Critical care medicine
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To review the current status of critical care education of medical students, focusing on how early, vigorous undergraduate training may address the needs of the learners and society. ⋯ Undergraduate medical education in critical care would be advanced by consolidation and organization into formal curricula. These would teach biomedical and humanistic skills essential to critical care but valuable in all medical settings. Early, well-planned exposure to critical care as a distinct discipline might increase student interest in careers in the field. The effects of educational interventions on the acquisition of knowledge, attitudes, and skills as well as long-term career choice should be subjected to rigorous study.
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Critical care medicine · Nov 2012
The Bereaved Parent Needs Assessment: a new instrument to assess the needs of parents whose children died in the pediatric intensive care unit*.
To evaluate the reliability and validity of the Bereaved Parent Needs Assessment, a new instrument to measure parents' needs and need fulfillment around the time of their child's death in the pediatric intensive care unit. We hypothesized that need fulfillment would be negatively related to complicated grief and positively related to quality of life during bereavement. ⋯ The Bereaved Parent Needs Assessment demonstrated reliability and validity to assess the needs of parents bereaved in the pediatric intensive care unit. Meeting parents' needs around the time of their child's death may promote adjustment to loss.
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Critical care medicine · Nov 2012
How nurses and physicians judge their own quality of care for deteriorating patients on medical wards: self-assessment of quality of care is suboptimal*.
To describe how nurses and physicians judge their own quality of care for deteriorating patients on medical wards compared with the judgment of independent experts. ⋯ Care-providers mostly rate their care provided to patients in the hours preceding a life-threatening adverse event as good. In contrast, independent experts had a more critical appraisal of the provided care in regards to timely recognition. These findings may partly explain the reluctance of care-providers to implement patient safety initiatives.