Healthcare Impacts Associated with Federally Declared Disasters-Hurricanes Gustave and Ike.

People impacted by disasters may have adverse non-communicable disease health effects associated with the disaster. This research examined the independent and joint impacts of federally declared disasters on the diagnosis of hypertension (HTN), diabetes (DM), anxiety, and medication changes 6 months before and after a disaster. Patients seen in zip codes that received a federal disaster declaration for Hurricanes Gustave or Ike in 2008 and who had electronic health records captured by MarketScan were analyzed.

Over-The-Counter Analgesics: A Meta-Synthesis of Pain Self-Management in Adolescents.

Background: The consumption prevalence of OTC medication ranges between 57% and 78% among adolescents in the United States of America; however, the reasons for self-medication with OTC analgesics have not been systematically examined.

Aims: The purpose of this meta-synthesis is to generate new knowledge and theoretical understanding of adolescents' use of over-the-counter (OTC) analgesics.

Design: Qualitative meta-ethnography using Noblit and Hare's (1988) approach.

Mentoring: A vital link in nurse practitioner development.

Mentoring has been recognized in the discipline since the inception of nursing as a profession. The core elements of mentoring are a formal dyadic relationship, reciprocity, mutual respect, professional growth, personal development, trustworthiness, objectives, and a pathway to meet the objectives, clear expectations, shared values, personal connection, provision of a safe place for asking hard questions, navigation of roadblocks, and using lessons learned. Mentoring is important at all stages of professional development.

Shipboard Global Health Engagement Missions: Essential Lessons for Military Healthcare Personnel.

Introduction: Global health engagement missions are conducted to improve and protect the health of populations worldwide. Recognizing the strong link between health and security, the Armed Forces have increased the number of global health engagement missions over the last decade to support force health protection, medical readiness, enhance interoperability, improve host nation capacity building, combat global health threats (i.e.

Beyond Pathologizing Harm: Understanding PTSD in the Context of War Experience.

An alternative to objectifying approaches to understanding Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) grounded in hermeneutic phenomenology is presented. Nurses who provided care for soldiers injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and sixty-seven wounded male servicemen in the rehabilitation phase of their recovery were interviewed. PTSD is the one major psychiatric diagnosis where social causation is established, yet PTSD is predominantly viewed in terms of the usual neuro-physiological causal models with traumatic social events viewed as pathogens with dose related effects.

Experiences of vulnerability and uncertainty during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: Stories of wounded service members and the nurses who cared for them.

Background: The findings reported in this paper were derived from a secondary analysis of selected data from a large clinical knowledge study designed to document the experiential learning of military and federal nurses caring for critically wounded service members (WSMs) of their experience of care from point of injury in the combat zone through their rehabilitation.

Findings: This article describes a picture of vulnerability and uncertainty in both WSMs and their nurses throughout the health care continuum. The concepts of vulnerability and uncertainty had distinct meanings for each group.

Advancing Nursing Practice: The Emergence of the Role of Advanced Practice Nurse in Saudi Arabia.

Background: The roots of advanced practice nursing (APN) can be traced back to the 1890s, but the nurse practitioner (NP) emerged in Western countries during the 1960s in response to the unmet healthcare needs of populations in rural areas. These early NPs utilized the medical model of care to assess, diagnose and treat. Nursing has since grown as a profession, with its own unique and distinguishable, holistic, science-based knowledge, which is complementary within the multidisciplinary team.

The evolution of case management for service members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In this article we describe the nursing care needs of wounded service members (WSMs) from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the evolving role of the nurse case manager (CM). New types of injuries, in-field treatment, immediate transport to multiple care centers, and new technologies have created a new patient population of WSMs that requires new types of nursing care and knowledge. We interviewed 235 nurses, including CMs from nine military treatment facilities (MTFs) and the Veterans Administration (VA), on actual patient care experiences and new knowledge development, and 67 WSMs about their experiences of care.

Improving compliance with diabetes clinical practice guidelines in military medical treatment facilities.

Background: A multidisciplinary, multifaceted approach to disease management that incorporates the health system, the provider, and the patient is supported in the literature. There was a need to improve patient outcomes to meet or to exceed the Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS) benchmarks for the management of patients with diabetes.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to implement a process improvement effort using practice guidelines on the basis of an evidence-based practice model for the management of type II diabetes mellitus at two primary care clinics at two military medical facilities in Hawaii.

Military nursing research: translation to disaster response and day-to-day critical care nursing.

Where to begin? How do you identify nursing care requirements for military operations, disaster, and humanitarian response, and how do you modify care under these unique conditions? This article presents a framework for identifying areas of critical care nursing that are performed on a day-to-day basis that may also be provided during a contingency operation, and discusses how that care may be changed by the austere conditions associated with a contingency response. Examples from various disasters, military operations, and military nursing research are used to illustrate the use of this framework. Examples are presented of how the results of this military nursing research inform disaster nursing and day-to-day critical care nursing practice.

Military nursing research by students at the Graduate School of Nursing Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Military nursing research has had a long and productive history. Today, much of this research is conducted under two programs, the TriService Nursing Research Program and the Graduate School of Nursing (GSN), both located at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. This article will discuss the 150 military nursing research projects carried out by students at the GSN since its founding in 1992.