Developing a practice template for communicating with families of people with learning disabilities

Practice templates are a way to empower nurses by providing guidance on nursing techniques that have proved to be effective in practice. However, there is a paucity of literature on the development of practice templates and, at the time of writing, none relating to learning disability care. This means there is an opportunity for learning disability nurses to draw on their clinical experience of collaborating with clients to develop useful practice templates. This article uses the example of how to communicate with the families of service users with learning disabilities to describe the process of developing a practice template and what nurses can include. The author argues that practice templates can assist nurses to outline care standards and help to develop a rapport between themselves and the families of service users.