Activities in the adolescent ward environment

Adolescent patients within the acute hospital setting require activities which allow for identity development and interaction with other patients. Adolescent patients in a study performed by Hutton in 1999, discuss what type of activities they would like to do while in hospital and describe the environment in which they would like these activities to take place. There were seven patients in Hutton's study. All of these adolescent patients had chronic medical conditions and had been in and out of hospital for most of their lives. These adolescent patients where able to articulate who they wanted to perform activities with and the reasons for both quiet and noisy activities within a busy ward environment. The use of televisions in the ward environment is also included in this discussion.     

Canine toxicology in the home environment

ABSTRACT:

This article discusses three toxins commonly encountered by dogs in the home environment. Theobromine, which is found in chocolate, can result in vomiting, diarrhoea and seizures. The ingestion of grapes and raisins can result in acute renal failure unless aggressive treatment is instituted. Paracetamol – although largely being displaced by ibuprofen – is licensed for use therapeutically in dogs and can have a significant toxic effect if an overdose is given.     

Use of home pregnancy tests among adolescent women

Many adolescents use home pregnancy tests when they suspect pregnancy. However, because of developmental issues and greater variation in menstrual cycles, teens are at risk for obtaining false-negative test results. Moreover, with teens, the need for a pregnancy test often accompanies the need for comprehensive reproductive care including evaluation for sexually transmitted infections and contraception. This article reviews the mechanisms of home pregnancy testing including sensitivity, accuracy, and home testing procedures. Clinical strategies for improving the accuracy of home pregnancy tests for teen users are discussed. Lastly, policy implications to improve teens' access to more accurate pregnancy testing and to reproductive health services are suggested.     

Predictors of the home environment of high-risk infants.

The quality of the home environment is an important predictor of the cognitive and social development of high-risk infants. Community health nurses (CHNs) have played a central role in the assessment and care of families with high-risk infants. We examined predictors of the home environment in a sample of 106 infants discharged from a neonatal intensive care unit. The most consistent predictor of an optimal home environment was an internal parental locus of control. Socioeconomic status affected dimensions of parenting related to cognitive stimulation but not emotional responsivity. Young mothers and those with other children are less responsive to their infants. Males are treated in a more responsive manner than females. These findings suggest that CHNs need to adopt an empowerment model of intervention and focus on the particular needs of young mothers and those with other children.     

A fall prevention program for the home environment

Falls are the leading cause of injury, death, and disability among people older than 65. When elders fall, they sustain such injuries as hip, spine, hand, and/or pelvic fractures. The prognosis after such a fall is poor--only half of older adults hospitalized for hip fractures are able to return home or live independently again. Even without injury, falls cause a loss of confidence that results in reduced physical activity, increased dependency, and social withdrawal. As a home care agency dealing with a geriatric population, our goal was to develop a user-friendly fall prevention program that would promote multidisciplinary assessment and intervention. We have developed a preventive approach through which clinicians and patients can collaborate on preventing falls in the home and maintaining our patients' first priority: quality of life.     

The home environment of Métis, First Nations, and Caucasian adolescent mothers: an examination of quality and influences.

This longitudinal exploratory study compared maternal psychosocial, situational, and home-environment characteristics at 4 weeks and at 12-18 months postnatal for a convenience sample of 71 Métis, First Nations, and Caucasian adolescent mothers. The combined group of Métis/First Nations mothers had significantly higher infant-care emotionality scores than the Caucasian mothers at 4 weeks. The Caucasian mothers scored considerably higher on quality of the home environment; a refined multiple regression model containing infant-care emotionality, education level of the infant's maternal grandmother, ethnicity, and enacted social support explained 49% of the variance, with significant influences being infant-care emotionality and grandmother's education level.     

Assessing environmental health risk in the home

The Environmental Health Risk Appraisal instrument simultaneously teaches students observational techniques of home visiting and environmental health risk assessment skills. Used in a community health nursing course, the authors describe how the instrument was integrated into clinical experiences and a comprehensive family analysis written assignment.     

Taking the long view: the prenatal environment and early adolescent overweight

The purpose of this study was to assess the independent effects of the prenatal environment and cumulated social risks on the likelihood of being overweight at age 12/13 years. Maternal prepregnancy weight and smoking during pregnancy were the measures of prenatal exposures. Average lifetime per capita income and mother's lifetime marital status were the measures of cumulative social risks. Analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's Child-Mother file indicated that exposures to tobacco smoke in utero, maternal prepregnancy overweight/obesity, and maternal unmarried status were significant risks for adolescent overweight. The risk for overweight was reduced by breastfeeding if the mother was overweight/obese prepregnancy. Prenatal and early life factors were related to adolescent overweight, providing an important window for intervention.     

Sending the elderly home. Assessing the risk

In our current health care system, health care agencies are seeing their budgets reduced and their human and support resources stretched to the limit. Many health regions are grappling with decreasing dollars by finding ways to reduce patient length-of-stay in acute care hospitals. But sending patients home earlier can present problems, especially for geriatric patients, whose numbers are swelling as baby boomers age. Society's traditional caregivers, women, are more and more likely to be employed outside the home, therefore are unavailable to assist with the care of older adults. Additionally, consumers have become more actively involved in their health care and are demanding a high quality of care. For all these reasons, it is essential that discharge planning be an integral part of acute-care services.     

Thai mothers and children and the home observation for measurement of the environment (home inventory): pilot study

The HOME Inventory is a measure of home stimulation available to children. The purposes of the study were to: (a) examine the psychometric properties of a Thai-translated HOME (Infant/Toddler), (b) compare Thai mean HOME scores with three groups (Hmong, Eskimo, HOME normative sample in the state of Washington) reported in the literature. A convenience sample from Mahasarakham public health centers in northeastern Thailand was assessed using 36 dyads of mothers and toddlers, 13-35 months. The internal consistency was 0.81 for the total scale; F-tests of the HOME total scale and subscale means showed significant differences between Thai and three other groups. Scheffe tests which showed Thai means on three subscales (Maternal Involvement, Responsivity, Restriction) were not significantly different from the Washington sample, but were significantly lower on three subscales (Play, Organization, Stimulation). Further study is needed on the use of home assessment instruments by nurses and others working in multicultural settings.     

Defining risk in home visiting

Risks associated with home visiting have been acknowledged in the nursing literature since the 19th century, yet there is not a well-defined body of literature on this subject. This void in the literature needs to be addressed in view of the current emphasis on practice in the community and the increase in the number of nurses and other health professionals that are new to the field who currently make visits. This article explores how different disciplines define risk and risk taking, identifies attributes of those who become involved in risk situations, and proposes the Cognitive-Perceptual Model of Risk in Home Visiting (CPMRHV) for community and public health nursing. The CPMRHV model provides a framework for identifying how field workers (FWs) perceive, assess, and evaluate situations relative to risk and suggests the development of policies and procedures to empower them and to assure the quality of care.     

Indoor environment and heatstroke risk

This paper describes the outline of heatstroke risk evaluation model for aged residents based on surveys done by the Heatstroke Surveillance Committee of Japanese Association for Acute Medicine and field measurements of indoor air temperature, humidity and so on. To reduce heatstroke of aged residents, promotion of thermal insulation, sun-shading, cross ventilation, air-condition of houses and living behavior of residents are needed.     

Organizational environment and the support of patient autonomy in nursing home care

This study examined how patient autonomy is associated with the organizational environment in nursing homes, particularly the organizational climate, organization of work and selected staff characteristics, such as age and experience of health care Staff from 13 nursing homes in the county of Stockholm, Sweden, were included The organizational climate was described by staff from two of the nursing homes that, on the basis of staff judgement, were rated as creative, and from two of the nursing homes that were rated as lacking innovation Regarding organization of work, which included the number of patients who required to be fed, together with the incidence of pressure sores and indwelling urinary catheters, there appeared to be no difference in care from both types of nursing home The statistical analyses showed that nursing homes characterized as significantly creative supported patient autonomy to a high degree, and that the staff's experience with health care was associated with the organizational climate