Critical care nurse
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Critical care nurse · Apr 2012
Surveillance: A strategy for improving patient safety in acute and critical care units.
Surveillance is a nursing intervention that has been identified as an important strategy in preventing and identifying medical errors and adverse events. The definition of surveillance proposed by the Nursing Intervention Classification is the purposeful and ongoing acquisition, interpretation, and synthesis of patient data for clinical decision making. The term surveillance is often used interchangeably with the term monitoring, yet surveillance differs significantly from monitoring both in purpose and scope. ⋯ Much of the attention in the bedside patient safety movement has been focused on efforts to implement processes that ultimately improve the surveillance process. These include checklists, interdisciplinary rounds, clinical information systems, and clinical decision support systems. To identify optimal surveillance patterns and to develop and test technologies that assist critical care nurses in performing effective surveillance, more research is needed, particularly with innovative approaches to describe and evaluate the best surveillance practices of bedside nurses.
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Critical care nurse · Apr 2012
Central neurogenic diabetes insipidus, syndrome of inappropriate secretion of antidiuretic hormone, and cerebral salt-wasting syndrome in traumatic brain injury.
Central neurogenic diabetes insipidus, syndrome of inappropriate secretion of antidiuretic hormone, and cerebral salt-wasting syndrome are secondary events that affect patients with traumatic brain injury. All 3 syndromes affect both sodium and water balance; however, they have differences in pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment. Differentiating between hypernatremia (central neurogenic diabetes insipidus) and the 2 hyponatremia syndromes (syndrome of inappropriate secretion of antidiuretic hormone, and cerebral salt-wasting syndrome) is critical for preventing worsening neurological outcomes in patients with head injuries.
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In patients with chronic heart failure, fluid retention (or hypervolemia) is often the stimulus for acute decompensated heart failure that requires hospitalization. The pathophysiology of fluid retention is complex and involves both hemodynamic and clinical congestion. ⋯ Critical care, intermediate care, and telemetry nurses have roles in both assessment and management of patients hospitalized with acute decompensated heart failure and fluid retention. Nurse administrators and managers have heightened their attention to fluid retention because the Medicare performance measure known as the risk-standardized 30-day all-cause readmission rate after heart failure hospitalization can be attenuated by fluid management strategies initiated by nurses during a patient's hospitalization.