The aging Hispanic in America: challenges for nurses in a stressed health care environment.

The aging of America and the explosion of Hispanic immigrants into the United States are causing a tremendous burden to the health care system. The challenges already apparent in an overburdened health care system are examined, and useful strategies for health care providers are offered. The significant challenges facing the Hispanic population are presented, and the need for cultural sensitivity and its importance in providing culturally competent, patient-relevant care are highlighted.

"I see my mother's face": student nurse experiences caring for cancer patients.

Purpose: With the numbers of cancer diagnoses increasing annually and the aging of the global citizenry, it is certain that more nurses with expert competencies in cancer care will be needed. Nursing students must have a broad understanding of cancer content in order to provide safe, effective care in the clinical setting as they learn to recognize their own experiences in caring for cancer patients. Experienced nursing educators are aware that student nurses bring into any clinical learning situation their unique knowledge, values, fear, uncertainty and bias.

The WebQuest: constructing creative learning.

An exciting expansion of online educational opportunities is occurring in nursing. The use of a WebQuest as an inquiry-based learning activity can offer considerable opportunity for nurses to learn how to analyze and synthesize critical information. A WebQuest, as a constructivist, inquiry-oriented strategy, requires learners to use higher levels of thinking as a means to analyze and apply complex information, providing an exciting online teaching and learning strategy.

Meningococcal meningitis: an emerging infectious disease.

Meningococcal meningitis is a potentially fatal disease which can affect many 15- to 24-year-olds and those that are affected could have been protected from the disease if they had received the vaccination. The number of reported cases has increased during the past decade and account for many preventable deaths. Adolescents and young adults account for nearly 30 percent of all cases of meningitis in the United States.

Revisiting geriatric failure to thrive: a complex and compelling clinical condition.

Geriatric failure to thrive (GFTT) poses a complex clinical issue in gerontological nursing practice. GFTT is not a normal part of aging, nor is it an outcome of chronic illness. Rather, GFTT describes a lack of vitality and diminished capacity for life and outlines a process of functional decline that is often difficult to explain.

The health status of rural caregivers.

The purposes of this study were to examine the relationships among stress, caregiver burden, and the health status of rural caregivers and assess whether caregiver burden and stress predict the physical health status of caregivers in the rural setting. A descriptive-correlational design was used to explore the caregiver health status of 63 informal caregivers in rural Alabama and Mississippi. The relationships among stress, burden, and health status in rural caregivers were significantly related (p .

The perceived health of rural caregivers.

Caregiving can be stressful in any setting; however, some challenges and differences are unique to the rural population of caregivers. Gene and Lena Tanner The rural elderly report more chronic illness and physical impairment than their urban counterparts. This study examines the differences between self-reported health status in rural caregivers and the general population.

Why are nurses leaving nursing?

The causes of nurses' exodus from acute health care delivery practice may lie more in intrinsic factors rather than the heretofore overtly expressed reasons. This article examines bureaucratic factors, issues related to the medical profession and medical/scientific discourse, and factors within the nursing profession itself that may contribute to a nurse's unhappiness and dissatisfaction that causes him or her to leave. Nursing as emotional work and the implications for the individual nurse, and nursing as moral and moral distress are discussed.