Text messaging support to enhance nurses' well-being and connectedness.

Nurses face numerous stressors due to increasing patient acuity, challenging staffing ratios, and trauma from the COVID-19 pandemic, among many other factors. To help improve nurses' daily self-care, nurses need diverse tools and interventions, such as peer support through text messaging (TM). This article evaluates the benefits of TM and strategies to use TM in providing effective peer support among nurses.

Nursing Care of Childbearing Families After Previous Perinatal Loss.

Nurses who care for childbearing families facilitate the family's adaptation to the arrival of a newborn through assessment of physical, emotional, and psychological needs. After experiencing a perinatal loss, such as miscarriage, stillbirth, or neonatal death, a woman's perception of pregnancy and of her sense of control in becoming a mother can include fear and anxiety, and she may have significantly different needs than a pregnant woman who has not experienced perinatal loss. In this article, we provide evidence-based information and recommendations for maternal-child nurses caring for childbearing families who are preparing to welcome a new baby (sometimes called a "rainbow baby") after a previous perinatal loss.

Why I Haven't Left.

A labor and delivery nurse describes the moments of grace that have sustained her during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Early pregnancy loss: Invisible but real.

One of every five pregnancies ends in miscarriage, disputing the common misconception that miscarriage is rare. Early pregnancy loss has a complex impact on women's mental health, requiring compassionate, trauma-informed care. This article explores the emotional and psychological impacts of miscarriage, and strategies for nurses to support the needs of patients after a miscarriage.

Before Journal Submission, Build Your Own Peer Review Board.

As professionals and potential leaders in health care, nurses should be committed to advancing practice through publishing in peer-reviewed journals. Asking trusted and experienced colleagues to critique a manuscript before its submission to a journal is a useful strategy to improve the quality of the manuscript and increase its chances of publication.

Peer to Peer Education: OB Visits the ED.

Ongoing education, an ever-present challenge in a hectic clinical environment, can be addressed by utilizing peer-to-peer education. Enhancing nurses' comfort level with specialty topics can reduce anxiety while enhancing core knowledge and skill proficiency for the provision of safe care. Increased self-confidence in a nurse's ability to detect a new or developing concern can lead to fewer delays in care.

The Meaning of Food and Multicultural Implications for Perinatal Palliative Care.

Feeding an infant is a bonding experience for parents, particularly for women from cultures in which breastfeeding is the norm. When an infant is unexpectedly ill, or his or her life is expected to be brief, challenges surrounding infant feeding can occur. Regardless of ethnicity or culture, parents facing the death of their infant have difficult decisions to make and need time to process those decisions.

A cost-effective approach to simulation-based team training in obstetrics.

Many larger facilities regularly stage obstetric drills in modern simulation departments equipped with expensive simulators. Despite lacking these resources, we wanted to provide effective simulation training at our rural hospital. A team of clinicians and educators developed a cost-effective and time-efficient simulation drill for nurses, which included both a didactic review and a simulation day.

How to succeed as an adjunct clinical nurse instructor.

Adjunct clinical nurse instructors who are proactive about staying clinically current and who form collaborative relationships with nurses, physicians and other health care professionals are able to teach safe care and engender staff nurses' trust. It's important for nurse educators to continually work to remain effective in the clinical setting to provide an optimal learning environment for students and optimal working environment for staff.

Making connections to develop a professional network.

Developing a professional network is important for career growth and professional development. Networking can open doors for countless opportunities to gain new knowledge, meet new people, visit new places and advance your career. Successful networking involves identifying opportunities to meet and interact with people and to do so in a genuine way that fosters the development of a professional relationship.

The rewards and challenges of becoming a clinical instructor.

Frontline nurses working in the clinical area are a vital component to nursing education. Taking on the role of adjunct clinical instructor can be a rewarding way to increase one's own knowledge while performing the important task of educating the next generation of nurses.

Maternal risk factors for peripartum transfusion.

Background: Postpartum hemorrhage remains one of the most significant maternal complications of childbirth in the United States, with peripartum transfusion the most commonly identified morbidity.

Methods: We completed a retrospective cohort study of women delivering at 20+ weeks at a large regional obstetric hospital between 2000 and 2008. Data were extracted from the institutional data warehouse; women with a potential coagulopathy were excluded.

Cesarean delivery is rising: implications for care for the perianesthesia Nurse.

Cesarean deliveries are on the rise, a fact that is impacting perianesthesia nurses across the country. Although many factors have contributed to this phenomenon, the end result is the need for perianesthesia nurses to update their knowledge base and skill sets to include standard care during the immediate postpartum period. In addition, the perianesthesia nurse will need to consider the normal physiological changes of pregnancy and delivery to assess for postoperative complications unique to obstetrical patients that can significantly affect mortality and morbidity in the surgical postpartum patient.

Requesting perinatal autopsy: multicultural considerations.

The subject of perinatal autopsy is not frequently seen in the literature. Perinatal loss, particularly stillbirth, frequently remains unexplained, despite current technology and diagnostic procedures. Parents may automatically refuse an autopsy, despite the potentially valuable information it could provide about the current pregnancy and subsequent pregnancies and despite the possible comfort the results could provide for relatives.