The impact of change on the tissue viability nurse specialist: 1

Tissue viability nurse specialists in the UK have experienced difficulty in articulating their role, and this has led to a poor understanding of what they do. This article, the first of two parts, presents a literature review which examines the development of specialism in nursing and explores the factors that have influenced the development of tissue viability specialist nurses in the UK. The study described in the second part of the article uses focus group methodology to examine the practices and experiences of tissue viability nurses working in a changing healthcare environment.