Articles: critical-illness.
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Critical care medicine · Oct 2001
Multicenter StudySymptoms of anxiety and depression in family members of intensive care unit patients: ethical hypothesis regarding decision-making capacity.
Anxiety and depression may have a major impact on a person's ability to make decisions. Characterization of symptoms that reflect anxiety and depression in family members visiting intensive care patients should be of major relevance to the ethics of involving family members in decision-making, particularly about end-of-life issues. ⋯ More than two-thirds of family members visiting patients in the intensive care unit suffer from symptoms of anxiety or depression. Involvement of anxious or depressed family members in end-of-life decisions should be carefully discussed.
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Multicenter Study
Sedating critically ill patients: factors affecting nurses' delivery of sedative therapy.
Critical care nurses often have wide discretion in managing the sedative therapy of patients receiving mechanical ventilation. Little is known about the factors and processes that influence sedative practice. ⋯ Social, personal, and professional factors influence sedative therapy. Future research should establish the relative importance of these factors and determine whether their impact is attenuated when sedation protocols are implemented.
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Critical care medicine · Feb 2001
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Comparative Study Clinical TrialIs a low transfusion threshold safe in critically ill patients with cardiovascular diseases?
To compare a restrictive red blood cell transfusion strategy with a more liberal strategy in volume-resuscitated critically ill patients with cardiovascular disease. ⋯ A restrictive red blood cell transfusion strategy generally appears to be safe in most critically ill patients with cardiovascular disease, with the possible exception of patients with acute myocardial infarcts and unstable angina.
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Critical care medicine · Jan 2001
Multicenter StudyDaily assessment of severity of illness and mortality prediction for individual patients.
To refine the prognosis of critically ill patients using a statistical model that incorporates the daily probabilities of hospital mortality during the first week of stay in the intensive care unit (ICU). ⋯ To have an accurate measurement of the prognosis, it is necessary to update the severity measure. The best estimate of hospital mortality was the probability of death on the current day. Severity at admission and at previous days did not improve the assessment of prognosis.
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Multicenter Study
Influence of stress and nursing leadership on job satisfaction of pediatric intensive care unit nurses.
High levels of stress and the challenges of meeting the complex needs of critically ill children and their families can threaten job satisfaction and cause turnover in nurses. ⋯ Job stress and nursing leadership are the most influential variables in the explanation of job satisfaction. Retention efforts targeted toward management strategies that empower staff to provide quality care along with focal interventions related to the diminishment of stress caused by nurse-family interactions are warranted.