Rhetoric or Reality? RN to BSN Graduates Returning to the Bedside.

This article reports on a study designed to illuminate the motivation and future goals of RN to BSN degree completion students, specifically to identify whether RNs returning to an online completion program were doing so with the intention of continuing to practice at the bedside. The findings indicate that students are seeking further education for five reasons: 1) to gain entry into a nurse practitioner program, 2) to complete a master's degree program in general, 3) to find opportunities in management, 4) to assume a position as a nurse educator, or 5) to take on a leadership position in general.

Efficacy of reductive ventricular osmotherapy in a swine model of traumatic brain injury.

Background: The presence of osmotic gradients in the development of cerebral edema and the effectiveness of osmotherapy are well recognized. A modification of ventriculostomy catheters described in this article provides a method of osmotherapy that is not currently available. The reductive ventricular osmotherapy (RVOT) catheter removes free water from ventricular cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) by incorporating hollow fibers that remove water vapor, thereby providing osmotherapy without increasing osmotic load.

Protein self-organization patterns in dried serum reveal changes in B-cell disorders.

Background: Detection of serum monoclonal proteins is a common laboratory analysis used in the evaluation of patients with B-cell disorders. Since many individuals with elevated immunoglobulin have no symptoms, it is important to have simple methods for initial screening of patients with suspected B-cell disorders.

Methods: Samples of serum from healthy donors and from patients with elevated immunoglobulin levels were tested using a technology named Droplet MicroChromatography (DMC).

Laser Doppler monitoring of cerebral blood flow.

The clinical management of cerebral hemodynamic status has become more important, as well as more complex, in recent years. In response, monitoring systems for neurological patients have grown increasingly sophisticated. Unfortunately, the capability of monitoring cerebral blood flow is absent in commercially available monitoring systems at this time.

Microvascular blood flow, volume, and velocity measured by laser Doppler techniques in IDDM.

A laser Doppler device with the capability to simultaneously measure skin blood flow, microvascular volume, and erythrocyte velocity was used to assess blood flow changes in 35 insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) subjects, mean age 33 +/- 1 yr, with average duration of diabetes 14 +/- 1 yr, and in a nondiabetic control group. Blood flow was determined at 35 and 44 degree C at several sites on the upper and lower extremities with a temperature-regulated probe. Blood flow was highest at both temperatures on the pulps of the index finger and the first toe, regions of high density of arteriovenous anastomoses.