Nursing research
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Daytime observed emotional expressions of people with dementia.
Emotional expression among people with dementia (PWD) may inform person-centered approaches to care and improvements in dementia-related quality of life. ⋯ PWD showed a broad range of emotional expression and significant within-person variation in daytime positive and negative emotional expressions. Observed emotional display is a promising measure of psychological well-being among PWD that, if more fully understood, could guide care approaches to improve quality of life.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Patterns of anxiety in critically ill patients receiving mechanical ventilatory support.
Mechanical ventilation is one of the most frequently used technological treatments in critical care units and induces great anxiety in patients. ⋯ Anxiety is an individual patient experience that requires ongoing management with appropriate assessment and intervention over the duration of mechanical ventilatory support.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The pain trajectory during treadmill testing in peripheral artery disease.
Ischemia-induced pain associated with walking (claudication) in peripheral artery disease limits mobility and diminishes quality of life. Self-reports of pain during standardized treadmill testing are used in clinical trials to assess the efficacy of interventions. ⋯ Change in the experienced claudication trajectory varied by type of exercise. Findings can inform design of future trials and aid decision making about exercise interventions for claudication.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Healthcare utilization in women after abdominal surgery for ovarian cancer.
Women undergoing surgery for ovarian cancer are severely ill and are high users of health services. Contributing to these increased utilization rates are the multiple modalities used to treat ovarian cancer and the complications and side effects from those treatments. ⋯ Women in the intervention group appropriately used the emergency room to manage their problems after hours, whereas more women in the attention control group reported significantly more primary care visits. These findings highlight the need for healthcare providers representing various disciplines to coordinate services across specialties, especially for women who have depressive symptoms.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Supplementing relaxation and music for pain after surgery.
Most postoperative patients have unrelieved pain despite the use of patient-controlled analgesia. Nurses need additional effective modalities. Relaxation and music (RM), in addition to analgesics, have been shown to reduce pain more than do analgesics alone. ⋯ Patient teaching did not result in less pain and did not support the theoretical proposition that PT reduces pain. However, the immediate RM-Effects supported the proposition that nonpharmacological adjuvants to analgesics can ease pain without adding side effects.