Learning through collaboration: the NEXus consortium as a winning collaborative.

The Nursing Education Exchange (NEXus) is a consortium of academic doctoral programs in nursing, initiated in response to a national shortage of well-qualified nurse educators and the need to increase the number of doctoral faculty in nursing programs across the United States. The vision for the consortium was to use distance-accessible delivery methods to provide rural nurse educators and clinical nurses with access to quality doctoral programs in nursing while remaining in their home environments. In addition, smaller or newly established doctoral programs would be able to offer a wider variety of elective coursework without recruiting and hiring additional faculty, further decreasing their limited available resources.

Do they really care? How trauma patients perceive nurses' caring behaviors.

Applying the theory of Nursing as Caring can help the nurse provide care that is perceived as caring by moderately to severely injured trauma patients. The Caring Behaviors Inventory was administered in a 1-to-1 interview format to hospitalized trauma patients in a level 2 trauma center. Nurses were positively perceived in their caring behaviors with some variation based on gender and ethnicity.

Perceptions of nurses' caring behaviors by trauma patients.

A descriptive study of moderately to severely injured patients' perceptions of nurses' caring behaviors was conducted at a level I trauma center. Seventy patients older than 18 years admitted through the trauma resuscitation unit were included. The participants were interviewed in their rooms/cubicles by the research team to complete the Caring Behaviors Inventory.

Pediatric spinal injuries.

Spinal injuries in children present unique challenges. The anatomy of the growing child affects injury patterns and subsequent care. There are many challenges for the child and family, but current research is providing hope for the future.

Bicycle injury prevention and safety in senior riders.

Senior bicycle riders have special safety and injury prevention needs. They are at greater risk for injury and mortality. Very few educational materials have been developed to assist this group in improving their riding abilities and preventing injury to themselves.

Evidence-based practice and heat loss prevention in trauma patients.

This article describes a quality management process used to develop an evidence-based protocol for heat loss prevention in trauma patients. The quality management tool applied was the ADDIE process (Assess the problem, Determine the root cause, Design a solution, Implement the solution, and Evaluate the outcome). Use of this process required multiple applications and resulted in the identification of a multifactorial root cause.

Liver enzymes as predictors of liver damage due to blunt abdominal trauma in children.

Background: Blunt abdominal trauma in children can result in injury to the liver. In hemodynamically stable patients, initial evaluation of liver transaminase levels may be useful in determining the need for computed tomography (CT).

Methods: We reviewed the medical records of 44 hemodynamically stable children who had abdominal CT and who also had liver enzyme determinations as the initial workup.

Thermal efficiency of prewarmed cotton, reflective, and forced-warm-air inflatable blankets in trauma patients.

Purpose: To compare the thermal efficiency of 3 methods of heat-loss prevention in trauma patients undergoing resuscitation in the emergency department and the nurses' attitude toward the use of each method.

Design: A quasi-experimental design was used to compare 3 interventions for heat-loss prevention: 3 prewarmed cotton blankets, a reflective blanket with a head covering over 1 prewarmed cotton blanket, and a forced-warm-air inflatable blanket. All patients (n = 298) admitted in trauma-alert status and who were not hypothermic at the time of admission were randomly assigned to 1 of the interventions.