The profile and follow-up of patients who attend the Emergency Department following a fall.

Unlabelled: Falls in the older population are associated with increased morbidity and mortality especially in the absence of risk reduction measures. The study aims were to compare the characteristics of older people who present to the Emergency Department (ED) following a fall with the general older ED population and examine referral patterns following ED discharge. Face-to-face interviews were carried out with 306 people aged 65 years or older.

Boundary matters: clinical leadership and the distinctive disciplinary contribution of nursing to multidisciplinary care.

Aims: To describe Irish nurses' views of clinical leadership and to describe their clinical leadership development needs.

Background: Nurses are often unclear about the precise nature of clinical leadership and its impact on the processes and outcomes of care and little is known about their self-perceived clinical leadership development needs.

Design: Seventeen focus group interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 144 nurses from 13 practice settings.

The role of health and non-health-related factors in repeat emergency department visits in an elderly urban population.

Introduction: Patients aged 65 years or older account for a growing proportion of emergency department (ED) repeat attendances. This study aimed to identify health and non-health factors associated with repeat ED attendance, defined as one or more visits in the previous 6 months in patients aged 65 years or older, and to examine the interaction between social and health factors.

Methods: 306 patients were interviewed.

In the know: cognitive and social factors in mental health nursing assessment.

Aims And Objectives: To develop an integrated cognitive and social understanding of assessment in mental health nursing.

Background: Assessment is a vital component of nursing care for mental health service users, largely driven by a tacit, experiential model of assessment; this approach is at variance with an evidence-based approach to assessment.

Design: A qualitative design was employed in the study, with a thematic analysis carried out on transcripts of focus groups with mental health nurses.

How different are older people discharged from emergency departments compared with those admitted to hospital?

Objective: To compare the characteristics of older people presenting to the emergency department (ED) and admitted to hospital with those discharged directly from the ED and identify factors independently associated with hospital admission.

Design: This is a cross-sectional survey of 306 community dwelling people aged 65 years or older presenting to two hospital EDs. A structured questionnaire and ED records were used to collect patient demographics, socioeconomic, physical, cognitive and social network information.

Psychosocial care in mental health nursing: a think aloud study.

Aim: This paper is a report of a study identifying psychosocial interventions relevant to routine care and exploring their content critically and analysing patterns in the use of these interventions.

Background: People experiencing enduring and serious mental disorders value psychosocial engagement as a means of achieving recovery and rehabilitation. However, mental health nurses' use of person-centred and directive psychosocial engagement in routine care is unclear, with the potential arising for benevolence and paternalism.

Ambiguities and conflicting results: the limitations of the kappa statistic in establishing the interrater reliability of the Irish nursing minimum data set for mental health: a discussion paper.

Background: In a study to establish the interrater reliability of the Irish Nursing Minimum Data Set (I-NMDS) for mental health difficulties relating to the choice of reliability test statistic were encountered.

Objectives: The objective of this paper is to highlight the difficulties associated with testing interrater reliability for an ordinal scale using a relatively homogenous sample and the recommended kw statistic.

Method: One pair of mental health nurses completed the I-NMDS for mental health for a total of 30 clients attending a mental health day centre over a two-week period.

Lost in translation, or the true text: mental health nursing representations of psychology.

One theme of academic discourse and research in mental health nursing is the exploration and application of psychosocial models of nursing practice. Despite this, the influence of disciplinary psychological knowledge on practitioners' talk about nursing practice has not been extensively researched. To address this gap, the authors analyzed talk about psychological work using transcripts of 10 focus groups involving 59 mental health nurses.

Reconsidering the conceptualization of nursing workload: literature review.

Aim: This paper reports a literature review that aimed to analyse the way in which nursing intensity and patient dependency have been considered to be conceptually similar to nursing workload, and to propose a model to show how these concepts actually differ in both theoretical and practical terms.

Background: The literature on nursing workload considers the concepts of patient 'dependency' and nursing 'intensity' in the realm of nursing workload. These concepts differ by definition but are used to measure the same phenomenon, i.

Developing a data dictionary for the irish nursing minimum dataset.

One of the challenges in health care in Ireland is the relatively slow acceptance of standardised clinical information systems. Yet the national Irish health reform programme indicates that an Electronic Health Care Record (EHCR) will be implemented on a phased basis. [3-5].