Healing Touch: A Strategy for Acute Care Nurses' Stress Reduction.

The purpose of the study is to determine whether administering healing touch (HT) is more effective than deep breathing (DB) for reducing acute care nurses' stress during a shift. A randomized cluster trial assessed 150 nurses' vital signs and Visual Analog Scale for Stress (VASS) levels pre, post, and at follow-up to achieve a power of .7 and medium affect size.

An overview of clinical tools used to assess neonatal abstinence syndrome.

Several clinical tools have been developed to quantify the severity of withdrawal signs and symptoms exhibited by infants born to substance-using mothers. Scores from the systematic assessments are used to guide treatment of infants with moderate to severe clinical signs. This article provides an overview of published assessment tools developed for infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome.

Targeting prenatal emergency preparedness through childbirth education.

The lack of emergency preparedness planning remains problematic for families, but there is a special concern for prenatal women and families. This article proposes childbirth education as one avenue through which nurses can engage families to prepare for a disaster. Template guides and references are included for community-specific emergency preparedness education for childbearing families.

Perinatal considerations in the hospital disaster management process.

Nurses play a vital role in providing care to mothers and infants during a disaster, yet few are fully prepared for the challenges they will encounter under extreme conditions. The ability to provide the best possible care for families begins with understanding the perinatal issues in relation to each phase of the disaster management process. This article reviews the hospital and perinatal nursing role in the mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery phases of disaster management.

Perinatal nursing in uncertain times: the Katrina effect.

Purpose: To make explicit the perinatal nurses' shared meanings of their lived experience while providing nursing care in the New Orleans area during the disaster of Hurricane Katrina.

Study Design: Interpretative phenomenology.

Methods: Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 perinatal nurses 9 to 18 months after they worked in obstetrical and newborn hospital settings in the Greater New Orleans area during the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Neonatal nursing care issues following a natural disaster: lessons learned from the Katrina experience.

The massive evacuation of sick and at-risk infants from a large metropolitan area following a natural disaster provides many lessons for neonatal nurses. Planning and education are of utmost importance, and disaster education and training are essential for all nurses. Unit-specific disaster plans can serve as a guide for nurses but the real test occurs during and after the event.