Hu li za zhi The journal of nursing
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We observed in our institute a 13.6% incidence of prolonged surgery (>4 hours) induced facial pressure ulcers that required prone positioning. Causes identified included: (1) customized silicon face pillows used were not suited for every patient; (2) our institute lacked a standard operating procedure for prone positioning; (3) our institute lacked a postoperative evaluation and audit procedure for facial pressure ulcers. ⋯ The project used a water pillow to relieve facial pressure and educated staff to recognize and evaluate pressure ulcers. These measures were demonstrated effective in reducing the incidence of facial pressure ulcers caused by prolonged prone positioning.
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Nurses play a critical role in Taiwan's helicopter emergency medical service, an essential healthcare response service for residents of outlying islands. The care skillsets required of nurses in special care and urgent care environments are significantly more specialized than those in other professional care environments. ⋯ These elements can be grouped under the categories of pre-flight preparation, assessment for flight-readiness and in-flight care, decision-making abilities, personal physical characteristics, training and experience. These categories should be referenced to improve the effectiveness of relevant education / training programs, enhance HEMS nurse readiness and effectiveness, and maximize the role of HEMS nurses in the civil helicopter medical service.
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Evacuating the injured is an important part of disaster medicine. Aircraft provide timely access to distant and remote areas and, in an emergency, can evacuate sick or injured individuals in such areas quickly and safely for critical treatment elsewhere. Aeromedical evacuation (AE) comprises the two categories of fixed-wing ambulance service and helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS). ⋯ Medical flight nursing belongs in a special professional category, as nurses must master knowledge on general and special-case casualty evacuation procedures, relevant instruments and equipment, triage, in-flight medical care, and aircraft loading requirements related to transporting the sick and injured. The internationalization of medical care has opened the potential to expand medical flight nursing roles and functions into disaster nursing. Although military considerations continue to frame medical flight nursing training and preparation today, the authors feel that creating strategic alliances with disaster nursing specialists and organizations overseas is a future developmental direction for Taiwan's medical flight nursing sector worth formal consideration.
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The Richter-scale 9.0 earthquake that struck Northeast Japan on March 11th, 2011 caused a tsunami that damaged the Fukushima No. 1 Power Plant and released enormous amounts of radiation into the environment. Many area residents were evacuated to several protected fallout shelters. Prior to the tsunami, Fukashima had around 505,760 residents over 65 years of age, comprising 24.9% of the city's pre-tsunami population of Fukushima (City of Fukushima, 2011). ⋯ This article was written to share her post-disaster care experience and learned knowledge with medical care professionals in Taiwan and other high earthquake risk areas. The article also offers guidelines on appropriate medical personnel response and behavior with regard to disaster response. We hope this experience-sharing offers positive suggestions for the future and facilitates improved disaster-care education in East Asia and enhanced international cooperation on disaster rescue.
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Heavy caregiving burdens can harm the physical and mental health of primary caregivers and reduce patient care quality. Understanding caregiving burden and its associated factors among primary caregivers of terminally ill patients with gastrointestinal cancer can help improve holistic terminal healthcare quality. ⋯ We recommend that terminal health care teams better assess the social support given primary caregivers of terminally ill gastrointestinal cancer patients, that assistance be provided to caregivers with less social support, that caregiver life-and-death education be improved, and that primary caregivers be taught how to accept and positively handle the death of the loved one in their care. More attention should be paid to controlling symptoms of terminal stage cancer patients in order to reduce caregiver self-perceived symptom distress. Evaluation of caregiving burden is especially important for those primary caregivers who are hospice homecare workers, spouses, and of lower self-perceived health status.