British journal of perioperative nursing : the journal of the National Association of Theatre Nurses
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Our fifteen bed, five day recovery unit accepts adult and paediatric patients and serves seven theatres dedicated to eye and ENT surgery. The aim of this article is to provide an insight into the practicalities involved in introducing a preoperative visiting programme and associated leaflet. These initiatives aim to give continuity of care, reduce stress and anxiety, and promote patients' coping strategies, by increasing the patients' knowledge and understanding of their perioperative journey (Malin & Teasdale 1991).
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Review Case Reports
An ethical dilemma. Is it ever acceptable to lie to a patient?
Ethical decision-making, and the choice of whether or not to be truthful, is an important part of everybody's life. For nurses, decisions such as these are made every day and affect not just themselves, but also the lives of others. This article will examine the ethics of truth-telling from the point of view of a theatre nurse dealing with a seriously ill patient.
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Awareness during general anaesthesia is a potentially traumatising risk of any general anaesthetic, which can have lasting effects on the patients who experience it. This article assesses the issues and causes of anaesthetic awareness, together with the current status of research being conducted into its prevention, and the effect of market forces and litigation.
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Perioperative hypothermia can be followed by severe complications. The greatest proportion of temperature decrease is attributed to heat redistribution, which mainly occurs during the first hour of anaesthesia and is difficult to treat intraoperatively. Prewarming, based on active warming techniques, has been proposed. Even a short period of prewarming may significantly increase peripheral tissue temperature, minimise normal core-to-peripheral temperature gradient, and keep core temperature within normal limits.
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Preparing the operation site by painting a solution of something onto the skin is one of the best preserved rituals in surgery. There appears to be something really satisfying about this precursor to the main event, and if the solution used is brightly coloured, or stains the skin, then so much the better--you can actually see where you've been. I hope than no-one is under the illusion that because the whole leg (or arm, or abdomen or anywhere else) is now a sickly shade of brown or alarmingly pink, that no pathogenic organisms can possibly have survived the onslaught. In this comprehensive review of the literature and practice audit, Sally Kent revisits the reasons for skin preparation, and recommends the use of well proven research to determine correct practice.