Research in nursing & health
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Among older, long-term breast cancer survivors, symptoms from previous treatment can generate uncertainty about whether they represent co-morbid conditions, recurrence, or normal aging. This uncertainty can result in emotional distress and thoughts of recurrence. Communication with health care providers may help women reduce uncertainty and improve both emotional and cognitive well-being. ⋯ Symptoms, age, and uncertainty had the strongest influence on well-being, regardless of race. There was an unexpected positive association between patient-provider communication and thoughts of recurrence. Descriptive analysis revealed that 52% of women were unable to achieve their desired decision-making role with health care providers.
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Nurses and other health researchers are often concerned with infrequently occurring, repeatable, health-related events such as number of hospitalizations, pregnancies, or visits to a health care provider. Reports on the occurrence of such discrete events take the form of non-negative integer or count data. Because the counts of infrequently occurring events tend to be non-normally distributed and highly positively skewed, the use of ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with non-transformed data has several shortcomings. ⋯ The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast the use of these three methods for the analysis of infrequently occurring count data. The strengths, limitations, and special considerations of each approach are discussed. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (AddHealth) are used for illustrative purposes.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Randomized study of stability and change in patients' advance directives.
Little is known about ethnic differences in understanding or using advance directives (ADs). Although health practitioners may presume AD intentions are durable over time, there is no supporting evidence. This randomized study intended to (a) examine differences between hospitalized Hispanic and non-Hispanic patients' AD preferences, (b) assess AD stability, and (c) discover if the Life Support Preferences Questionnaire (LSPQ) influences AD preferences. ⋯ However, non-Hispanics were more likely to change AD preferences. The LSPQ itself prompted change in AD preferences, delivering an educational effect with no specific educational intent. Change seen in patients' ADs, even over a brief interval, suggests revisiting AD preferences with patients and their families after hospitalization.
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The purposes of this study were to identify factors associated with nurses' intention to report suspected child abuse in Taiwan, and to determine the empirical adequacy of the extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain nurses' intention to report child abuse. A stratified quota sampling technique was used to select registered nurses in emergency rooms, psychiatric units, and pediatric units in Taiwan. ⋯ Structural equation modeling demonstrated that nurses' attitudes toward reporting child abuse, perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, and knowledge of the child abuse and reporting law explained 85% to 91% of the variance in nurses' intention to report child abuse for the less severe and severe child abuse cases in vignettes, respectively. The findings support the use of the extended TPB in identifying factors associated with nurses' intention to report child abuse in Taiwan.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Relaxation and music reduce pain following intestinal surgery.
Three nonpharmacological nursing interventions, relaxation, chosen music, and their combination, were tested for pain relief following intestinal (INT) surgery in a randomized clinical trial. The 167 patients were randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups or control and were tested during ambulation and rest on postoperative days 1 and 2. ⋯ Mixed effects after ambulation were due to the large variation in pain and difficulty relaxing while returning to bed; but post hoc explorations showed effects for those with high and low pain. These interventions are recommended along with analgesics for greater postoperative relief without additional side effects.