Living out our values: the legacy of Christian academic nursing leadership.

Retired academic nursing leaders possess a rich legacy of knowledge. Using a grounded theory approach, knowledge possessed by 14 retired Christian Chairperson/Deans was explored. Two themes representing commitment to living out Christian values; and fortitude, understanding, and spiritual guidance emerged from written responses to open-ended survey questions.

The emotional needs of care recipients and the psychological well-being of informal caregivers: implications for home care clinicians.

In this exploratory study, 77 informal caregivers of older persons in Ohio completed telephone interviews that included questions regarding their perceived difficulty providing emotional and physical care, perceived quality of care, demographic items including caregivers' health status, and a measure of their psychological well-being. Findings suggest that psychological well-being of informal caregivers is diminished when they experience greater difficulty meeting the care recipients' emotional care needs, are in poorer health, or are older. Suggestions for clinical implications and future research based on these findings are discussed.

The role of social support in the family and community integration of right-hemisphere stroke survivors.

The goal of this project was to understand better the communicative processes by which social support can assist right-hemisphere stroke survivors in the process of community integration. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 12 right-hemisphere stroke survivors and their family caregivers. The transcribed interviews revealed 7 challenges (physical, cognitive-perceptual, emotional, relationship, employment, financial, and challenges to activities of daily living) and three types of resources (formal external, informal external, and internal).

Incorporating research into associate degree nursing curricula.

All nurses are urged to be involved in research as participants and/or consumers. Such involvement may range from using research findings to participating in one or more of the research process steps to serving as principle investigator of a funded study. Clinicians at the bedside, including associate degree (AD) nurses, are well positioned to contribute to the body of nursing knowledge and enhance nursing care by identifying nursing care problems worthy of research, collecting data for nursing studies, and applying research findings in the care they provide.

The working alliance as a model for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Rehabilitation and health care researchers are increasingly called upon to examine contemporary disability issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to (a) borrow from the counseling literature to introduce the working alliance, a model developed by Bordin [1] to facilitate positive therapeutic relationships; and (b) to discuss its application to interdisciplinary research. The authors, who represent the fields of nursing, rehabilitation, and health communication, describe characteristics of the working alliance and draw upon their experiences to illustrate the key components of effective working alliances (bonds, goals, and tasks).

Preserving blind peer review of electronic manuscript files.

Peer review of manuscripts for potential publication has become an intrinsic component of the scientific process, and is aimed at improving the manuscript's quality through unbiased, independent, and critical assessment by experts who are not on the journal's staff (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, 2003).

A review and application of social scientific measures of religiosity and spirituality: assessing a missing component in health communication research.

Social and behavioral scientists in fields such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, nursing, and medicine have been investigating the relation between religious or spiritual variables and health outcomes for several decades. This article reviews a sample of the major empirical instruments used in this research, including extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity, spiritual well-being, and religious coping. The review encompasses suggestions for application of these scales to health communication theory and research associated with identity, self-efficacy, social support, and media use.

Negotiating dyadic identity between caregivers and care receivers.

Purpose: To describe the ways in which caregivers (CGs) and their care receivers (CRs) negotiate the dyadic rules that influence how the care experience "fits into" their lives and to suggest theory based on the data.

Design: This qualitative study was part of a larger, NIH-funded study of 60 care dyads and their use of respite care in the Midwestern United States. The sample for this analysis included 60 informal CGs and CRs in their home settings.

Spirituality in caregiving and care receiving.

Spirituality is a part of holistic care for clients and families. This qualitative, descriptive study examined spirituality in 60 caregivers and 60 care receivers, equally divided between Caucasians and African Americans. Themes were coping (subthemes of formal religion and social support) and meaning (subthemes of positive attitude, retribution or reward, and all encompassing).

A description of clinical nurse specialist programs in the United States.

Changes have occurred in clinical nurse specialist educational requirements in recent years, and it is not known how programs have responded. The purpose of this descriptive survey was to identify the number of clinical nurse specialist programs in the United States, describe curricula, and examine enrollment and employment trends. This report contains data from 157 separate clinical nurse specialist programs/majors representing 139 different schools.

Prevention of venous ulceration by use of compression after deep vein thrombosis.

Venous ulcers may result from damage to the lining of the veins after an occurrence of deep vein thrombosis (DVT). As the pressure in the damaged venous system remains pathologically high, a result of DVT, swelling develops, hemosiderin staining develops around the ankle area, and varicosities often develop. These symptoms are part of the postphlebitic syndrome and are a precursor to formation of the chronic venous ulcer.

The culture of the deaf.

The population of the United States includes over 1 million deaf people, the majority of whom have chosen to differentiate themselves in terms of a Deaf culture. These Deaf people share unique values and norms and use sign language for communication. The differences that exist between hearing and Deaf individuals necessitate that the nurse understand this population.

Discharge teaching. Work strategies of patients and families for care in the home.

Purpose: To better understand how care givers, and their care receivers who have experienced mobility limitations over a period of time, enhance the work of care in the home.

Design: The qualitative method of grounded theory was used to identify work strategies enacted by care dyads consisting of informal (family) care givers and their care receivers.

Sample: The sample consisted of 60 care dyads.

An action approach to redesigning a patient-centred unit.

Receptiveness to innovation is critical in orchestrating change and learning to use new technology in a redesigned work environment. The patient-centred unit redesign approach (PCURA) provides a guide for unit assessment in many healthcare settings. The backbone of the PCURA approach: work excitement and unit culture assessment.

Valuing authority/responsibility relationships. The essence of professional practice.

Central to the practice of professional nursing are the elements of accountability, autonomy, direct communication, and authority. The value that nursing work groups place on authority affects their level of acceptance of responsibility and accountability for clinical decision making. The authors examined the value that nurse managers and staff nurses on primary nursing and total patient care units place on authority/responsibility relationships.

Understanding work group culture on rehabilitation units: the key to facilitating group innovation and promoting integration.

Understanding work group culture is essential for the smooth running of today's complex rehabilitation units. Failure to understand a unit's culture can impede necessary care delivery innovations and impair group integration. This article describes the phenomenon of work group culture and offers suggestions for assessing and understanding a given unit's culture.

Computer-assisted instruction: a learner's viewpoint.

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is becoming increasingly common in nursing. Insight into factors that facilitate or impede this process was gained through interviews with nursing students who had used one of four computer programs. Content analysis of these interviews found that the CAI experience includes many components.

Steps to collaboration.

Although collaboration is a much sought-after goal among health care professionals, minimal research has clarified the essential communication elements (behaviors) necessary for collaboration. This series of research studies, grounded in the pragmatic perspective, represents a beginning attempt to identify these behaviors. A total of 270 practicing physicians and nurses responded to open-ended questions and/or a survey assessing the communication elements of content; relationship (aggressive, affirming, and collaborative styles); and opportunity to communicate.

Facilitating innovation at the unit level through cultural assessment, Part 2: Adapting managerial ideas to the unit work group.

The culture of an organization is a powerful force to contend with in transforming a healthcare system. Culture can either drive or restrain innovation: sometimes cultural values support innovation; but culture can restrain innovation when there is conflict between the culture and the innovation. Part 1 of this series (April 1993) examined the concept of organizational culture fail to materialize when the work group culture is not considered while implementing change.