• Australas Emerg Nurs J · Nov 2017

    Emergency nurses' knowledge and self-rated practice skills when caring for older patients in the Emergency Department.

    • Helen Rawson, Paul N Bennett, Cherene Ockerby, Alison M Hutchinson, and Julie Considine.
    • Deakin University, Geelong, School of Nursing and Midwifery,75 Pigdons Road, Waurn Ponds, VIC 3126, Australia; Deakin University, Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Research, School of Nursing and Midwifery, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC 3125, Australia; Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Research, Monash Health Partnership, Clayton, VIC, Australia. Electronic address: helen.rawson@deakin.edu.au.
    • Australas Emerg Nurs J. 2017 Nov 1; 20 (4): 174-180.

    BackgroundOlder adults are high users of emergency department services and their care requirements can present challenges for emergency nurses. Although clinical outcomes for older patients improve when they are cared for by nurses with specialist training, emergency nurses' knowledge and self-assessment of care for older patients is poorly understood.AimTo assess emergency nurses' knowledge and self-rating of practice when caring for older patients.MethodsA cross-sectional self-report survey of emergency nurses (n=101) in Melbourne, Australia.ResultsMean scores were 12.7 (SD 2.66) for the 25-item knowledge of older persons questionnaire, and 9.04 (SD 1.80) for the 15-item gerontic health related questions. Scores were unaffected by years of experience as a registered nurse or emergency nurse. More than 80% of nurses rated themselves as 'very good' or 'good' in assessing pain (94.9%), identifying delirium (87.8%), and identifying dementia (82.8%). Areas with a 'poor' ratings were identifying depression (46.5%), assessing polypharmacy (46.5%) and assessing nutrition (37.8%).ConclusionsThere was variation in knowledge and self-rating of practice related to care of older patients. The relationship between knowledge and self-ratings of practice in relation to actual emergency nursing care of older people and patient outcomes warrants further exploration.Copyright © 2017 College of Emergency Nursing Australasia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…