Journal of advanced nursing
-
This paper reports a study investigating hospital nurses' experiences of death and dying. ⋯ There is a need to improve communication with patients and families about diagnosis and prognosis to ensure that effective communication takes place and 'blocking behaviour' is avoided. The findings also challenge practitioners to focus attention on death as a process, and to prioritize patients' needs above those of the organization. Moreover, there is the need for guidelines to be developed enabling patients to have a role in shaping events at the end of their lives.
-
Comparative Study
Treatment advice in primary care: a comparative study of nurse practitioners and general practitioners.
This paper reports a study comparing the content of talk about treatments by nurse practitioners and general practitioners in order to understand how this might be related to satisfaction. ⋯ Nurses offered more holistic care to these patients and it is likely that this, and the greater provision of information, led to the higher levels of satisfaction found by other investigators. General practitioners are more focused on gathering information directly relevant to diagnosing and treating the immediate presenting complaint. Both types of practitioner may benefit from seeing the detailed illustrations of different approaches provided.
-
This paper reports a study of the perceptions of patients and nurses of palliative care and, in particular, the concept of the expert palliative nurse. ⋯ Although the study was conducted in the United Kingdom, the findings have relevance for palliative care practice globally in terms of dependence, issues of patient choice, nurses being interpersonally skilled and building therapeutic relationships with patients.
-
This paper reports an investigation of the approaches to study and learning of nursing and midwifery students at a school of nursing and midwifery in Iran. ⋯ Our findings suggest that adoption of strategic or deep approaches to learning was associated with better educational outcome, as indicated by higher grade point averages. Moreover, the findings emphasize the impact of students' interest in their field on their academic success. Therefore, the adoption of factors which foster deep or strategic approaches and activities which increase students' interest should lead to improved academic outcomes.
-
This paper reports a study of the experience of and concerns about weight loss described by patients with advanced cancer, their caregivers and nurse specialists. ⋯ Weight loss-related concern might be mitigated if clinicians adopted a systematic and proactive approach to the management of the symptom that breaks through the weight loss taboo.