Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index: A Reliability Generalization Meta-Analysis.

A healthy work environment is a critical factor in nurse satisfaction, retention, and patient outcomes. The Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index (PES-NWI) is the most commonly used instrument to measure the nursing practice environment. This study uses meta-analysis to examine the reliability generalization of the PES-NWI.

Continuing to challenge practice to be evidence based.

Practice habits continue in clinical practice despite the availability of research and other forms of evidence that should be used to guide critical care practice interventions. This article is based on a presentation at the 2014 National Teaching Institute of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. The article is part of a series of articles that challenge critical care nurses to examine the evidence guiding nursing practice interventions.

Achieving quality health outcomes through the implementation of a spontaneous awakening and spontaneous breathing trial protocol.

Background: Continuous sedation infusions can lead to prolonged treatment with mechanical ventilation (MV), resulting in serious complications. Spontaneous awakening trials (SATs) and spontaneous breathing trials (SBTs) are strategies that limit the amount of sedative agents a patient receives and promote extubation.

Objective: The objective of this performance improvement project was to evaluate the outcomes of an evidence-based practice protocol that included SATs and SBTs on the duration of treatment with MV, ventilator utilization ratio (VUR), intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay (LOS), and incidence of self-extubations and reintubations.