Interdisciplinary collaboration and the electronic medical record

PURPOSE: To examine interdisciplinary collaboration via electronic medical records (EMRs) with a focus on physicians' perception of nursing documentation. DESIGN: Quality improvement project using a survey instrument. LOCATION: Tertiary care pediatric hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Thirty-seven physicians. OUTCOME MEASURE: Physicians perceptions of nursing documentation after EMR implementation KEY FINDINGS: Physicians desire nursing documentation with greater clarity and additional information. Physicians indicate checklists alone for patient assessment and intervention data are insufficient for effective nurse/physician collaboration. Narrative nursing summaries are invaluable references that guide medical treatment decisions. Physicians see detailed assessments and well-described interventions of nurses' as critical to their ability to effectively practice medicine. KEY CONCLUSIONS: Health care technology is called to develop EMRs that enable nurses to document detailed patient data in a swift and straightforward manner. Joint collaboration between nurses, physicians, and technology specialists is recommended to develop effective EMR systems.     

Perioperative nurses' attitudes toward the use of nursing diagnoses in documentation

AIM: This paper reports a study of nurses' attitudes towards the use of nursing diagnoses in perioperative documentation and the factors affecting these attitudes. BACKGROUND: There are both international and national requests for nurses to move from natural language-based narrative documentation to electronic documentation and clinical use of nursing classifications. However, nurses' attitudes toward nursing classifications have not been widely studied. METHODS: A questionnaire was distributed to a purposive sample of perioperative nurses (n = 146) who had participated in clinical testing of nursing diagnoses. The response rate was 60% (n = 87). The data were collected in 2003. RESULTS: In general, nurses' attitudes toward nursing diagnoses were positive. Those over 40 years of age who had clinical experience from 10 to 19 years, postbasic nursing education and previous knowledge of nursing diagnoses were most positive in their attitudes. However, the use of nursing diagnoses in perioperative practice was not seen as either necessary or accurate in describing patients' problems. Furthermore, the documentation of perioperative routines was seen as time-consuming and frustrating. CONCLUSIONS: Nursing classifications should be included in both preregistration nursing curricula and in-service educational programmes to ensure theoretical knowledge of and practical skills in standardized clinical languages. The perioperative nursing diagnoses should be reviewed to fit better with clinical practice. In addition, current perioperative documentation practices should be reconsidered and updated as appropriate to address clinical requirements better.     

Nurses' views on ethical codes: a focus group study

AIM: This paper reports a study exploring nurses' views on the 'potential' content and functions of an ethical code for nurses in Belgium. The term 'potential' is used, because Belgian nurses do not have experience with an ethical code. BACKGROUND: Ethical codes have been developed to guide nurses' practice and to improve their professional status. Little empirical research, however, has been undertaken to determine nurses' views on the content and functions of these codes. The available quantitative studies merely give some information on nurses' (lack of) knowledge and use of their ethical code. No nursing ethical code currently exists in Belgium. Qualitative research exploring nurses' views, therefore, was needed in order to find out which functions an ethical code could fulfil and what the code's content could be. METHOD: Eight focus groups were conducted with 50 nurses in different healthcare settings in Belgium. Data were generated during 2003. FINDINGS: According to participants, an ethical code could fulfil several functions, including supporting their professional nursing identity (external function) and giving guidelines for nursing practice (internal function). In addition, some aspects of content were mentioned, including nurses' responsibilities in a relational context: particular attention should be paid to the personality of the nurse and to the specificity of nursing as a relational activity. Most agreement was reached on the 'ethical' function of the code, namely guiding nurses' professional moral practice. Regarding disciplinary use and the need for legalization of the ethical code, on the contrary, opinions were divergent. CONCLUSIONS: It is of utmost importance to take into account nurses' views when developing an ethical code for their profession. This study gave a first picture of the views of nurses themselves. These initial findings should be completed with nurses' views on the formulation, dissemination and promotion of the ethical code. Such evidence-based development of an ethical code will probably give more guarantees that the code will meet nurses' expectations and will function optimally.     

Confirming mentorship

BACKGROUND: Mentorship is related to nurses' success in nursing practice linked to professionalism, nursing quality improvement and self-confidence. AIM: To elucidate mentorship of recently registered nurses' view of themselves with regard to their development of nursing competencies by means of the Sympathy-Acceptance-Understanding-Competence (SAUC) model for confirming mentorship. METHODS: Questionnaires, personal interviews and focus group interviews were used for evaluation 2 years after the completion of a year of mentorship, the subjects being eight nurses. FINDINGS: The study showed that novice nurses evaluated their mentors as confirming, which is understood as a key factor for novice nurses' positively reinforced self-relation (perception of themselves) and self-knowledge linked to improved competencies in nursing practice such as more secure and motivated to nurse (S-phase), increased capacity to verbalize nursing situations (A-phase) and to reflect upon and evaluate patient situations based on patients' unique identities as individuals (U-phase), and improved abilities to support patients' own resources as individuals from a more holistic view and to establish collaboration with other professionals. CONCLUSION: Mentorship enabled novice nurses to nurse in a more reflective and holistic way, and their positively reinforced self-relation may be understood as a crucial ingredient for maintaining quality standards in nursing in the future.     

Documentation practices of nurses in long-term care

Documentation of nursing care is an important source of reference and communication between nurses and other health care providers. This article describes a study of the documentation practices of nurses in a long-term care institution. Results revealed a number of positive aspects of nurses' documentation practices and areas requiring modification or change which could be facilitated through redesigning the documentation system. Implications for professional practice are discussed, which include the need for a concise, non-duplicating system of documentation, and the importance of nursing documentation in support of evidence-based practice.     

Impact of primary care management on nursing documentation

AIM: The aim was to investigate whether perceptions of electronic nursing documentation and its performance differed because of primary health care management. BACKGROUND: Success in leading people depends on the manager's personality, the context and the people who are led. Close proximity to clinical work, with manager and personnel sharing the same profession, promotes the authority to carry out changes. METHODS: This study comprised a postal questionnaire to district nurses and an audit of nursing records from two primary health care organizations, one with a uniprofessional (nursing) organization, and one with multidisciplinary health care centres with general practitioners and/or another profession as managers. RESULTS: Uniprofessional nurse management increased district nurses' positive perceptions of nursing documentation but did not affect documentation performance, which was inadequate regardless of management type. CONCLUSIONS: Positive perceptions of nursing documentation are bases for further development to a nursing documentation including a holistic view of the patient.     

A discursive exploration of nursing work in the hospital emergency setting

Emergency nurses apply specialist knowledge to the practice of emergency care. This paper discusses the ways in which three emergency nurses understand the nature of their care from their own frames of reference and experiences and presents some of the data collected in a larger study. Various discourses, which compete to inform emergency nurses' understandings of practice, are linked with the notion of nurses as subjects; that is, each discourse may inform, shape and constitute the practice of the nurse and, in turn, the ways in which the patient comes to be known and understood. I will examine the ways in which emergency nurses come to experience or position themselves vis-à-vis extant forms of knowledge of emergency care and the extent to which they articulate new or distinctive formulations of emergency care. This paper illuminates the commonalities that constitute the discourses of emergency nursing care, and also analyse nurses' language which demonstrates that within each discourse variations, contradictions and resistances exist. Emergency nursing care occurs in a context of a biomedical discourse that dominates, or tends to dominate, the work of the emergency setting and so to determine acceptable or possible practices. Nevertheless, nurses contest in various ways the 'truths' that they understand to underpin their practice. Challenges to biomedical discourses are revealed, to some extent, by drawing attention to specific situations and particular struggles encountered in emergency nurses' everyday practice.     

Nursing the patient, the room and the doctor: Assessing New Zealand nurses' practical capability, 1900-1945

Assessing nurses' practical capability was a challenge in the past as it is today. In 1901 New Zealand established state registration of nurses, with a standardised three-year hospital-based training system and state final examinations. Nurses' practical capability was assessed in an oral and practical examination and in general nursing questions in written medical and surgical nursing papers. This historical research identifies the practical component of nursing assessed in these examinations, categorising it as nursing the patient, the room and the doctor. It considers changes in the nursing profession's view, 1900-1945, of the best way to assess nurses' practical capability. This shifted from the artificial setting of the oral and practical examination held by doctors and matrons, to a process of senior nurses assessing candidates in the more realistic setting of a ward. The research also considers whether the nursing or medical profession defined nursing practice. By the end of the time period, the nursing profession was claiming for itself the right to both determine and assess the practical component of nursing.     

A discursive exploration of the practices that shape and discipline nurses' responses to postoperative delirium

A discursive exploration of the practices that shape and discipline nurses' responses to postoperative delirium Although delirium is classified as a medical emergency, it is often not treated as such by health care providers. The aim of this study was to critically examine, through a poststructural, Foucauldian concept of discourse, the language practices and discourses that shape and discipline nurses' care of older adults with postoperative delirium (POD) with a purpose to question accepted nursing practice. The study was based on data collected from face-to-face, in-depth, personal interviews with six nurses who work on an acute postoperative patient care unit. Five analytic readings of the data identified two prominent discourses at work in nursing practice which influenced the care of patients with POD. These were identified as discourses of legitimacy/illegitimacy and discourses of nursing work. Through the process of poststructural analysis it became evident that one overriding discourse - the biomedical/scientific discourse - served to direct, legitimize and govern all other discourses. The findings of this study have implications for nursing knowledge and practice, length of hospital stay and improved patient outcomes. This study builds on previous work and is the first study to conduct a discourse analysis illuminating nurses' responses to POD through comparison with other acute medical emergencies from a poststructural perspective.     

Exploring the heart of ethical nursing practice: implications for ethics education

The limitations of rational models of ethical decision making and the importance of nurses' human involvement as moral agents is increasingly being emphasized in the nursing literature. However, little is known about how nurses involve themselves in ethical decision making and action or about educational processes that support such practice. A recent study that examined the meaning and enactment of ethical nursing practice for three groups of nurses (nurses in direct care positions, student nurses, and nurses in advanced practice positions) highlighted that humanly involved ethical nursing practice is also simultaneously a personal process and a socially mediated one. Of particular significance was the way in which differing role expectations and contexts shaped the nurses' ethical practice. The study findings pointed to types of educative experiences that may help nurses to develop the knowledge and ability to live in and navigate their way through the complex, ambiguous and shifting terrain of ethical nursing practice.     

护理文件书写中常见问题原因分析与对策

目的提高护士书写护理文件的质量，减少因护理文件书写不当造成的医疗纠纷。方法对2007年终末护理病历抽查中发现的问题进行分析。结果护理文件书写缺陷原因主要与护理人员少、责任心及法律意识不强有关。结论提高护理人员法律意识，不断学习和加强培训，严格护理质量控制是护理文件书写质量的保证。     

Electronic nursing documentation in primary health care

The aim of this study was to describe and analyse nursing documentation based on an electronic patient record (EPR) system in primary health care (PHC) with emphasis on the nurses' opinions and what, according to the nursing process and the use of the keywords, the nurses documented. The study was performed in one county council in the south of Sweden and included 42 Primary Health Care Centres (PHCC). It consisted of a survey, an audit of nursing records with the Cat-ch-Ing instrument and calculation of frequencies of keywords used during a 1-year period. For the survey, district nurses received a postal questionnaire. The results from the survey indicated an overall positive tendency concerning the district nurses' opinions on documentation. Lack of in-service training in nursing documentation was noted and requested from the district nurses. All three parts of the study showed that the keywords nursing interventions and status were frequently used while nursing diagnosis and goal were infrequent. From the audit, it was noted that medical status and interventions appeared more often than nursing status. The study demonstrated limitations in the nursing documentation that inhibited the possibility of using it to evaluate the care given. In order to develop the nursing documentation, there is a need for support and education to strengthen the district nurses' professional identity. Involvement from the heads of the PHCC and the manufactures of the EPR system is necessary, in cooperation with the district nurses, to render the nursing documentation suitable for future use in the evaluation and development of care.     

A summative evaluation of clinical competence: students' and nurses' perceptions of inpatients' individual physical and emotional needs

The ability to assess individual patients' physical and emotional needs was used as one foundation for evaluation of clinical competence for Swedish student nurses. Each of the randomly sampled 48 student nurses and their corresponding supervisors (48 nurses) assessed the perceived needs of a patient they both knew well by separately answering a questionnaire concerning basic physical and emotional needs. Simultaneously the selected patients (n = 48) were interviewed about their perceived needs. Student nurses' and nurses' assessments were compared with the individual patient's opinion. Both the students' and the nurses' assessments showed close similarities with the patients' own estimations, although certain under- and overestimations for both physical and emotional needs were found, with a predominance of overestimation of emotional needs. Student nurses and nurses also showed uncertainty in some of their assessments, mainly concerning emotional needs. Their assessments were closer than student nurses/patients or nurses/patients, and also closer for physical than for emotional needs. The conformity in student nurses' and their supervisors' assessments might be understood as the supervisors' influence as role models. Attention should be paid both in nursing education and in clinical practice to the need for individualization of patient care.     

The study of nursing documentation complexities

This study aimed to explore complexities in nursing documentation and related factors. Nursing documentation has been one of the most important functions of nurses since the time of Florence Nightingale because it serves multiple and diverse purposes. Current health-care systems require that documentation ensures continuity of care, furnishes legal evidence of the process of care and supports evaluation of quality of patient care. However, nursing documentation has not served such objectives because of its complexities. This study explores nursing documentation complexities and related factors through both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The study used multiple methods of inquiry: in-depth interviewing; participant observation; nominal group processing; focus group meetings; time and motion study of nursing activities; and auditing of completeness of nursing documentation. Complexities in nursing documentation include three aspects: disruption, incompleteness and inappropriate charting. Related factors that influenced documentation comprised: limited nurses' competence, motivation and confidence; ineffective nursing procedures; and inadequate nursing audit, supervision and staff development. These findings suggest that complexities in nursing documentation require extensive resolution and implicitly dictate strategies for nurse managers and nurses to take part in solving these complicated obstacles.     

Careful nursing: a model for contemporary nursing practice

BACKGROUND: Careful nursing, a system of nursing developed in Ireland by Catherine McAuley in the early years of the 19th century and used by Irish nurses at the Crimean war, has been described as Ireland's legacy to nursing. Although records of careful nursing have been preserved, it has received little attention in the nursing literature. AIM: The purpose of this study was to conduct a preliminary content analysis of the mainly primary source historical documentation of the careful nursing system and present it within the structure of a contemporary conceptual model of nursing. METHODS: The documents describing the careful nursing system were studied and re-studied to gain understanding of the philosophical assumptions underlying careful nursing and of the thinking, attitudes, actions and practice of the nurses. Content relating to the four central nursing concepts was identified and summarized. RESULTS: Careful nursing definitions of person, environment, health and nursing are presented. Ten key concepts of careful nursing practice are identified as disinterested love, contagious calmness, creation of a restorative environment, 'perfect' skill in fostering safety and comfort, nursing interventions, health education, participatory-authoritative management, trustworthy collaboration, power derived from service and nurses' care for themselves. The spiritual dimension of human life and the spiritual in nursing emerge as important characteristics of the model. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this preliminary analysis require further verification and critical examination. However, the careful nursing model illuminates important aspects of professional nursing and could be further developed to conceptualize and guide nursing practice.     

Said Another WaySeeing the Nursing Profession From a Different Perspective: Nurstry? Why Not!

Nurses need to identify themselves through a true revolution. Nurses should be treated as equals with physicians, and nursing as a profession that is capable of independent practice. For this very reason, the term "Nurstry" was invented by the authors to refer to the science and caring art of nursing. Nurstry includes nursing knowledge developed by nurstrists and nurses in the global nursing village. This commentary included sections of discussion as follows: (a) nurses' occupational identity in the time of the Old Testament; (b) nursing profession in the 21st century; (c) smart nurses and the cruel reality in practice; (d) distorted occupational personality; and (e) nurstry as a distinct, professional discipline.     

Organizing context: nurses' assessments of older people in an acute medical unit

The paper presents findings from a study of how older people are assessed and cared for in an acute medical unit. The aim of the study was to reconsider nurses' assessment practices in relation to organisational context. Drawing together ethnographic methods with discourse analysis, the study develops an approach to studying nurses' assessment practices and aims to demonstrate that nurses go beyond entering their relationships with patients as individuals. Rather, nurses' assessments of patients can be considered as processes of alignment that help nurses accomplish complicit managerial and medical objectives, and shape their own identities.     

护理是什么?--诠释植根中国文化的护理概念

目的:了解中国护士对护理概念的理解和认识,以诠释具有中国特色的护理概念.方法:采用质性研究与量性研究相结合的方法,分为两个研究阶段完成了资料的收集和分析.第一阶段采用随机抽样的方法对全国省、市、区级综合医院和中医院的护士进行了问卷调查,要求调查对象详尽地书写个人对护理工作的体验和观点.共回收了254份问卷,然后采用范甘的"查验解说"分析方法,提取出了护士用于描述护理概念的含义、特点、目标、活动和职责的词语和句子共117项.第二阶段对全国八个地区的护士做了进一步的问卷调查,以了解护士对这些词句的认同度,共收回1782份问卷.结果:护士对这些词句的认同度颇高.我国护士对护理一词的理解,已由前专业转化到专业的用词,并认为护理是情、理、知、行的组合.护理特点是由"情"反映出来关顾的意识,"理"的伦理的意识,"知"的知识的意识和"行"的实践的意识.护士认同护理的目标是要面向全人类、社会、个体和临终.护士对护理的活动及护理职责的理解是正面多于负面.结论:现阶段我国护士对护理概念的理解和认识可以概括为:了解个人健康状况的动态变化,对所出现的健康问题进行辨证,准确施护,帮助个人掌握健康知识,从自身状况出发,防治疾病,增强对疾病的应对及适应的能力,达到身心最佳状态.