Efficient, accurate, and timely communication is required for quality health care and is strongly linked to health care staff job satisfaction. Developing ways to improve communication is key to increasing quality of care, and interdisciplinary care teams allow for improved communication among health care professionals. This study examines the patient- and family-centered use of structured inte...

PURPOSE To develop and evaluate a toolkit for Registered Nurse/Registered Practical Nurse (RN/RPN) staff mix decision-making based on the College of Nurses of Ontario's practice standard for utilization of RNs and RPNs. METHODS Descriptive exploratory. The toolkit was tested in a sample of 2,069 inpatients on 36 medical/surgical units in five academic and two community acute care hospitals in...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the Mental Health Liaison Nurse (MHLN) service based in the emergency department (ED) of a large, inner city teaching hospital in Sydney, Australia. DESIGN Data were gathered over the first two years of the position. Information is presented regarding the length of time that patients waited to be seen by the MHLN. Results from two rounds of surveys conducted with ED nurs...

AIM To explore the mechanisms through which nurse practice environment dimensions, such as nurse-physician relationship, nurse management at the unit level and hospital management and organizational support, are associated with job outcomes and nurse-assessed quality of care. Mediating variables included nurse work characteristics of workload, social capital, decision latitude, as well as work ...

Current nurse call systems are very static. Call buttons are fixed to the wall, and systems do not account for various factors specific to a situation. We have developed a software platform, the ontology-based Nurse Call System (oNCS), which supports the transition to mobile and wireless nurse call buttons and uses an intelligent algorithm to address nurse calls. This algorithm dynamically adap...

OBJECTIVE To describe experiences of uncertainty and management strategies for staff working with families in a hospital waiting room. SETTING A 288-bed, nonprofit community hospital in a Midwestern city. METHODS Data were collected during individual, semistructured interviews with 3 volunteers, 3 technical staff members, and 1 circulating nurse (n = 7), and during 40 hours of observation i...

UK government policy now officially encourages an attitude of 'zero tolerance' towards aggression against health care staff. This study examines levels of such tolerance amongst a group of mental health care staff and associations between tolerance and other occupational and stress factors. Thirty-seven staff completed a Tolerance Scale (from the Perceptions of Aggression Scale) and the Maslach...

Objective: Care coordination is a core competency for primary care nurses and an essential element of the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model. Implementing care coordination in primary care is challenging and requires changes in roles, staffing, and culture. Clinical Microsystems are frontline teams of healthcare staff that, when engaged in quality improvement, can make important contrib...

BACKGROUND Pregnant women and their fetuses are known to be at increased risk for influenza-associated morbidity and mortality. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and others have recommended influenza vaccination for all pregnant women at any gestational age, but vaccination rates for pregnant women remain low, near 45%. METHODS A retrospective chart review was performed at each...