Families' Importance in Nursing Care: Nurses' Attitudes--an instrument development

This article describes the development and testing of a research instrument, Families' Importance in Nursing Care-Nurses' Attitudes (FINC-NA), designed to measure nurses' attitudes about the importance of involving families in nursing care. The instrument was inductively developed from a literature review and tested with a sample of Swedish nurses. An item-total correlation and a first principal component analysis were used to validate the final instrument, including a second principal component analysis to analyze dimensionality, and Cronbach's alpha was used to estimate internal consistency. The instrument consists of 26 items and reveals four factors: families as a resource in nursing care, family as a conversational partner, family as a burden, and family as its own resource. Cronbach's alpha was 0.88 for the total instrument and 0.69 to 0.80 for the subscales. The instrument requires further testing with other nurse populations.     

Validation of the new Intensive Care Nursing Scoring System (ICNSS)

OBJECTIVES: To validate a new Intensive Care Nursing Scoring System (ICNSS). DESIGN: Retrospective data collection. SETTING: Adult 19-bed intensive care unit (ICU) in a tertiary care university hospital. PATIENTS: A total of 1,538 patient records of which 30 documents were included in the validation. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Data included admission scores of the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) and the Simplified Acute Physiology Scores II (SAPS II), daily Therapeutic Intervention Scores (TISS) and ICNSS scores. Data were compared using Spearman's correlation, t-test and chi-square test. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis was used to assess the ability of ICNSS and TISS to predict mortality. Intra-class correlation, percentage agreement and kappa statistics were used to test the validity of given scores. Nursing workload assessment using ICNSS showed that medical and emergency-operated patients caused a greater nursing workload than electively operated patients (p<0.001). Six variables of the sub-scale that described vital function nursing accounted for 27.4% of the variation of SAPS II and for 37% of the variation of APACHE II. The ICNSS sub-scale of vital function nursing accounted for a ROC area of 0.91. In the validity of the given ICNSS scores, kappa was 0.81 and weighted kappa 0.82. CONCLUSIONS: Nursing workload varied between the different admission types. ICNSS explained a similar percentage of the variation of the admission scores of APACHE II and SAPSS II as TISS and discriminated between non-survivors and survivors. ICNSS is a suitable nursing workload instrument to be used with the TISS score.     

International field test results of the Observable Indicators of Nursing Home Care Quality instrument

Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia developed the Observable Indicators of Nursing Home Care Quality instrument to measure the dimensions of nursing home care quality during a brief on-site visit to a nursing home. The instrument has been translated for use in Iceland and used in Canada. Results of the validity and reliability studies using the instrument in 12 nursing homes in Reykjavik, in a large Veterans Home in Ontario with 14 units tested separately, and in 20 nursing homes in Missouri, are promising. High-content validity was observed in all countries, together with excellent inter-rater reliability and coefficient alpha. Test-retest reliabilities in Iceland and Missouri were good. Results of the international field test of the Observable Indicators of Nursing Home Care Quality instrument points to the usefulness of such an instrument in measuring nursing home care quality following a quick on-site observation in a nursing facility. The instrument should be used as a facility-wide assessment of quality, rather than for individual units within a facility. We strongly recommend its use by practising nurses in nursing homes to assess quality of care and guide efforts to improve care. We recommend its use by researchers and consumers and further testing of the use of the instrument with regulators.     

护理服务与药学服务

综述药学服务与护理服务的主要结合点,认为现代临床药学的发展及药学服务的推广不仅依赖于药学工作,更依赣于临床药师与护理工作的紧密配合,并从理论和实践上讨论了临床药学与护理工作在药物治疗效果、治疗药物监测、药品不良反应监察及临床药学研究等方面相互协作的重要意义与效果。     

Should Age be a Criterion for Rationing Health Care?

The need to decrease healthcare costs is urgent. One method of decreasing costs that has been proposed is age-based rationing. With the burgeoning number of Americans over 65 comes increased spending for health care. It is thought by some that this increase represents disproportionate spending, and that the money should be spent on health care for the young. Another school of thought is that the elderly have a right to health care just as any other group. The author believes that age may have to be one consideration for allocation of resources but not the only one.     

Clinical Validation of Nursing Diagnoses

We are reprinting selected papers occasionally to share with readers the history of the research work and the methodologies involved. This article is reprinted from Monographs of the Invitational Conference on Research Methods for Validating Nursing Diagnoses .     

Validation of Nursing Management Diagnoses

Nursing management diagnosis based on nursing and management science, merges "nursing diagnosis" and "organizational diagnosis". Nursing management diagnosis is a judgment about nursing organizational problems. The diagnoses provide a basis for nurse manager interventions to achieve outcomes for which a nurse manager is accountable. A nursing organizational problem is a discrepancy between what should be happening and what is actually happening that prevents thegoals of nursing from being accomplished. The purpose of this study was to validate 73 nursing management diagnoses identified previously in 1992: 71 of the 72 diagnoses were considered valid by at least 70% of136 participants. Diagnoses considered to have high priority for future research and development were identified by summing the mean scores for perceived frequency of occurrence and level of disruption. Further development of nursing management diagnoses and testing of their effectiveness in enhancing decision making is recommended.     

整体护理视域中的护理教育

整体护理是指以现代护理理论为指导 ,运用科学的护理方法 ,根据护理对象的特点 ,通过调动护理对象的主观能动性有计划地施以全面护理的一种护理模式。简言之 ,就是以护理对象为中心 ,以护理程序为框架 ,视对象为具有生物、心理、社会、文化、精神等多层面需要的整体 ,给予适合不同个体需要的全面护理[1] 。我国护理模式的这种转变 ,对培养护士的护理教育提出了新的要求。在整体护理视域中 ,护理教育呈现了新的内容和特点。1　整体护理的基本特点　　从根本上讲 ,整体护理改变了多年来实施的“以疾病为中心”的功能制护理模式 ,构建为“以护…