nursing research Archives - Page 28 of 39

So What? An Invitation to Nurses To Tell Us How They’re Translating Research into Practice

By Inge B. Corless, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, and Brian Goodroad, DNP, RN, AACRN, nurse practitioner and associate professor at Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota

by centralasian/via Flickr

Crossing the Quality Chasm, an Institute of Medicine report from 2001, bemoans the chasm between our current research knowledge and the current state of care. Back in 2003, Don Berwick, now the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, provided the following pithy codification of the problem in a JAMA article called “Disseminating Innovations in Health Care” (subscription required; click here for the abstract): “Failing to use available science is costly and harmful; it leads to overuse of unhelpful care, underuse of effective care, and errors in execution.” Berwick pondered the slow pace of innovation adoption and attributed it to three factors:

the characteristics of the innovation
the characteristics of the potential adopters
contextual factors

Berwick also made this observation about innovations that do get adopted: “Health care is rich in evidence-based innovations, yet even when such innovations are implemented successfully in one location, they often disseminate slowly—if at all.”

Given these obstacles, what can be done to facilitate the integration of research findings into practice? What can be done to change this situation, and what would this entail?

One step is to […]

Guest Author2017-05-27T10:28:00-04:00June 17th, 2011|nursing perspective, nursing research|1 Comment

Tragedy into Policy: A Hepatitis C Outbreak and a Study of Nevada RNs Lead to New Protections for Whistleblowers

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

In 2008, more than 62,000 people who had undergone procedures at one of two southern Nevada endoscopy clinics were notified that “they might have been exposed to bloodborne pathogens, including hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus (HCV), and HIV, as a result of unsafe injection practices.” As author Lisa Black reports in this month’s CE–Original Research feature, a subsequent investigation by federal and state agencies found multiple breaches of infection control protocols. Indeed, 115 patients were found to be “either certainly or presumptively infected” with HCV through the reuse of contaminated medication vials.

Especially distressing was strong anecdotal evidence that because of a general fear of workplace retaliation, staff at the two clinics had often failed to report unsafe patient care conditions. At the request of the Nevada legislature, a study was conducted to examine Nevada RNs’ experiences with workplace attitudes toward patient advocacy activities. Black was the principal investigator. […]

Guest Author2016-11-21T13:12:47-05:00June 7th, 2011|nursing perspective, nursing research|1 Comment

What Is the Role of the Staff Nurse on a Medical Emergency Team?

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

There is strong evidence that a hospital’s use of a medical emergency team (MET) helps to decrease the rates of in-hospital cardiac arrests, unplanned ICU admissions, and overall hospital mortality. (A MET is similar to a rapid response team, but is typically led by a physician rather than by a nurse.)

But our understanding of such teams is incomplete. Nurse researcher Margaret Pusateri and colleagues set out to explore, in particular, the role of non-ICU staff nurses during a MET call. They wanted to better understand such nurses’ familiarity with and perceptions of the MET, and possibly, to increase the team’s effectiveness. So they sent a survey to 388 non-ICU staff nurses at a large urban teaching hospital; 131 nurses (34%) responded.

The authors report on the results in May’s CE feature (for optimum reading, open the PDF version). Among their findings:

Nearly three-quarters of the respondents had participated in a MET call.
The most common actions they reported taking during the call included relaying patient history, initiating the call, and documenting MET data.
But fewer than half of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statements “I feel comfortable with my role as a member of the MET” and “I know what my role as a member of the MET is.” […]

Guest Author2016-11-21T13:12:55-05:00May 25th, 2011|nursing perspective, nursing research|1 Comment

‘A True Art’: Strategies for Feeding Patients with Dementia

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Feeding difficulties in people with dementia are common, but the way such difficulties manifest can vary widely, and there is no single, one-size-fits-all solution. Nurse researchers Chia-Chi Chang and Beverly L. Roberts open their April CE article, “Strategies for Feeding Patients with Dementia,” with some disturbing statistics that make clear the scope of the problem:

People with dementia constitute roughly 25% of hospital patients ages 65 and older and 47% of nursing home residents. And more than half of them lose some ability to feed themselves, which puts them at high risk for inadequate food intake and malnutrition. Patients who are unable to eat independently must rely on caregivers to assist them . . . Unfortunately, caregivers may be unable to identify the various types of feeding problems that accompany dementia or unaware of the feeding practices required to address them.

In an earlier literature review published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing, Chang and Roberts evaluated three tools used to assess feeding difficulties in people with dementia, then created a conceptual model depicting such difficulties, contributing factors, and outcomes. Now, in this CE article, the authors take their work […]

Guest Author2016-11-21T13:13:37-05:00April 1st, 2011|nursing research|2 Comments

Errors to Avoid in Scientific Publication, circa 1929

Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Scholarly publication has been under fire because of lack of rigor and conflicts of interest. And authors seem to be clueless at times as to how things went so wrong.

Well, here’s some sage advice about common errors to avoid that I found in the July 1929 issue of AJN: