Health Care Worker Perceptions of Gaps and Opportunities to Improve Hospital-to-Hospice Transitions.

Care transitions from the hospital to hospice are a difficult time, and gaps during this transitions could cause poor care experiences and outcomes. However, little is known about what gaps exist in the hospital-to-hospice transition. To understand the process of hospital-to-hospice transition and identify common gaps in the transition that result in unsafe or poor patient and family caregiver experiences.

Survey Development: Caregivers Help Define a Tool to Measure Cultures of Care.

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop an instrument that measures all healthcare staff's perceptions of a culture of caring.

Background: Healthcare organizations have increased their focus on cultures of caring within their staff to improve staff satisfaction and patient satisfaction. Nurses and physicians traditionally have been the focus in understanding caring cultures excluding non-direct care staff who do impact organizational culture.

Improving End-of-Life Communications Using Technology-Assisted Continuing Education With Interprofessional Teams.

Registered nurses and social workers may have little experience engaging in end-of-life discussions. Technology-assisted continuing education (TACE) improves interprofessionals' capability and comfort with these difficult discussions. This study measured the impact of TACE on improving the capability and comfort of caregivers with end-of-life communication.

Pediatric Delirium: Early Identification of Barriers to Optimize Success of Screening and Prevention.

Introduction: Pediatric delirium has a 25% prevalence rate in the pediatric intensive care unit. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the impact/effect of implementing nonpharmacologic nursing bundles on the incidence of pediatric delirium. It is not yet known whether or not bundles consistently reduce the incidence of delirium.

Take charge and change our healthcare system.

It is often said that no two days in nursing are the same. This means staff nurses and nurse managers understand how to work with unknowns. Nurses often make the best of any situation, calmly delivering measured care while advocating for what they know to be the best for their patients and staff.

Embedding a Professional Practice Model Across a System.

Professional practice models (PPMs) are an integral part of any organization on the Magnet® journey, whether initial designation or redesignation. Through the journey, the PPM should become embedded within the nursing culture. Leadership at multiple levels is crucial to ensure successful adoption and implementation.

Searching for the Holy Grail of Care Delivery Models.

Too often health care executives state the need for more research, knowledge, and information in staffing. Perhaps what we really need is education and support for innovation in operations. In looking for the holy grail of staffing solutions, focused attention will need to be placed on creating innovative care delivery models.

Strategies for Pursuing a Master's Degree.

Health care has become very complex and is in a constant state of change. As a result of the evolving change and increasing complexity, a more educated nursing workforce is needed (Dracup K. Master's nursing programs.

High Reliability and Excellence in Staffing.

Nurse staffing is a complex issue, with many facets and no one right answer. High-reliability organizations (HROs) strive and succeed in achieving a high degree of safety or reliability despite operating in hazardous conditions. HROs have systems in place that make them extremely consistent in accomplishing their goals and avoiding potential errors.

Why Nurse Staffing Matters: A Moral Imperative.

Safe nurse staffing is undeniably linked to patient safety and satisfaction, workforce satisfaction and safety, and cost savings. A nationwide mandate must be driven toward the use of electronic staffing and scheduling systems that take into consideration the patient's real-time specific needs This system must be matched to the most appropriate nurse with the ability to provide care safely for all the patients in his or her total assignments. These patient care assignments should be designed in partnership with managers and staff RNs.

Reducing Length of Labor and Cesarean Surgery Rate Using a Peanut Ball for Women Laboring With an Epidural.

One strategy for reducing the primary cesarean surgery rate and length of labor is using a peanut-shaped exercise ball for women laboring under epidural analgesia. A randomized, controlled study was conducted to determine whether use of a "peanut ball" decreased length of labor and increased the rate of vaginal birth. Women who used the peanut ball (n = 107) versus those who did not (n = 91) demonstrated shorter first stage labor by 29 min (p = .

Nursing's role and staffing in accountable care.

Nurse staffing in a world of health care reform and accountable care is uncertain and creates fear not only for the nurse leaders, but all RNs. As health care reform transforms the environment, so must the role and staffing of nurses. There is still not one right answer or agreed upon manner to nurse staffing of inpatient units.

Development of a professional nursing framework: the journey toward nursing excellence.

To achieve Magnet recognition designation, an organization must demonstrate a framework for nursing practice. However, successfully incorporating and sustaining frameworks and theories into practice are not easy undertakings. The authors describe how leaders and staff in a healthcare system created and implemented a conceptual framework for nursing practice to guide nursing practice for the system.

Understanding research and evidence-based practice: from knowledge generation to translation.

Health care today requires an evidence-based environment where nurses deliver increasingly safer, higher-quality care. To obtain this environment, nurses must use the best evidence in their practice. As the largest deliverer of health care in the United States, nurses are vital in the participation of improving safety and quality care.

The Essentials of Magnetism for home health.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine what home health nurses perceived to be the Essentials of Magnetism in the home healthcare setting.

Background: Research in the acute care setting has established relationships between organizational attributes, nurse satisfaction, and quality outcomes. However, little is known in the home health setting on the importance and the impact of these relationships.

The application of plasma tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase to assess changes in bone resorption in response to artificial menopause and its treatment with estrogen or norethisterone.

Plasma tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TR ACP), urinary hydroxyproline excretion (UH), serum osteocalcin, and bone alkaline phosphatase isozyme were determined in a prospective study in 31 women who had undergone bilateral ovariectomy (OOX). Nine patients were followed up for 1 year without treatment and for the following 3 years when on mestranol (M) substitution. On the basis of UH, 22 patients were identified as having increased bone resorption (BR) within 3 months of OOX.

[Transdermal estradiol in the prevention of the menopause-induced increase in osteoresorption].

In the introduction of the paper the authors explain that it is essential to adopt effective preventive provisions to prevent the loss of osseous tissue in women after the menopause and to prevent osteoporotic fractures. In Bohemia and Moravia during the last 20 years the incidence of these frequently fatal or invalidating fractures of the proximal femur has increased substantially and in view of the ageing of the population it may be assumed that this trend will proceed further. Among possible preventive provisions, in order to eliminate undesirable metabolic side-effects of long-term hormonal substitution treatment, it seems best to administer by the parenteral route natural oestradiol by using the transdermal therapeutic Estraderm TTS system.

Epizootiological features of avian cholera on the north coast of California.

An avian cholera (Pasteurella multocida) epizootic was observed among wildfowl at the Centerville Gun Club, Humboldt County, California (USA) in January 1978. Compared to their live populations and use of the area, coots (Fulica americana) died in proportionately greater numbers than any other species. Coots collected by gunshot were evaluated for sex and age composition, and morphometry from November 1977 through mid-January 1978 at this site.

[Objective evaluation of the immunogenic effectiveness of polyvalent vaccines against enteral infections of newborn calves under enzootic conditions].

For evaluating the protective effect of polyvalent vaccine against diarrhoea in new born calves caused by rotaviruses, coronaviruses and enterotoxigenic E. coli the method was selected of mathematical and statistical analysis of the set of data characterizing the most important clinical symptoms of the disease during the first three weeks after birth. In two large-scale breeds with a mass occurrence of diarrhoea of the known etiology the state of health of calves before the vaccine application was compared with the state of health of calves born in the period after the vaccination.

[A new polyvalent vaccine against enteral infections in newborn calves].

The most frequent microbial causative agents of massive diarrheas in new-born calves kept on large cattle farms in the CSSR are rotaviruses, coronaviruses and enterotoxigenic strains of E. coli, manifesting themselves as complicated virus-bacterial infections. An inactivated polyvalent adjuvant vaccine has been developed for the prevention and specific prophylaxis of these enteral infections; the vaccine contains bovine rotavirus, bovine coronavirus and three enterotoxigenic serotypes of E.

[The complex etiology of epidemic diseases in calves on large-capacity farms and their clinical and epizootic characteristics].

It is not easy to exactly diagnose the etiology of the mass infections of new-born calves on large farms where considerable losses are suffered. On the basis of the complex epizootological, clinical and laboratory examination in four large calf-rearing facilities, rotaviruses, coronaviruses, the infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR) virus and the bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) virus, and in some cases also the enteropathogenic E. coli, were found to be etiologically involved in the mass rise of diarrhoea, complicated by respiratory symptoms already during the first days after birth.

[Phagocytic activity of blood leukocytes in calves from birth to 3 months of age].

Forty-three calves of various age from the day of birth to the age of three months were subjected to the 2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA) particle phagocytosis test. Significant differences in the phagocytic activity of blood leucocytes were recorded, all depending on age. New-born calves had very low phagocytic activity: only 16.

Antibodies to new variants of subtype A(H3 N2) influenza virus in pigs.

Following an explosive epidemic of A(H3N2) influenza among the human population of Czechoslovakia in 1983, haemagglutination-inhibiting antibodies (titre range 10-640) against strains A/Texas/77, A/Bangkok/79 and A/Philipines 2/83 were detected in 93% of sera collected from 135 pigs on three farms. Only 6.6% of sera were negative.

[The present epizootological situation in intensively bred cattle in relation to the morbidity and mortality of calves during their rearing].

The rise and mass incidence of intestinal and respiratory infections in calves kept in large herds depend on a joint influence of infective agents and numerous endogenous and exogenous factors, mostly with non-specific action. Therefore, purely medical approach fails to provide efficient prevention. Detailed epizootological analysis is needed for taking actual measures; the analysis should concern potential respiratory and intestinal pathogens and should also cover the persistent infections such as IBR, BVD-MD and others.