Medsurg nursing : official journal of the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses
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Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an illness that affects red blood cells. Patients with SCD can have chronic pain or acute pain episodes, which must be managed with medical therapy. Although many options are available for pain management, utilization of subcutaneous patient-controlled analgesia for pain management has positive outcomes for patients in both pain management and satisfaction.
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Health care facilities that utilize patient and family advisors are experiencing improved outcomes in decreased length of stay, and improved reimbursements and patient satisfaction. Patient and family advisors can be strong allies in ongoing performance improvement efforts. Perhaps even more importantly, involving advisors in health care systems encourages treatment of the whole patient as he or she would want to be treated
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Staff members on a medical-surgical unit in a large community teaching hospital adapted the hourly rounding concept to their specific patient population. Lessons learned and strategies to assure continuous success with the rounding process are addressed.
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Early recognition and treatment of sepsis reduces mortality (Dellinger et al., 2008). Nurses are a critical part of the health care team that provides evidence-based care to prevent, identify, and promptly treat sepsis in the hospital setting.