Implementing a patient assessment framework in acute care

This article describes the secondment of a critical care practitioner to an acute medicine unit. The aim was to develop the acute assessment skills of the unit's nurses and to implement a new assessment framework. The secondment took place over four months from December 2007 to March 2008 at the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham. There were several stages to the project, commencing with exploration of existing practice and culminating with evaluation of the project's effect on practice. A review of the multi-professional patient records was conducted six months after the conclusion of the secondment. This revealed that the assessment framework continued to be used in practice. The secondment demonstrated that supporting nurses to embrace new skills resulted in a change in practice. However, a permanent change cannot be assured unless practice is revisited and supported on a continual basis.