Critical care nurse
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Critical care nurse · Apr 2020
Self-care Strategies to Combat Burnout Among Pediatric Critical Care Nurses and Physicians.
Professional burnout is a widespread phenomenon in health care. The health of patients and organizations begins with the well-being of health care professionals. Identifying and understanding self-care strategies that professionals perceive to be helpful is crucial to combat burnout. ⋯ Developing effective self-care strategies helps promote health care professionals' physical and psychological well-being and reduce burnout. It is vital for health care professionals to care for themselves so that they can best care for others.
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Critical care nurse · Apr 2020
ReviewCommunication in Pediatric Critical Care Units: A Review of the Literature.
Current communication styles in pediatric critical care units do not often consider the needs of providers, patients, or family members. ⋯ Twenty-eight articles met inclusion criteria and were analyzed according to study focus (provider, parent/caregiver, patient, or tool). This review links communication to outcomes related to providers, parents, and patients. Current tools are reviewed to evaluate their effectiveness in addressing communication barriers and to guide future research in communication. Findings indicate that effective communication is challenging in intensive care units despite robust evidence that effective communication improves patient outcomes and quality metrics. Repeated and varied forms of communication, especially written reinforced with verbal communication, seem to have the strongest effect and show promising results. Common barriers nurses face on their units are identified, and solutions are suggested. This review adds to current knowledge by linking communication to measurable outcomes and examining communication barriers and needs specific to pediatric critical care populations from the provider, parent, and patient perspectives.
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Critical care nurse · Apr 2020
Navigating Symptom Management in Heart Failure: The Crucial Role of the Critical Care Nurse.
High-acuity, progressive care, and critical care nurses often provide care for patients with heart failure during an exacerbation of acute disease or at the end of life. Identifying and managing heart failure symptoms is complex and requires early recognition and early intervention. Because symptoms of heart failure are not disease specific, patients may not respond to them appropriately, resulting in treatment delays. ⋯ It outlines the many barriers to symptom recognition and response, including multimorbidities, age, symptom intensity, symptom escalation, and health literacy. The influence of self-care on heart failure management is also described. The critical care nurse plays a crucial role in teaching heart failure patients to identify and respond appropriately to their symptoms, thus promoting early intervention.
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Patients with both true and false arrhythmia alarms pose a challenge because true alarms might be buried among a large number of false alarms, leading to missed true events. ⋯ An awareness of factors associated with arrhythmia alarms might aid in developing solutions to decrease alarm fatigue. To improve detection of true alarms, further research is needed to build and test electrocardiographic algorithms that adjust for clinical and electrocardiographic characteristics associated with false alarms.