Gastrointestinal Nursing: A journal dedicated to research in gastroenterology and stoma care nursing

This article series has attempted to describe the unique role played by gastroenterology and stoma care nurses in the UK, and the importance of these nurses publishing research articles related to their work.

Stoma care nursing dates back to the 1970s, when Barbara Saunders, a ward nurse at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, started the first stoma care training for nurses to look after patients who underwent stoma surgery (Breeze, 1995). It is perhaps one of the earliest nursing specialties in the country. Nurse endoscopists in the UK have paved the way for nurses performing non-invasive or minimally invasive procedures. In the 1990s, nurses started performing flexible sigmoidoscopies  as a solution to the shortage of doctors and the willingness of nurses to adopt expanded roles (Norton and Vance, 2009). More than half the number of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) nurses who responded to an audit in 2012 stated that they also make decisions to treat and prescribe drugs to patients (Mason et al, 2012), thus eliminating the need for a patient to see a consultant for a routine appointment.

Therefore, it is vital for these nurses to share their experience and best practices with their peers. Concurrently, it is important that there is a publication that caters to this niche group of nurses, encouraging them to conduct research and reach out to their peers.

Gastrointestinal Nursing is a journal dedicated to gastroenterology and stoma care nurses, and provides a platform for these nurses to share their best practices and the innovations they have introduced at their hospitals and departments. All the research and review articles published in the journal are subject to a double-blind peer review, thus increasing the credibility of the articles. Considering that there are a very limited number of articles available on these fields of nursing, the publication of such articles will help to augment the literature written by nurses for nurses. Gastrointestinal Nursing also has a mentoring program for first-time authors. A number of nurses have many years of experience but have never published an article (many have told me that they fear they are bad writers). The mentoring program assigns a first-time author to a member of the Gastrointestinal Nursing editorial board, who guides the author on the most effective format for the article before it is sent out for peer review.

Most of the specialties within gastroenterology and stoma care are interlinked: some of the patients of a stoma care nurse can have IBD; the patients of liver care nurses could also have upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract problems; some patients scheduled for an endoscopy can also have GI problems. Therefore, the sharing of knowledge among nurses in these specialties is crucial to advances in these fields of nursing and patient care.

References

Breeze J (1995) Stoma care: Is there room to extend our practice? Br J Nurs 4(17): 1001-5

Mason I, Holbrook K, Kemp K, Garrick V, Johns K, Kane M (2009) Inflammatory bowel disease nursing Results of an audit exploring the roles, responsibilities and activity of nurses with specialist/advanced roles.
http://www.rcn.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/433736/004197.pdf (10 October 2014)

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Norton C, Vance M (2009) Nurse delivered endoscopy. BMJ 338: a3049. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.a3049