The American journal of nursing
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: This article examines the nature of implicit, or unconscious, bias and how such bias develops. It describes the ways that implicit bias among health care providers can contribute to health care disparities and discusses strategies nurses can use to recognize and mitigate any biases they may have so that all patients receive respectful and equitable care-regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identification, socioeconomic status, disabilities, stigmatized diagnoses, or any characteristic that distinguishes them from societal norms.
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: Background: Handover from the operating room (OR) staff to the ICU staff is a critical transition time for patients, in which the potential for error and miscommunication is high. Therefore, minimization of extraneous interruptions during the exchange of crucial information between the anesthesia and surgical teams and the nursing, respiratory therapy, and medical teams is imperative.
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Like most hospital inpatients, those with opioid use disorder (OUD) often experience acute pain during their hospital stay and may require opioid analgesics. Unfortunately, owing to clinicians' misconceptions about opioids and negative attitudes toward patients with OUD, such patients may be inadequately medicated and thus subjected to unrelieved pain and unnecessary suffering. This article reviews current literature on the topic of acute pain management for inpatients with OUD and dispels common myths about opioids and OUD.
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Conflicting data and study methods make it hard to reach a firm conclusion.
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: Opioid analgesics are commonly administered to hospitalized patients to treat acute pain, but these drugs put patients at risk for serious adverse events, such as unintended advancing sedation, respiratory depression, and death. Nurses play an important role in keeping patients safe by making clinical decisions about the frequency and intensity with which patients receiving IV and epidural opioids should be monitored. To make sound clinical judgments, nurses must be aware of the factors that place patients at elevated risk for adverse opioid-related effects and know how to screen and assess patients for these risks. The authors review the literature on unintended advancing sedation and respiratory depression associated with opioid administration and present evidence-based recommendations for clinical decision making and patient monitoring, using both nursing assessments and electronic technologies.