OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence, characteristics, and impact of arthritis in the US nursing home population. METHODS A national cross sectional sample of US nursing homes (8138 sampled residents in 1406 nursing homes) from the 1997 National Nursing Home Survey provided demographic and functional characteristics for residents with primary arthritis, any arthritis, or no arthritis diagnos...

This study elucidates the nursing of undernourished patients as experienced by eight registered clinical nurses and five nursing assistants by using content analysis. The participants' narratives describe the inner perspective of caring for undernourished patients, known in Sweden as 'the thin ones'. Categories identified were: frustration in nursing, joy in nursing and that undernourishment is...

CONTEXT Primary care is a highly complex environment in which multiple safety problems have been identified. Each primary care practice can be viewed as a complex adaptive system with its own unique characteristics. The introduction of an electronic medical record (EMR) into such a system represents a significant perturbation that can have multiple unpredictable effects. From a safety standpoin...

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To evaluate the implementation of a domestic violence screening protocol in an oncology clinic. DESIGN A retrospective review of a random sample of clinic medical records and qualitative surveys of nursing staff. SETTING A gynecologic oncology clinic in a large teaching hospital. SAMPLE 204 charts were abstracted and six oncology nurses completed surveys. METHODS A ra...

Nurses, particularly those working in non-psychiatric settings, report that they do not feel adequately prepared to meet the mental health needs of patients. The psychiatric consultation-liaison nursing role has arisen in part, as a response to these difficulties and aims to facilitate access to mental health nursing expertise for general hospital patients and staff. The impact of the introduct...

PURPOSE Healthcare staff educate nursing students during their clerkships at community health nursing programs. Their teaching methods play an important role in nursing students' acquisition of competencies; however, these methods have not been studied thoroughly. Thus, this study aims to describe, interpret, and understand the experiences of healthcare staff's teaching methods in clerkships at...

BACKGROUND Nursing home patients have complex mental and physical health problems, disabilities and social needs, combined with widespread prescription of psychotropic drugs. Preservation of their quality of life is an important goal. This can only be achieved within nursing homes that offer competent clinical conditions of treatment and care. COmmunication, Systematic assessment and treatment ...

BACKGROUND Delirium is a common condition in hospitalized patients, associated with adverse outcomes such as longer hospital stay, functional decline and higher mortality, as well as higher rates of nursing home placement. Nurses often fail to recognize delirium in hospitalized patients, which might be due to a lack of knowledge of delirium diagnosis and treatment. The objective of the study wa...

OBJECTIVES To assess perceptions of nursing staff regarding methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), infection control (IC) and prevention strategies, barriers to IC, and IC resources. DESIGN Cross-sectional mixed methods study. SETTING Atlanta Veterans Affairs (VA) long-term care facility (LTCF). PARTICIPANTS Forty-two direct-care nursing staff employed at the LTCF during Augu...