The Aggressive Incidents in Medical Settings (AIMS) Study: Advancing Measurement to Promote Prevention of Workplace Violence.

Background: Rates of aggressive events and workplace violence (WPV) exposure are often represented by proxy measures (restraint, incident, injury reports) in health care settings. Precise measurement of nurse and patient care assistant exposure rates to patient aggression on inpatient medical units in acute care hospitals advances knowledge, promoting WPV prevention and intervention.

Methods: This prospective, multisite cohort study examined the incidence of patient and visitor aggressive events toward patient care staff on five inpatient medical units in a community hospital and an academic hospital setting in the northeastern United States.

Where's the Marker? Perceptions of Whiteboards in the Emergency Department.

Background: In the emergency department, bedside whiteboards are used to help improve communication, teamwork, and collaboration among health care providers. In addition, previous studies have shown that whiteboards aid the patient with the identification of their health care providers, plan of care, expected length of stay, and overall patient satisfaction.

Purpose: This evidence-based evaluation project assessed the perceptions of emergency department health care providers on their awareness of the effectiveness of bedside whiteboards, whether there are challenges with using them, and whether they are being updated and used consistently.

Psychometric Testing of the Self-Efficacy for Interdisciplinary Plans of Care Scale.

Computerized interdisciplinary plans of care have revitalized nurse-centric care plans into dynamic and meaningful electronic documents. To maximize the benefits of these documents, it is important to understand healthcare professionals' attitudes, specifically their confidence, for making computerized interdisciplinary care plans useful and meaningful documents. The purpose of the study was to test the psychometric properties of the Self-Efficacy for Interdisciplinary Plans of Care instrument intended to measure healthcare professionals' self-efficacy for using such documents.

Mucolytic agents for COPD and chronic bronchitis.

This is a summary of a nursing care-related systematic review from the Cochrane Library.

Beyond the classroom. Teaching staff to manage cardiac arrest situations.

Teaching staff members how to manage cardiac arrest situations effectively can be accomplished through a well-executed plan. An interdisciplinary task force researched the situation and identified educational opportunities to resolve the problem. Based on the task force's recommendations, a plan was developed for educational programs and mock code implementation.