Children with a long-term illness: parents' experiences of care.

A diagnosis of a long-term illness in a child will bring on a major upheaval in the lives of the whole family involved and leads to a long-standing relationship with health care personnel. The purpose of this study was to describe parents' experiences with their child's illness and treatment and with their relationships with health professionals during the process of learning to care for their child. Data were collected by conducting open-ended interviews with parents (N = 11) whose child had been diagnosed with a physical long-term illness at least 1 year previously and were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Preoperative education for orthopaedic patients: systematic review.

Aims: This paper presents a systematic review whose aim was to describe the scope and methods of the current literature on preoperative patient education and to identify the effects of this education.

Background: Preoperative patient education is a common and important intervention in surgical nursing, yet there is very limited systematic evidence on its precise role.

Methods: The Medline, CINAHL, Eric, Psycinfo and Social Sciences Index databases and the Cochrane Library were searched, covering the period from the beginning of each database to April 2003.