Five easy-to-master uses for point-of-care ultrasound.

Clinicians are increasingly becoming familiar with the value of limited, focused point-of-care ultrasonography (POCUS) to help answer discrete clinical questions. Ultrasound education is being taught in medical schools and physician assistant (PA) and PA postgraduate programs nationwide. This article introduces five basic POC ultrasound scans that can easily be mastered by practicing PAs.

Perspectives on the Meaning of "Disability".

The meaning of "disability" has shifted with changes in public policy. Half a century ago, Congress was convinced that narrow determinations of disability are easy for physicians to make. But with the advent of universal civil rights protection against disability discrimination in the US, deciding whether particular individuals are disabled became increasingly contentious, until Congress intervened.

How Should Medical Schools Respond to Students with Dyslexia?

We examine the dilemmas faced by a medical student with dyslexia who wonders whether he should "out" himself to faculty to receive the accommodations entitled by federal law. We first discuss scientific evidence on dyslexia's prevalence, unexpected nature, and neurobiology. We then examine the experiences of medical students who have revealed their dyslexia to illustrate the point that, far too often, attending physicians who know little about dyslexia can misperceive the motives or behavior of students with dyslexia.

Long-Term Surgical Management of Severe Pelvic Injury and Resulting Neurogenic Bladder From an Improvised Explosive Device.

Reconstructive surgery can help veterans improve their quality of life and live free of chronic indwelling catheters following injury from an improvised explosive device.

Oncology Nursing Certification: Relation to Nurses' Knowledge and Attitudes About Pain, Patient-Reported Pain Care Quality, and Pain Outcomes.

Purpose/objectives: To (a) compare pain knowledge and attitudes between nurses with oncology certified nurse (OCN®) status, non-OCN®-certified nurses, and nurses ineligible for certification and (b) examine the relationships among OCN® status, nurses' knowledge and attitudes about pain, patient-reported quality of nursing pain care, and pain outcomes. 
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Design: Prospective, correlational survey design.

Pediatric Cancer Genetics Research and an Evolving Preventive Ethics Approach for Return of Results after Death of the Subject.

The return of genetic research results after death in the pediatric setting comes with unique complexities. Researchers must determine which results and through which processes results are returned. This paper discusses the experience over 15 years in pediatric cancer genetics research of returning research results after the death of a child and proposes a preventive ethics approach to protocol development in order to improve the quality of return of results in pediatric genomic settings.

Cancer-related fatigue: scientific progress has been made in 40 years.

Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is a distressing, persistent symptom that is experienced by survivors during and after treatment. Unsurprisingly, many early CRF studies were conducted by nurses. These studies included a look at patients receiving localized radiation treatment (Haylock & Hart, 1979); an exploration of fatigue as a conceptual approach to a clinical problem (Aistars, 1987); the development of a nursing theory focused on fatigue mechanisms (Piper, Lindsey, & Dodd, 1987); an examination of fatigue mechanisms (St Pierre, Kasper, & Lindsey, 1992), as well as of fatigue in advanced cancer (Bruera & MacDonald, 1988) and in non-small cell lung cancer (Sarna, 1993); and a description of fatigue and potential nursing interventions (Nail & King, 1987).

Setting the bar: developing quality measures and education programs to define evidence-based, patient-centered, high-quality care.

In 2008, the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS) initiated a multi-year project to develop and test quality measures in areas judged by oncology nurses as high-priority opportunities to improve quality of life for patients across the cancer continuum, and to provide education to oncology nurses on how to achieve high-quality care. Supported through a grant to the ONS Foundation by the Breast Cancer Fund of the National Philanthropic Trust, two teams of expert nurses convened to review the literature and draft potential measures that are considered important to providers and patients, are high-volume, high-impact issues, and are supported by strong clinical evidence linking high-quality care processes to improved outcomes. The ONS Foundation contracted with the Joint Commission's Department of Quality Measurement to combine its measure-development experience with ONS's ambulatory oncology perspective to create a reproducible testing process.

Quality measures: a call to action. Foreword.

This supplement to the Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing (CJON) marks a significant milestone in the sustained efforts of the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS) to improve the quality of cancer care-a core component of the ONS mission. The lead article by Fessele, Yendro, and Mallory on pages 7-11 of this supplement summarizes the ONS Foundation-supported Breast Cancer Care (BCC) and Breast Cancer Survivorship (BCS) Quality Measures project. ONS leaders recognized that efforts to improve performance and patient outcomes were limited by the lack of a core set of reliable and valid patient-centered measures.

Allelic expression of phase II metabolizing enzymes and relationship to irinotecan toxicity.

Many drugs are associated with variable response rates and, of the 1,200 drugs approved for use in the United States, about 15% are associated with adverse drug responses (Jorde, Carey, & Bamshad, 2010c). Often, variable response and risk for toxicity can be explained because of differences in genes and in the proteins encoded by those genes. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) responsible for variable expression can be found in genes encoding for drug targets (receptors) or in genes responsible for drug disposition, including those that encode metabolizing enzymes or transporter molecules (Jorde et al.

Awaiting diagnosis of breast cancer: strategies of enduring for preserving self.

Purpose/objectives: To explicate the emotional experiences of women undergoing breast cancer diagnosis who are waiting for the results of breast biopsy.

Research Approach: Glaserian Grounded Theory.

Setting: Urban area in western Canada.

Communication behaviors and patient and caregiver emotional concerns: a description of home hospice communication.

Purpose/objectives: To identify and describe communication behaviors used by hospice nurses when eliciting and addressing concerns of patients with cancer and their caregivers.

Design: Secondary analysis.

Setting: Home hospice in Salt Lake City, UT.

Implementing survivorship care plans for colon cancer survivors.

Purpose/objectives: To evaluate the feasibility, usability, and satisfaction of a survivorship care plan (SCP) and identify the optimum time for its delivery during the first 12 months after diagnosis.

Design: Prospective, descriptive, single-arm study.

Setting: A National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in the southeastern United States.

Care of the body after death.

Care of the body after death is an important nursing function that occurs in a wide variety of contexts. After a patient dies, nursing care continues as physical care of the body as well as care of the family members. In this descriptive, qualitative study, the authors explored nurse perceptions of what it means to care for the body after death.

Use of Angiotensin receptor blockers in cardiovascular protection: current evidence and future directions.

Objective: To differentiate angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) by vascular effects and outcomes in trials on cardio-protective endpoints.

Data Sources: MEDLINE searches were conducted from January 2003 to March 2009 using the following search terms: renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) blockade or inhibition; angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARBs); cardio-protection; vascular protection; end-organ protection; candesartan; eprosartan, irbesartan; losartan; olmesartan; telmisartan; and valsartan. Ongoing and recruiting clinical trials were identified via Clinicaltrials.

Cellular plasticity in vertebrate regeneration.

Within the animal kingdom, there are several examples of organisms with remarkable regenerative abilities. Among vertebrates, newts appear to be the most adept at replacing lost structures and injured organs and can regenerate their limbs, tails, spinal cords, jaws, retinas, lenses, optic nerves, intestines, and heart ventricles. This regenerative ability is dependent on the induction of an unusual degree of cellular plasticity near the site of injury.