Publications by authors named "Brigit L Roberts"
Article Synopsis
- - The 4-hour rule in Western Australia requires emergency department patients to be admitted or discharged within 4 hours, and compliance improved significantly from 35%-46% in 2008 to 64%-75% in 2011.
- - Despite better compliance, there was an increase in ICU exit bed block and longer bed block days from 2008 to 2011, though overall ICU occupancy decreased.
- - The implementation of the 4-hour rule was linked to a reduction in hospital mortality rates, but it did not result in a significant rise in medical emergency team (MET) calls during the same period.
Aims And Objective: To examine the relationship between observed delirium in ICU and patients' recall of factual events up to two years after discharge.
Background: People, the environment, and procedures are frequently cited memories of actual events encountered in ICU. These are often perceived as stressors to the patients and the presence of several such stressors has been associated with the development of reduced health-related quality of life or post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Objective: To measure Intensive Care Unit Research coordinator job satisfaction and importance and to identify priorities for role development.
Background: Research coordinator numbers are growing internationally in response to increasing clinical research activity. In Australia, 1% of registered nurses work principally in research, many as Research coordinators.
Introduction: Currently, diagnosis of delirium in theintensive care unit requires the use of one of a range of screening scales. Publications on delirium in the ICU are increasing, but most focus on psychological markers, with only limited data on physiological indicators of delirium.
Aim: To assess the relationship between a range of physiological and treatment markers and the presence of delirium in an ICU cohort.
Research coordinators in intensive care are a growing specialty about which little is known. This cross-sectional study surveyed the Australia and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Coordinators' Group (n = 49) regarding demographics, education, employment history, job structure, and role content. Most research coordinators were highly qualified and experienced nurses who undertake pharmaceutical trials, multicenter projects, departmental medical and nursing research, audits and data registries, and their own projects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Research Coordinator (RC) role is a relative new addition to staffing profiles in Australasian Intensive Care Units (ICUs). The RC plays a pivotal role in conducting ethically and scientifically sound research. There have been anecdotal reports of the RC role in various speciality areas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDischarged intensive care unit (ICU) patients often recall experience vivid dreams, hallucinations or delusions. These may be persecutory in nature and are sometimes very frightening. It is possible that these memories stem from times when the patient was experiencing delirium, a common syndrome in the critically ill.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To compare the efficacy of intravenous versus intramuscular antivenom (AV) in the treatment of Red-back spider (RBS) envenoming.
Methods: Randomized, double-dummy, double-blind, multicentre trial of patients with red-back spider envenoming requiring AV treatment recruited from five hospital EDs in Western Australia.
Results: Thirty-five patients were recruited; two were excluded; 33 were available for initial analysis, but two who were unblinded after one ampoule of trial AV and given i.