Nurses and Loss: A Call to Action

As we seek to understand how best to support the health and well-being of nurses, we must include a better understanding of the impact of loss and grief on the heart of a nurse. The chronic accumulation of unacknowledged, unattended grief can express itself as detachment, distancing, and avoiding caring connections, but it can also be a primary cause of more severe problems that nurses struggle with. If we courageously explore the inevitable heartbreak that is inherent in our work, it can serve as a catalyst into actions, innovations, and changes that will better prepare and support our nursing workforce.     

Concept Analysis of Pain: Implications Related to Nursing Diagnoses

Pain is a phenomenon that has an impact on clients in a variety of settings. Nurses have many responsibilities related to assessment, diagnosis, intervention, and evaluation when caring for the person experiencing pain. The phenomenon of pain is described through a concept analysis, which is guided by the research tradition of phenomenology. A review of both medical and nonmedical literature provides a broad base of definitions from which the attributes, antecedents, and consequences are derived. The analysis includes the construction of various cases and identification of empirical referents in the phenomenologic tradition. Suggestions for future development and implementation of the concept into clinical nursing practice and clinical nursing research are included.     

Bed Bugs and Beyond: A Call to Action for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses

Bed bugs, once considered well controlled and even eradicated in many parts of the developed world, have made a comeback and are an increasing public health concern. Coordinated actions on the part of public health entities, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency, have focused on the use of integrated pest management strategies to combat the recent resurgence. Advanced practice registered nurses, especially as clinicians, educators, and policy makers, need to be aware of this public health issue and their integral role in management and containment efforts.     

Compliance: A Concept Analysis

Compliance has a myriad of definitions. Understanding it as a phenomenon is complicated by the different perspectives fo different disciplines. Nurses need to define compliance in a manner that best fits the philosophy of the nursing discipline. This article makes a distinction between the ordinary use and the scientific use of the term compliance. Nurses are challenged to embrace an interactive, transactional process in order to form a partnership with clients, which allows for client choice and control in decision making about carrying out the prescribed behavior.     

Concept development of family resilience: a study of Korean families with a chronically ill child

Aims. To clarify and delineate the concept of family resilience in the context of the chronic illness of a child. This study also investigated the concept of family resilience in relation to family functioning in order to compare and contrast family resilience and family functioning. Design and method. Three phases of the hybrid model of concept development were applied: theoretical, fieldwork and final analytical. In the theoretical phase, a working definition of family resilience was developed by a literature review. The fieldwork phase comprised in‐depth interviews with 11 parents with a chronically ill child, in the paediatric oncology unit of a university hospital in South Korea. The qualitative data obtained from the interviews were analysed to find attributes of family resilience. The final analytical phase compared and interpreted the findings from the theoretical and fieldwork phases in order to clarify and refine the concept of resilience. Results. The definition of family resilience was of an enduring force that leads a family to change its functioning dynamics in order to solve problems encountered. Twenty‐one conceptual attributes of family resilience emerging from this study were differentiated into four dimensions: (i) intrinsic family characteristics, (ii) family member orientation related to family characteristics, (iii) responsiveness to stress and (iv) external orientation. Conclusions. Family resilience is an enduring force that leads a family to change its dynamics of functioning in order to solve problems associated with stresses encountered. This conceptualization led to the development of a model of family coping that incorporates both family resilience and family functioning, as the property and as the process of change, respectively. Relevance to clinical practice. In order to build a family that functions better under stress, it is necessary for nurses to focus more attention on family resilience, especially in terms of the development of intervention strategies to strengthen family resilience.     

Household Air Pollution From Cooking Fires: A Challenge for Nurses Globally and a Call to Action

The global burden of disease from exposure to household air pollution related to cooking fires is ranked as the 6th leading cause of death, primarily impacting poor women and children in low-income countries. Globally, smoke exposure from household air pollution is attributed to approximately 1/3 of chronic obstructive pulmonary deaths, 1/4 of pneumonia deaths, and 3% of lung cancer deaths. Nurses are increasingly working in global health arenas but are typically ill-prepared to address this complex environmental health problem. Nurses can play a key role in education, practice, and research to develop and support interventions, both in the United States and abroad, which may reduce this substantial burden of disease.     

Resilience as a mediator between cardiorespiratory fitness and mental health‐related quality of life: A cross‐sectional study

In this cross‐sectional study, we analyzed the relationship between resilience, cardiorespiratory fitness, and mental health‐related quality of life, and examined whether resilience acts as a mediator between the latter two. The study included 770 university students, aged 18–30 years, from Cuenca, Spain. Anthropometric, sociodemographic, cardiorespiratory fitness (20 m shuttle run test), biochemical parameters, resilience, and mental health‐related quality of life measurements were analyzed. The results showed that mental health‐related quality‐of‐life values were significantly higher in students who had good cardiorespiratory fitness and a high level of resilience. Moreover, resilience acted as a partial mediator between cardiorespiratory fitness and mental health‐related quality of life at 33.79%. Therefore, in young adults, resilience mediates the relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness and mental health‐related quality of life. These findings should be taken into account by nurses and other public health professionals, because in addition to the development of physical activity interventions to improve mental health‐related quality of life, it is necessary to implement measures that increase resilience to achieve mental wellness.     

Concept Analysis: Nurse‐to‐Nurse Lateral Violence

PURPOSE. The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of nurse‐to‐nurse lateral violence (LV). SOURCE. Published literature—LV among nurses is significant and results in social, psychological, and physical consequences, negative patient and nursing outcomes, and damaged relationships. An extensive review of literature through Health Source, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), ProQuest health, and Medical Complete was used to determine agreement and disagreement across disciplines and emerging trends. CONCLUSION. This concept analysis demonstrates that nurse‐to‐nurse LV is nurse‐to‐nurse aggression with overtly or covertly directing dissatisfaction toward another. Origins include role issues, oppression, strict hierarchy, disenfranchising work practices, low self‐esteem, powerlessness perception, anger, and circuits of power. The result of this analysis provides guidance for further conceptual and empirical research as well as for clinical practice. Organizations must learn how to eliminate antecedents and provide nurses with skills and techniques to eradicate LV to improve the nursing work environment, patient care outcomes, and nurse retention.