Family caring strategies in neutropenia.

Aggressive chemotherapy protocols result in neutropenia in approximately half of all patients receiving chemotherapy. Thus, neutropenia continues to be a significant and potentially life-threatening side effect of treatment, even with use of colony-stimulating factors. Families of patients with neutropenia often provide the primary healing environment because most chemotherapy protocols are managed on an outpatient basis.

Turbulent waiting: rural families experiencing chemotherapy-induced neutropenia.

Purpose/objectives: To explore how rural families understand and manage the chemotherapy-induced neutropenia (CIN) experience.

Design: Qualitative, inductive approach using family interviews.

Setting: Family homes in a rural community in the midwestern United States.

The relationship between nursing staffing levels and nursing home outcomes.

This study examined the effects of selected Minnesota nursing home attributes (size, ownership, noncompliance with a state correction order, and licensed and nonlicensed nursing hours) on specific outcomes (functional ability, discharge home, and death) for residents ages 65 and older, controlling for residents' age and previous functional ability. The functional outcome was operationalized by calculating the resident's Total Dependence Score (TDS), the total score on the assessment of eight activities of daily living (score range: 0-33). Ordinary least squares regression analysis was used to estimate the effects of facility attributes, admission TDS, and age on resident outcomes, and nonlinear probability analyses were used to estimate the effects of facility attributes, admission TDS, and age on the probability of death or discharge home.

Research considerations: nursing home quality perceptions.

1. One of our nation's most challenging health care problems is providing quality care for nursing home residents. Those of us who desire to evaluate and to improve the quality of care provided in a nursing home must attempt to define quality in specific terms, even though it is a product of many factors.

Gerontological nursing practice standards: achievement and importance.

The 1987 ANA Standards of Gerontological Nursing Practice is compared with the 1976 Standards and found to be a new document, not simply a revision. These 1987 standards are assessed using five queries: progression, timeliness, adequacy of scope, substance, and form. Eighteen nurses practicing at a long term care facility in the midwest rated both the achievement and importance of these new standards.