now being implemented across the organisation. With ongoing evaluation and improvement of the Expert Panel Process, this quality initiative will become the foundation of nursing standards and practice evaluation at this organisation.

Approaches for the systematic evaluation of nursing practice are outlined. Practical methods and steps in auditing care at ward and individual patient level are discussed. Standard‐setting at ward level is systematically described and examples given. Monitoring and measuring outcomes and individual patient unit (IPA) are also described.

Concerns about quality and standards of care in the nursing and residential home sector have exercised policymakers, managers and practitioners in both Australia and the UK for some years. While Australia is a relatively young country, demographically speaking, it has in place a coherent ‘aged care’ policy. The UK on the other hand, with its rapidly ageing profile, has only recently made a serious policy commitment to the health and social care agenda for older people. Australia therefore has several years of experience to be shared with the UK when it comes to policy and practice of quality improvement. In particular, there are valuable lessons to be learnt from Australia's national outcome standards and monitoring system for care homes, and its more recent introduction of a care homes accreditation system. Apart from identifying any issues associated with the implementation of such approaches to quality improvement, it is important to establish whether they have an impact on the quality of care and life of older residents. As the UK moves to implementing national minimum standards in 2002, lessons from Australia are timely and may help inform best practice and policy in long‐term care in the future.

The part played by quality assurance and the setting of standards in enhancing the motivation of nurses is described. The involvement of nurses themselves in developing “professional practice” has played a key role in reducing sickness, absence and turnover rates.

This paper aims to explain how and why the philosophical changes to the pre-registration nursing standards by the UK’s Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) have resulted in a paradigm shift for mental health nursing.

This paper critically examines the changes to nursing education standards and offers an analysis of the problems associated with the shift towards a generic nursing syllabus.

The said shift prioritises physical health intervention, skills, procedures and tasks over the uniqueness of mental health nursing.

This paper argues that mental health nursing skills and qualities such as connection, genuine advocacy and therapeutic-use-of-self have been undervalued and under-represented by the new education standards.

This paper calls on the profession and service users to join the discourse and inform future mental health nursing identity. Ultimately, this paper calls on the NMC to reconsider the underpinning principles of the education standards and allot due consideration to the specific needs of the mental health nursing profession.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and evaluate the Standards of Healthcare Facility for Thai Female Inmates (SHF-TFI) through healthcare service improvement.

This research and quality improvement project was comprised of three phases. Surveying healthcare facilities and in-depth interviews with female inmates as well as prison nurses were employed in Phase I. Expert reviews and public hearing meetings were used for developing the SHF-TFI in Phase II. Satisfaction questionnaires, focus group interviews of the female inmates, and in-depth interviews with nurses and prison wardens were utilized to evaluate feasibility and effectiveness of SHF-TFI implementation in Phase III.

The SHF-TFI was elaborated in order to be more specific to the context of the correctional institutes and correspond with healthcare as to the needs of female inmates. It was divided into three main aspects: administrative standards, health service standards and outcome standards. After implementation, nurses reflected on the feasibility and benefits of the SHF-TFI on the organizations, inmates and nurses. The female inmates perceived remarkable improvement in the healthcare services including physical activity promotion and screening programs for non-communicable diseases, the physical environment and sufficiency of medical equipment. Moreover, the pregnant inmates and incarcerated mothers with children shared their views on better antenatal and child developmental care, as well as availability of baby supplies.

The findings support the feasibility and effectiveness of the SHF-TFI for quality care improvement and applicability of the Bangkok Rules in women’s correctional institutes.

The purpose of this paper is to report on ethnographic research that investigated how self-employed nurses perceive the contemporary healthcare field, what attributes they possess that facilitate their roles as change agents, what strategies they use to influence change, and what consequences they face for their actions, thus contributing to what is known about organizational change in institutionalized settings such as healthcare.

Focussed ethnography was used to explore self-employed nurses’ work experiences and elucidate the cultural elements of their social contexts, including customs, ideologies, beliefs, and knowledge and the ways that these impact upon the possibilities for change in the system.

These self-employed nurses reflected on the shortcomings in the healthcare system and took entrepreneurial risks that would allow them to practice nursing according to their professional values. They used a number of strategies to influence change such as capitalizing on opportunities, preparing themselves for innovative work, managing and expanding the scope of nursing practice, and building new ideas on foundational nursing knowledge and experience. They had high job satisfaction and a strong sense of contribution but they faced significant resistance because of their non-traditional approach to nursing practice.

Despite dramatic restructuring in the Canadian healthcare system, the system remains physician-centered and hospital-based. Nursing ' s professional potential has been largely untapped in any change efforts. Self-employed nurses have positioned themselves to deliver care based on nursing values and to promote alternative conceptions of health and healthcare. This study offers a rare exploration of this unique form of nursing practice and its potential to influence health system reform.

The study aims were: (1) to replicate a previous study by the first author to confirm previous findings (internal validity) and to check construct validity of previously proposed information-behaviour profiles, (2) to compare the information processes used by students in parallel with requirements of early professional practice.

A replication study used the same questionnaire, delivered online to all 175 students across three years of a BSc adult nursing degree programme on one UK university campus. The survey included questions on information seeking processes, personality, approaches to learning and self-efficacy with information literacy. The literature review examined evidence around the transition from nursing student to practitioner and the Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL) standards for nursing information literacy.

The response rate was 86/175 (49%). The result verified findings on the most frequent information processes and association between approach to learning and information literacy self-efficacy. The personality findings differed. Combining results for both studies helped confirm most of the information-behaviour profiles. Mapping the frequent information processes against requirements of practice indicated gaps, particularly around professional networking.

As both studies were carried out at one higher education campus, further research to assess external validity is required.

Information-behaviour profiles, plus the mapping, help librarians and tutors develop tailored information literacy support that is clinically relevant and support transition to practice.

Validated a set of information behaviour profiles for nursing students and linked these to the requirements of professional practice.

The nursing journals titles needed to support Project 2000 were considered. In order to reflect the structure of nursing literature as a whole, a citation count from the Citation index for 1990 was undertaken. In order to rank journals in each of the 4 branches of Project 2000, an analysis of the citations in a leading journal representing each branch was undertaken. To reflect student usage a survey of photocopier use and citation in student bibliographies was undertaken. In order to reflect what titles the library ought to have, a questionnaire survey of tutors was undertaken. The ranking of titles in the Citation index was tested for correlation with the ranks obtained from student use and tutor recommendation and the correlation between student use and tutor recommendation was drawn. Finally, a scheme for combining the rankings of journal titles obtained by the methods above was devised in order to produce an overall ranking of the principal titles.