Liver disease is the third highest cause of premature mortality in the UK (Williams et al, 2014). The revised Royal College of Nursing (RCN) competence framework for health professionals caring for people with liver disease was published in autumn 2015. The aim was to make care of those patients and their families as person-centered as possible, building the competence needs around their actual experiences of living with liver disease. The framework also covers patients who are at risk of liver disease as many of the main culprits, such as alcohol-related liver disease, viral hepatitis B and C and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) are preventable. Two areas of concern are alcohol consumption and the rising number of people who are overweight and obese, including children. It is important to make every contact count, whether that is in a GP clinic, by a health visitor or school nurse, or in secondary care from accident and emergency across the board to gastroenterology wards and liver units. Patients can present in many ways and nurses can use the competences presented in the framework to think about how they promote a healthy liver.

Lynda Greenslade - Lead Nurse for Specialist Practice—Hepatology, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust