While empirical evaluation of the outcome of patient care has come to the fore in recent years due to political initiatives, there has always been a professional interest by nurses in the end result of their care. A review of the literature shows that outcome evaluation was advocated for nursing as early as the 1860s by Florence Nightingale. This article explores the evolvement of outcome evalu...

OBJECTIVE Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth. EI is increasingly discussed in healthcare as having a potential role in nursing. The purpose of this descriptive study was to e...

OBJECTIVES Several researchers have proposed the use of logical ontologies as 'reference terminologies'. However, there are a number of unresolved issues. This article describes the development of a logical ontology for nursing interventions and presents the results of evaluation. METHODS Initially this study involved the development in GRAIL of two separate experimental ontologies: an ontolo...

In multiple-choice tests, four-option items are the standard in nursing education. There are few evidence-based reasons, however, for MCQs to have four or more options as studies have shown that three-option items perform equally as well and the additional options most often do not improve test reliability and validity. The aim of this study was to examine and compare the psychometric propertie...

Clinical evaluation in nursing education is an important activity with potentially serious implications for students, teachers, and the recipients of nursing care. The evaluation of student learning in the clinical area has been the focus of much effort and energy as educators struggle with issues arising from the subjective nature of clinical evaluation and the role of clinical instructors as ...

The benefit of engaging in evidence-based teaching practice (EBTP) is to identify and implement best practices in nursing education. Unfortunately, nursing education has made little forward movement in identifying the evidence upon which faculty base their teaching practices. A national online survey of 295 nurse educators from 86 programs revealed the evidence they use in their teaching practi...

BACKGROUND Strategies to improve communication in people with dementia are warranted. We examined the effect of the Sonas programme on communication ability in persons with moderate to severe dementia. METHODS A 24-week 3-armed (Sonas, reading, and control group) randomized controlled trial including 120 nursing home residents with dementia was conducted; 105 completed the follow-up assessmen...

BACKGROUND The End-of-Life in Dementia (EOLD) scales comprise the most specific set of instruments developed for evaluations of patients' end of life by their families. It is not known whether the EOLD scales are useful for cross-national comparisons. METHODS We used a mortality follow-back design in multi-center studies in the Netherlands (pilot study 2005-2007) and the U.S.A. (1999), and we...