Resistiveness to Care as Experienced by Family Caregivers Providing Care for Someone With Dementia.

Purpose: This research explored family caregivers' lived experiences of resistiveness to care when they provided care for people with dementia. The goal was to identify a general meaning of family caregivers' lived experiences to target potential areas for future nursing interventions to help family caregivers manage their caregiving role and provide a base for future research surrounding resistiveness to care.

Design: Descriptive phenomenology was used to provide descriptions of eight family caregivers who provided care for someone with dementia and experienced resistiveness to care.

Efficiency of health care in state correctional institutions.

Little is known about the efficiency of health care in correction settings. This article reports an efficiency analysis of health care in state correctional institutions (SCIs) in a single, mid-Atlantic state from 2003 to 2006. A two-stage data envelopment analysis was used to estimate the technical efficiency of prison health care and determine inmate and institutional characteristics that were associated with efficiency.

Administrators' perspectives on changing practice in end-of-life care in a state prison system.

Objective: Sentencing trends have created a demographic shift in prison populations. Greater numbers of inmates are aging and dying in prison, creating a demand for enhanced end-of-life (EOL) care. Changing practice to meet escalating care demands in correction settings is complicated by economic constraints, attitudinal barriers, and organizational features.

Elucidating the function of penetratin and a static magnetic field in cellular uptake of magnetic nanoparticles.

Nanotechnology plays an increasingly important role in the biomedical arena. In particular, magnetic nanoparticles (mNPs) have become important tools in molecular diagnostics, in vivo imaging and improved treatment of disease, with the ultimate aim of producing a more theranostic approach. Due to their small sizes, the nanoparticles can cross most of the biological barriers such as the blood vessels and the blood brain barrier, thus providing ubiquitous access to most tissues.

Care and companionship in an isolating environment: inmates attending to dying peers.

The purpose of this study was to examine the values, beliefs, and perceptions of end-of-life (EOL) care held by inmates caring for peers approaching the end of their lives. The study is part of a broader participatory action research project to infuse enhanced EOL care into state prisons. Face-to-face interviews using a semistructured discussion guide were conducted with 17 male prisoners who were providing care for peers with advanced chronic illness and approaching end of life.

End-of-life care and barriers for female inmates.

The number of female inmates is growing, and their average age is increasing. As a result, end-of-life care is situated in a highly restrictive environment with a focus on security rather than comfort. We describe the need for and potential barriers to humane care and provide care strategies that can be useful in a complex organizational system.

The primary care nurse practitioner and cancer survivorship care.

Purpose: To examine the important role that primary care nurse practitioners (NPs) have in providing long-term surveillance and health maintenance for breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer survivors throughout the continuum of cancer care.

Data Sources: MEDLINE, CINAHL, MD-Consult, and Cochrane's databases were utilized with the inclusion of primary research and critical research reviews from January 1995 through March 2008. Select organizational websites were also cited.

Personal digital assistant use by nurse practitioners: a descriptive study.

Purpose: We sought to describe the prevalence and patterns of use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) among active nurse practitioners (NPs).

Data Sources: A descriptive correlational survey was conducted among NPs in the United States (N = 126). Participants were randomly selected from members of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners who had listed a practice site on their application.

An integrative literature review of lifestyle interventions for the prevention of type II diabetes mellitus.

Aims And Objectives: An integrative literature review was undertaken to determine what type II diabetes prevention programmes have been evaluated, what type of programme is the most effective and how adherent to lifestyle changes adults are after participating in a prevention programme.

Background: Type II diabetes is important because the disease is affecting millions of people worldwide. Obesity and sedentary lifestyles are preventable risk factors for type II diabetes, leading many researchers from around the world to examine different programmes that are focussed on prevention of the disease.

An evaluation framework for faculty practice.

Faculty practice is promoted in schools of nursing for the purposes of strengthening the clinical expertise of faculty, maintaining clinically relevant curricula, fostering student learning, and generating revenue. For clinical faculty, this practice often provides the foundation for academic scholarship. The integration of this scholarship into the traditional academic triad of education, research, and service has proved difficult.

Therapeutic drug monitoring of once daily tobramycin in cystic fibrosis--caution with trough concentrations.

Background: : Once daily intravenous aminoglycoside dosing (ODD) is widely used to treat acute Pseudomonas aeruginosa exacerbations in patients with cystic fibrosis. Controversy exists as to what is the most appropriate method of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of such therapy with recommendations including trough plasma concentrations of <1 mg/L or <2 mg/L, area under curve (AUC) and various nomograms. This study aimed to compare the exposures to ODD of tobramycin in adults and children with cystic fibrosis using the AUC and trough TDM approaches.

The use of personal digital assistants by nurse practitioner students and faculty.

Purpose: To describe the prevalence and patterns of use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) by nurse practitioner (NP) students and faculty, examine relationships between patterns of use of PDAs and demographic characteristics of NP students and faculty, and describe patterns of use of PDAs that support evidence-based practice (clinical scholarship).

Data Sources: Responses to a 20-item questionnaire administered via electronic or postal mail from 227 NP students and faculty.

Conclusions: A majority (67%) of the participants used PDAs.

Educating advanced practice nurses for collaborative practice in the multidisciplinary provider team.

Purpose: To describe the use of a clinical decision-making work sheet as a tool to teach communication skills to advanced practice nurse (APN) students. Achievement of competencies in communication and documentation that utilize language and communication strategies that are shared with other health professionals promotes effective collaborative practice among members of the multidisciplinary provider team.

Data Sources: Review of the recent Institute of Medicine report on health professions education and other health professional literature.

Flash detection/identification of pathogens, bacterial spores and bioterrorism agent biomarkers from clinical and environmental matrices.

We propose to develop an integrated rapid, semiportable, prototype point microbial detection/identification system for clinical specimens that is also capable of differentiating microbial bioterrorism attacks from threats or hoaxes by defining the pathogen. The system utilizes "flash" extraction/analytical system capable of detection/identification of microbes from environmental and clinical matrices. The system couples demonstrated technologies to provide quantitative analysis of lipid biomarkers of microbes including spores in a system with near-single cell (amol/microl) sensitivity.