Journal of professional nursing : official journal of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing
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This article examines the evolution of state and federal legislation and court opinions in the 1990s concerning treatment abatement and assisted suicide. The recent Supreme Court decision on assisted suicide is summarized, and its rejection of a recognized constitutional right to assisted suicide is explored. Additionally, surveys of the opinions of nurses, physicians, and the public regarding the permissibility of assisted suicide are evaluated. The contradictions between public opinion and some federal and state legislation are highlighted and discussed.
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Despite widespread evidence of the concept of mentoring in nursing, it has been largely undefined, borrowed from other disciplines, viewed as static, and/or confused with related terms. Building on the work of Yoder and using a literature-based method developed by Rodgers, an evolutionary concept analysis is presented to provide an understanding of the meaning of mentoring in nursing, its current status, and the conceptual clarity necessary for additional systematic and rigorous inquiry. A random sample of 82 research abstracts and journal articles, representing 26 per cent of the total population of literature, was used to extract six essential attributes of the concept: a teaching-learning process, a reciprocal role, a career development relationship, a knowledge or competence differential between participants, a duration of several years, and a resonating phenomenon. ⋯ A model case, encompassing all of the critical attributes, depicts the Investigators' mentoring experience. Major changes in mentoring are viewed within the context of nursing as a learned profession, a legitimate academic enterprise, and a clinical science. Implications for further development are posed to further mentoring as a process for the socialization of nurse scholars and scientists and the proliferation of a body of professional knowledge.
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In clinical practice professional nurses appear to make different judgments regarding particular nursing situations. The purpose of this literature review is to gain insight into the way nurses make decisions related to nursing diagnoses and interventions. Literature on decision making can be divided into literature that focuses on how decisions are made, ie, information-processing model, and information that focuses on how decisions ought to be made, ie, mathematical models. ⋯ These factors include the problem task (cues), the decision maker (his or her knowledge, experience, personal variability), and discipline. However, to date, most of the research that has been done with regard to these factors has been restricted to the performance between novice and expert. We conclude that further validation of nursing diagnoses is necessary to ensure accuracy in decision making in nursing.
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This article examines a range of ethically related concerns and considerations that must be addressed by health professionals and society as they grapple with how to make decisions about the type and degree of treatment to provide to patients at the ends of their lives. These considerations include (1) medical and nursing indications; (2) patient desires; (3) patient interests, including benefit/burden analysis and quality-of-life considerations; (4) family wishes and interests; and (5) costs. The article elaborates the ethical warrants and justifications for why these concerns need to be addressed in clinical decision making and in the development of a national health care policy. A substantial bibliography of current ethics literature on these issues is included.
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The nursing literature is replete with commentary and opinions about the research and scholarly productivity of nursing faculty. There are also a number of research studies on several aspects of faculty productivity. However, a scholarly critique and integration of research on this topic is lacking. This article reviews the literature on faculty research productivity and synthesizes the findings to present recommendations for promoting nursing faculty research and scholarship.