"Feeling Like an Island": Perceptions of Professional Isolation Among Emergency Nurses.

Introduction: Professional isolation, feelings of being isolated from one's professional peers and lacking mentoring and opportunities for professional interaction, collaboration, and development, is a challenge for workers across the labor market. The notion of professional isolation is particularly prevalent in low-resource health care settings and is common among emergency nurses.

Methods: This study explored the perceptions of professional isolation among emergency nurses working in a low-resource environment using individual interviews with 13 participants in 5 settings in Lesotho.

Experiences of midwifery care in English prisons.

Background: In the United Kingdom (UK), all prisoners must receive healthcare equivalent to that available in the community. However, evidence suggests that equality in healthcare provision for perinatal women in UK prisons is not always achieved. The aim of this research was to examine pregnant women prisoners' and custody staffs' experiences and perceptions of midwifery care in English prisons.

Interventions for managing professional isolation among health professionals in low resource environments: A scoping review.

Background: Professional isolation is viewed as a sense of isolation from ones professional peers and this has contributed to compromised quality of health service delivery as well as quality of life for health professionals in low resource environments. Professional isolation is a multidimensional concept which may be either geographic, social, and/or ideological. However, professional isolation in low resource environments remains poorly defined with a limited body of research focusing on health professionals.

Facilitating the development of emergency nursing in Africa: Operational challenges and successes.

The World Health Assembly declared 2020 as the 'Year of the Nurse and the Midwife' in recognition of the critical contribution of both professions to global health. Nurses globally are having to do more with less and in the already resource deficient African context, significant adaptation and leadership is required in the way emergency nurses work if they are to be effective in reducing mortality and morbidity within emergency populations. In 2011, an emergency nursing group, representing the largest group of nurses in Africa, swiftly engaged with this process by publishing the document 'Developing a framework for emergency nursing practice in Africa' (2012).

Pregnancy and childbirth in English prisons: institutional ignominy and the pains of imprisonment.

With a prison population of approximately 9000 women in England, it is estimated that approximately 600 pregnancies and 100 births occur annually. Despite an extensive literature on the sociology of reproduction, pregnancy and childbirth among women prisoners is under-researched. This article reports an ethnographic study in three English prisons undertaken in 2015-2016, including interviews with 22 prisoners, six women released from prison and 10 staff members.

How much training in ultrasound would emergency nurses need?

Ultrasound sonography, in which a high-pitched sound wave travels at different speeds through objects of variable density, offers effective clinical diagnostic applications to identify problems, such as free abdominal fluid following blunt trauma, cardiac effusion and long bone fractures.

Reflections on researcher departure: Closure of prison relationships in ethnographic research.

Background: The United Kingdom has the highest incarceration rate in Western Europe. It is known that women in prison are a vulnerable female population who are at risk of mental ill-health due to disadvantaged and chaotic life experiences. Accurate numbers of pregnant women held in UK prisons are not recorded, yet it is estimated that 6%-7% of the female prison population are at varying stages of pregnancy and around 100 babies are born to incarcerated women each year.

Be alert and stay safe.

In this issue of Emergency Nurse, we report on the latest NHS Protect figures on health service staff who have been assaulted ( page 6 ).

Compassion is a constant.

Compassion is a powerful word that describes an intense feeling of commiseration and a desire to help those struck by misfortune. Most people know intuitively how and when to offer compassion to relieve another person's suffering. In health care, compassion is a constant; it cannot be rationed because emergency nurses have limited time or resources to manage increasing demands.

Nursing is a global concern.

I had the privilege last month of speaking at the International Council of Nurses (ICN) conference in Seoul, South Korea, where about 7,000 nurses from 119 different countries explored the importance of global co-operation in nursing.

Sudden death in emergency care: responding to bereaved relatives.

Many emergency nurses find it difficult to support relatives whose loved ones are being resuscitated or to witness relatives' distress after their family members have died. When such events occur, emergency practitioners have few opportunities to engage effectively with relatives and so they must get it right first time, every time. Consequently, they need to be able to give information sensitively, and express compassion and empathy, to bereaved relatives.

Assessing carbon monoxide poisoning.

Carbon monoxide (CO) is a toxic gas usually formed during the incomplete combustion of carbon-based fuels. Poisoning by CO can be fatal or lead to long-term debilitating cardiovascular, respiratory and neuropsychological conditions. Despite the reinforcement of government policies on CO poisoning over the past decade, emergency practitioners should become more aware of CO toxicity to reduce mortality and morbidity, and an unnecessary financial burden on health services.