Smoking prevalence, attitudes, and confidence about tobacco roles among Australian nursing students.

This study identified major challenges to be addressed before student nurses can achieve their full potential in providing effective and comprehensive smoking cessation interventions. Smoking behaviors were assessed among undergraduate nursing students. In addition, students' attitudes, confidence levels, and support for extra training in tobacco control were examined.

Predictors of medication compliance among older heart failure patients.

Aim.  To examine relationships between psycho-social and patho-physiological measures in explaining medication compliance in older heart failure (HF) patients. Background.

Obesity: translation and testing of a survey instrument for use in Taiwan.

Aim And Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to describe a cross-cultural translation and validation methodology recommended by Vallerand. The translation technique has seven steps and ensures the instrument provides data that are valid and reliable.

Background: Translation of data collection instruments is a challenge increasingly being faced by overseas students studying in the West as they choose to research contextual issues of relevance to their home culture.

Cognitive factors in student nurses' clinical problem solving.

Rationale, Aims And Objectives: The assumption that the acquisition and mastery of the nursing process alone is sufficient to explain problem-solving performance has been challenged in recent literature. Researchers have argued that the quality of prior knowledge is a key component in explaining performance. In addition, motivational orientation and the quality of reasoning have been found to have different effects on performance in cognitive tasks.

Effectiveness of home-based cardiac rehabilitation for special needs patients.

Background: The benefits of cardiac rehabilitation programmes have been well documented including reductions in mortality, improved physical performance, and improved quality of life. However, a large number of special needs patients often fail to access these programmes. Of particular concern are elderly patients with chronic illness and disability.

Nursing students' and clinical educators' perceptions of characteristics of effective clinical educators in an Australian university school of nursing.

Background: This study is a replication of research undertaken by Mogan and Knox in 1987, which investigated and described characteristics of 'best' and 'worst' clinical educators. They developed and used an instrument known as the Nursing Clinical Teacher Effectiveness Inventory (NCTEI), a 48 item checklist that describes discrete characteristics clustered into five subscales or categories: teaching ability; interpersonal relationships, personality traits, nursing competence and evaluation. The tool has since been used in several countries including Greece, Hong Kong, Israel and North America and is the instrument most frequently used to identify effective clinical teaching characteristics of clinical educators.

Communication: principal barrier to nurse-consumer partnerships.

An 8-month pilot study conducted in urban, rural and remote areas of Australia sought to identify barriers to nurse-consumer partnerships, as well as strategies to overcome these barriers. One hundred and ninety-nine Registered Nurses (RNs) and 36 consumers participated across 14 workshops to collect data for the pilot study. Analysis of these data found that nurses' perceptions of partnership with consumers were diverse.