Aligning Organizational Culture and Infrastructure to Support Evidence-Based Practice.

Standardized nursing practice based on the foundations of evidence-based practice leads to high-quality patient care and optimal outcomes. Despite knowing the benefits of evidence-based practice, health care organizations do not consistently make it the standard of care; thus, implementation of evidence-based practice at the system level continues to be challenging. This article describes the process adopted by a facility in the Southwest that took on the challenge of changing the organizational culture to incorporate evidence-based practice.

Survivorship Data Coordinator: Successful Exemplar of a New Survivorship Care Plan Role.

Survivorship care and survivorship care plans have become integral components of comprehensive cancer care and national accreditation. An academic and community cancer network successfully pilot tested a new non-nursing role to support efficiency in case finding, staffing, and tracking patients throughout care delivery: the survivorship data coordinator (SDC). Key functions of the SDC role include abstracting data into survivorship care plans, scheduling survivorship visits, and tracking the number of completed survivorship care plans shared with patients.

SerpinB3, a new prognostic tool in breast cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

It is unclear which patients with breast cancer benefit from anthracycline-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy and whether taxanes increase survival. Hsp70 and serpinB3 inhibit a lysosomal cell death pathway induced in anthracycline and taxane treated cells, which may be critical for breast cancer cell survival. Thus we evaluated serpinB3 and Hsp70 as putative prognostic biomarkers in breast cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Infant-feeding practices of low-income Vietnamese American women.

Healthy People 2010 breastfeeding goals include 50% exclusive breastfeeding at 6 months. In California, US, Santa Clara County Women, Infants, and Children (SCCWIC) data indicated Asian participants had low (5.6%) 6-month breastfeeding rates.

Therapeutic Magnets Do Not Affect Tissue Temperatures.

OBJECTIVE: Manufacturers of commercially available "therapeutic" magnets claim that these magnets cause physiologic thermal effects that promote tissue healing. We conducted this study to determine if skin or intramuscular temperatures differed among magnet, sham, and control treatments during 60 minutes of application to the quadriceps muscle. DESIGN AND SETTING: A 3 x 3 mixed-model, factorial design with repeated measures on both independent variables was used.