Publications by authors named "Nicholas R Henry"

Some family members who previously made the decision to donate a family member's organs support the organ procurement organization (OPO) through volunteer work. Volunteers were asked to describe their family's organ donation story to educate the general and medical communities about organ donation. This study explored the transformative learning experienced by volunteers during and following the organ donation consent process and throughout their volunteer work.

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Introduction: Health care providers working as organ recovery coordinators (ORC) in the United States have diverse backgrounds and many of the skills needed for the position are obtained during on-the-job training. Some students in health care programs express interest in the organ procurement field but have limited experience and knowledge regarding organ procurement practices. In response to this, a partnership was developed between an undergraduate respiratory care (RC) program and its local organ procurement organization (OPO) to develop and initiate an internship designed to educate students regarding organ procurement.

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Organ recovery coordinators (ORCs) have varied professional education backgrounds; however, based on their specialized education, their training may not have included in-depth mechanical ventilation and pulmonary management. An 8-hour pulmonary workshop was developed in collaboration between an organ procurement organization and a university-based respiratory care department. The workshop focused on pulmonary management and hands-on laboratory exercises using mechanical ventilators.

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Context: Ventilator auto-trigger is the delivery of an assisted mechanical ventilated breath over the set ventilator frequency in the absence of a spontaneous inspiratory effort and can be caused by inappropriate ventilator trigger sensitivity. Ventilator auto-trigger can be misinterpreted as a spontaneous breath and has the potential to delay or prevent brain death testing and confuse health-care professionals and/or patient families.

Objective: To determine the frequency of organ donor referrals from 1 Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) that could benefit from an algorithm designed to assist organ recovery coordinators to identify and correct ventilator auto-triggering.

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Background: Nasal cycling may present negative consequences for oxygen-dependent patients using a nasal cannula. This study investigates the effects of nasal cycling on the delivered F(IO2) via nasal cannula in an anatomic model following a baseline study comparing right and left prong nasal cannula oxygen flow delivery.

Methods: Flow from right and left nasal cannula prongs were measured simultaneously using thermal mass flow meters while delivering 0.

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Background: Students attending institutions of higher education have the option of utilizing their student health center (SHC) for asthma management. However, a review of the available literature revealed no previous research as to how SHCs on college campuses in Texas manage students with asthma. This led to the following research questions; how are SHCs in Texas managing asthma for college students, and what are the SHC directors' attitudes and perceptions of the impact of asthma on their college campuses?

Methods: This descriptive pilot study randomly selected 20 colleges in Texas; 17 institutions agreed to participate.

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Context: Respiratory therapists provide care for every potential organ donor but do not receive formal education regarding organ procurement.

Objective: To assess the number of respiratory therapists who are aware of the organ donor referral criteria and their attitude toward organ donation before and after an organ procurement organization provided an educational course.

Design: A retrospective analysis of surveys following an educational course.

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Background: The apnea test is used to determine the absence of respiratory drive when determining brain death. Current guidelines for performing the apnea test do not specify the size of insufflation catheter (IC) to use with each endotracheal tube (ETT) size, despite case reports describing procedure-related complications with the use of various IC sizes. We studied the effect of the ratio of IC outer diameter to ETT inner diameter on the pressure and volume generated within the lungs during the apnea test.

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We report a case of broncholithiasis secondary to pulmonary actinomycosis. Broncholithiasis has occasionally been reported in association with actinomycosis, but it is unclear if actinomycosis leads to lymph node calcification with subsequent erosion into the airway, producing a broncholith, or if an existing generic broncholith is secondarily colonized with Actinomyces. The patient had post-obstruction pneumonia, and computed tomography showed calcified nodules obstructing the bronchus intermedius and distal necrotizing pneumonia.

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Background: Current American Association for Respiratory Care (AARC) clinical practice guidelines recommend a suction catheter to endotracheal tube ratio (SC/ETT) based on the external diameter of the SC and the internal diameter of the ETT. An SC/ETT ratio of < 50% is consistent with the current recommendation. We theorized that a more satisfactory assessment of SC/ETT ratio could be accomplished using volume or area formulas and expansion of diameter recommendations.

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