Contemp Nurse
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Comparative Study
Reducing time to analgesia in the emergency department using a nurse-initiated pain protocol: a before-and-after study.
Suboptimal management of pain in emergency departments (EDs) remains a problem, despite having been first described over two decades ago. A 'before-and-after' intervention study (with a historical control) was undertaken in one Western Australian tertiary hospital ED to test the effect of a 'nurse-initiated pain protocol' (NIPP) intervention. ⋯ The statistically significant reduction in both time to pain score and time to analgesia remained, even when adjusted by age and sex. Whilst we demonstrated the safety and efficacy of a NIPP in ED, an unacceptable proportion of patients continued to have inadequate pain relief.
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Multicenter Study
Evaluation of a nurse education workshop on children's grief.
This paper provides an overview of the development and evaluation of an educational program to increase the knowledge of hospice and paediatric nurses who support grieving children and improve their attitudes toward death and bereavement. The specific target groups for the project included nurses providing care through community-based hospice services and inpatient palliative care units, as well as nurses providing inpatient and community-based care at a children's teaching hospital. Fifty-nine nurses from hospice, community and inpatient settings participated in three workshops. Results indicated that the workshop produced a sustained improvement in bereavement knowledge among the nurses and an improvement in their attitudes toward death and bereavement.
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The definition of a 'good death' is centred on being peaceful, dignified and pain free. The preferred place of death has also been highlighted as an important concept in defining a good death (Cox, Almack, Pollack, & Seymour, 2011). Seventy percent of Australians express the desire to spend their last days at home. ⋯ Other factors include the availability of medical and nursing care. This story has been written with the consent of Kelly's husband. All efforts have been made to maintain privacy and confidentiality: Pseudonyms have been used.
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Nurses are the people most consistently and intensely involved in the care of people who present to emergency departments because of self-harm, yet most have received no training or support to provide strategic care. This paper will explore unique features of the emergency context for care and provide practical instruction on how nurses working in the area can respond effectively. As this paper argues there is much that the emergency nurse can provide for the client who self-harms and it describes important steps toward recovery--a respectful human encounter, understanding, support for the person's efforts in coping, optimism and hope that pain will lessen and recovery will take place.
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Previously there has been commitment to the idea that Indigenous curricula should be taught by Indigenous academic staff, whereas now there is increasing recognition of the need for all academic staff to have confidence in enabling Indigenous cultural competency for nursing and other health professional students. In this way, Indigenous content can be threaded throughout a curriculum and raised in many teaching and learning situations, rather than being siloed into particular subjects and with particular staff. ⋯ This paper reports on a collaborative process that was used to reconceptualise how Indigenous health care curricula would be positioned throughout a programme and who would or could work with students in this area. Effective leadership, establishing a truly collaborative environment, acknowledging fears and perceived inadequacies, and creating safe spaces for sharing and learning were crucial in effecting this change.