The RCN Foundation fund scoping review at University of West London

For a number of years, written work has stated it is not clear what learning disability nurses do to support people with learning disabilities.

The RCN Foundation commissioned the University of West London to undertake a scoping review into learning disability nursing. The overall objective of this research was to identify intellectual disability nursing interventions and their impact on the health and healthcare of people with intellectual disability.

The review found that what is written about the role of learning disability nurses doesn't always tell us what difference their work makes. It is evident that more work is needed to understand how people with learning disabilities benefit from what learning disability nurses do as well as improving the public’s understanding of what learning disability nurses do.

Findings

Read the findings from the scoping review:

• Paper 1 - findings from the scoping literature review
• Paper 2 - findings from an online cross-sectional survey of intellectual disability nurses that identified 5 major themes of nursing interventions
• Paper 3 - evaluate intellectual disability nurses’ confidence in their understanding of the interventions they undertook
• Paper 4 - reporting the impacts of intellectual disability nursing interventions and other nurses working predominantly with people with intellectual disabilities