Development of Nurse Practitioner Competencies for Advance Care Planning.

This article describes the development of nurse practitioner (NP) competencies for advance care planning. Nurse practitioners are well positioned to implement advance care planning with their patients; however, very few patients have an advance care plan. A modified Delphi method was used to engage NPs in achieving consensus for advance care planning competencies.

The meaning of home for ageing women living alone: An evolutionary concept analysis.

The concept of home to women ageing should be visited in the light of ongoing cultural, political, temporal and disciplinary evolutions. In part, to compliment policies increasing focus on supporting older adults to age in place and a growing attention on the home as a place where healthcare is designed and provided. The following concept analysis utilises Rodgers' evolutionary method to inductively analyse literature in order to elicit the meaning and experience of home among older women who are ageing at home.

Teamwork and Patient Care Teams in an Acute Care Hospital.

The literature suggests that effective teamwork among patient care teams can positively impact work environment, job satisfaction and quality of patient care. The purpose of this study was to determine the perceived level of nursing teamwork by registered nurses, registered practical nurses, personal support workers and unit clerks working on patient care teams in one acute care hospital in northern Ontario, Canada, and to determine if a relationship exists between the staff scores on the Nursing Teamwork Survey (NTS) and participant perception of adequate staffing. Using a descriptive cross-sectional research design, 600 staff members were invited to complete the NTS and a 33% response rate was achieved (N=200).

Implementation of an Advanced Access Scheduling System in Primary Healthcare: One Clinic's Experience.

Advanced access scheduling is a system designed to allow patients to be seen same day or next day or in the future according to their preference. The scheduling system has been associated with patients being seen earlier in the course of illness and patients being hospitalized less often. The advanced access system focuses on timely access to primary healthcare, ideally within 48 hours.

Nurse practitioners' perceptions of interprofessional team functioning with implications for nurse managers.

Aims: To determine the perceptions of nurse practitioners (NPs) about the level of functioning of their interprofessional teams.

Background: Interprofessional teams are a global trend, and nurses play leadership roles in their management. Little is known about the impact of specific barriers to team functioning and the role of the nurse manager on team functioning.

Overcoming barriers to practice: A nurse practitioner-led model.

Purpose: Nurse practitioners (NPs) in Ontario, Canada, experience many barriers to practice that negatively influence their ability to increase access to comprehensive primary healthcare services. A NP-Led Clinic Model has helped to overcome many of the barriers and has had a real impact on access to care.

Data Sources: Legislative and regulatory documents from the government of Ontario were reviewed.

Canada's First Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic: A Case Study in Healthcare Innovation.

Canada's first nurse practitioner-led clinic opened in 2007 after a period of intense lobbying. The development of this clinic has received a great deal of attention in the nursing world and among the general public, but the factors that enabled it have not been examined. The antecedents outlined in healthcare innovation concept analysis - including leadership, financial considerations, idea generation, teamwork, culture and demand - provide a framework for examination of the campaign for the nurse practitioner-led clinic.

Identification of facilitators and barriers to the role of a mentor in the clinical setting.

Clinical mentors are integral to the education of health care professionals. In Northeastern Ontario, Canada, clinical mentors can take a variety of forms. Examples include preceptors who are employees in a clinical setting working with an individual student for a specific period of time, clinical educators, individuals contracted to take a group of students in acute care settings, and faculty advisors, who facilitate students' community placements.

Representations of disability in nursing and healthcare literature: an integrative review.

Aim: This paper is a report of an integrative review to explore the way in which disability has been considered in the multidisciplinary health and nursing literature.

Background: In the multidisciplinary health and nursing literature, two ways are presented in which disability can be understood: the traditional, functional perspective and a more contemporary, social perspective.

Data Sources: Computerized databases of the CINAHL, Proquest Nursing and Allied Health Sources, EBSCO and Evidence Based Medicine Reviews Multifile and Cochrane databases were conducted for papers published in English in the period 1963-2007 using the keywords 'models of disability', 'disability and nursing research' and 'theories of disability'.

Locating Carper's aesthetic pattern of knowing within contemporary nursing evidence, praxis and theory.

Carper's (1978) seminal work has been used in nursing education for many years as a method for introducing students to the multitude of ways of knowing that support nursing practice. This manuscript focuses on the aesthetic pattern of knowing and the ongoing debate in nursing literature surrounding aesthetics, evidence and nursing practice. Writers will describe and critique a strategy used to introduce first year undergraduate nursing students to this pattern of knowing.

Death stories: acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The underlying premise of narrative research within social science literature is the belief that individuals most effectively make sense of their world by (re)constructing stories. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a progressive degenerative respiratory disorder that affects approximately 15% of Canadians annually. Prior to the study discussed in this article, no research had been done to understand the frightening event of an acute exacerbation episode of COPD from the perspective of patients and their family caregivers.

Quick and easy stress-relief techniques.

Since nurses are constantly bombarded by stress, you would expect many documented interventions to help them deal with it. But such interventions are hard to find. As one researcher remarked, there are lots of courses to teach nurses about mental illness, but few to teach them how to improve their own mental health.

Finding your way around qualitative methods in nursing research.

The intention of this paper is to assist neophyte and traditionally educated nurse-researchers to navigate the qualitative research literature with understanding. The labelling language describing the central structures of the qualitative paradigm will be discussed as the key element to facilitating insight. The 'trustworthiness' of this research perspective will also be addressed within the context of the nursing research literature.