Journal of emergency nursing : JEN : official publication of the Emergency Department Nurses Association
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Pediatric emergency nurses who are directly involved in clinical care are in key positions to identify the needs and concerns of patients and their families. The 2010 Institute of Medicine report on the future of nursing supports the active participation of nurses in the design and implementation of solutions to improve health outcomes. Although prior efforts have assessed the need for research education within the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN), no systematic efforts have assessed nursing priorities for research in the pediatric ED setting. ⋯ The PECARN network provided an infrastructure to gain expert consensus from nurses on the most current priories that researchers should focus their efforts and resources. The results of the study will help inform further nursing research studies (for PECARN and otherwise) that address patient care and nursing practice issues for pediatric ED patients.
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Emergency departments have an important role in screening for human immunodeficiency virus infection and reducing the morbidity, mortality, and transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus. There are debates about human immunodeficiency virus screening, including opt-in, opt-out, and active choice models. Previous studies have shown that multiple factors affect the patient rate of acceptance, including where, when, and by whom the screening is offered. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to test a team-based triage intervention to improve the amount of HIV testing done in our emergency department. ⋯ This process intervention, in which licensed practical nurses offered human immunodeficiency virus screening tests during team triage, resulted in a 3-fold increase in the percentage of patients being tested for human immunodeficiency virus.
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Emergency nurses experience multiple traumatizing events during clinical work. Early identification of work-related tension could lead to a timely intervention supporting well-being. We sought to discover whether there is an immediately measurable effect on emotional stress, as determined by changes between pre- and postshift survey scores, associated with exposure to traumatizing events during a single emergency nursing shift. ⋯ Our results suggest that repeated exposure to traumatizing events during a single clinical shift was associated with a measurable effect on negative emotional stress in emergency nurses as determined by ESRQ positive-negative balance scores.