Genital herpes is one of the commonest sexually transmitted infections worldwide. Using the best available evidence, this guideline recommends strategies for diagnosis, management, and follow-up of the condition as well as for minimising transmission. Early recognition and initiation of therapy is key and may reduce the duration of illness or avoid hospitalisation with complications, including urinary retention, meningism, or severe systemic illness. The guideline covers a range of common clinical scenarios, such as recurrent genital herpes, infection during pregnancy, and co-infection with human immunodeficiency virus.

Aims and objectives This paper reports an integrative review of the literature on nursing competency standards for nurses working in primary health care and, in particular, general practice. Background Internationally, there is growing emphasis on building a strong primary health care nursing workforce to meet the challenges of rising chronic and complex disease. However, there has been limited emphasis on examining the nursing workforce in this setting. Design Integrative review. Methods A comprehensive search of relevant electronic databases using keywords (e.g. 'competencies', 'competen*' and 'primary health care', 'general practice' and 'nurs*') was combined with searching of the Internet using the Google scholar search engine. Experts were approached to identify relevant grey literature. Key websites were also searched and the reference lists of retrieved sources were followed up. The search focussed on English language literature published since 2000. Results Limited published literature reports on competency standards for nurses working in general practice and primary health care. Of the literature that is available, there are differences in the reporting of how the competency standards were developed. A number of common themes were identified across the included competency standards, including clinical practice, communication, professionalism and health promotion. Many competency standards also included teamwork, education, research/evaluation, information technology and the primary health care environment. Conclusion Given the potential value of competency standards, further work is required to develop and test robust standards that can communicate the skills and knowledge required of nurses working in primary health care settings to policy makers, employers, other health professionals and consumers. Relevance to clinical practice Competency standards are important tools for communicating the role of nurses to consumers and other health professionals, as well as defining this role for employers, policy makers and educators. Understanding the content of competency standards internationally is an important step to understanding this growing workforce.

Summary: This is the guideline for genital herpes simplex virus (HSV) management for the IUSTI/WHO Europe, 2010. They describe the epidemiology, diagnosis, clinical features, treatment and prevention of genital HSV infection. They include details on the management of HSV in pregnancy, those who are immunocompromised and the clinical investigation and management of suspected HSV-resistant disease.

Objective Genital Chlamydia trachomatis infection is the most common bacterial sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the UK. Behaviours including multiple sex partners and inconsistent condom use, and biological factors such as cervical ectopy, may increase susceptibility to STIs. Cervical ectopy is thought to increase risk of chlamydia infection by exposing columnar epithelium to a potential infectious inoculum. This study aimed to determine whether chlamydia was more prevalent in young women with cervical ectopy.Methods Clinical notes of women aged 16-24 years attending the Portsmouth Genitourinary Medicine Clinic for an STI screen during the period May-July 2003 were reviewed retrospectively. Information collected included the presence or absence of cervical ectopy, smoking habits, methods of contraception, number of sexual partners in the previous 3 months, and previous STIs. Chlamydia infection was diagnosed by using strand displacement amplification on cervical swabs.Results A total of 231 women were included in the study. The mean age was 19.8 years. Evidence of cervical ectopy was found in 107 women. Chlamydial infection was detected in 37.4% (40/107) of those women with cervical ectopy and 21.8% (27/124) in those without cervical ectopy. This difference was statistically significant (p = 0.009). The significance remained even when accounting for confounding variables.Conclusions Cervical ectopy is a common physiological process in young women. Recognition of cervical ectopy should alert the clinician to the possibility of a genital chlamydia infection. Opportunistic screening for chlamydia in young people should be offered to reduce the prevalence of infection and its sequelae. G A diagnosis of chlamydia is more likely in young women with cervical ectopy.G Opportunistic screening for chlamydia in young people should be offered to reduce the prevalence of infection and its sequelae.

These guidelines concern the management of anogenital herpes simplex virus infections in adults and give advice on diagnosis, management, and counselling of patients. This guideline replaces the 2007 BASHH herpes guidelines and includes new sections on herpes proctitis, key points to cover with patients regarding transmission and removal of advice on the management of HSV in pregnancy which now has a separate joint BASHH/RCOG guideline.

Objectives:To assess the variability in time taken for a patient to be seen in a genitourinary (GUM) clinic in the United Kingdom having contacted that clinic by telephone and compare this with GUM physicians' expectations. Methods: A postal questionnaire was sent to lead GUM physicians asking when they thought patients with two specific clinical scenarios would be seen in their clinics. Following this, healthcare personnel contacted individual units posing as patients with the same clinical scenarios and asked to be seen as soon as possible. Results: 202/258 (78%) lead clinicians responded to the postal questionnaire. All clinics claimed to have procedures allowing patients with acute symptoms to be assessed urgently and estimated that such patients would be seen within 48 hours of the initial telephone contact. In 243 of 311 (78%) clinic contacts, the patient was invited to attend the clinic within 48 hours. For the remaining 68 contacts (22%) the patient could not be accommodated within 48 hours and, of these, 49 could not be seen for more than 1 week. Conclusions:No clinician estimated that patients with acute severe symptoms would be seen more than 48 hours after the initial telephone contact, but in reality, for 22% of the patient contacts this was the case. This study may well underestimate the diYculties the general public may have in accessing GUM services. We hypothesise that this situation could be ameliorated by establishing process standards and addressing issues of resource allocation. (Sex Transm Inf 2001;77:12-14)

The development of national professional practice standards for nurses working in Australian general practice will support ongoing workforce development. These Standards are also an important means of articulating the role and scope of the nurses' practice for both consumers and other health professionals, as well as being a guide for curriculum development and measurement of performance.

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