Dimensions of critical care nursing : DCCN
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Practitioners in critical care have made a significant progress in caring for dying patients in critical care by taking advantage of the suggestions from their professional groups. Progress has been made in responding to and controlling patients' pain. Major initiatives from the Joint Commission and the American Pain Society have helped direct this improvement. ⋯ But, better policies related to advance directives have been developed to ensure good care. Spiritual care has received more attention, and now chaplains are recognized by the Society for Critical Care Medicine as integral to the critical care team. The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses has been a leader in improving end-of-life issues and continues to spearhead many projects to improve end-of-life care.
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Individuals who do not have a spleen are highly susceptible to severe infections. The purpose of this article was to present vaccination guidelines for prophylactic treatment of sepsis following splenectomy. Nursing considerations for the prevention of sepsis after splenectomy are discussed.
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Dimens Crit Care Nurs · Mar 2010
The intensive care unit: experiences of patients, families, and their nurses.
Past studies have examined how nurses can meet the needs of the critically ill patients and their families and the effects of their relatives' critical illness on the families themselves. However, there is a paucity of research studies in the literature conducted on the triad of nurses, patients, and family members looking at the experience of critical illness and their perspective of each from the other. This qualitative phenomenological study was able to elucidate the experiential descriptions, essential relationships, and meaning of structures of the intensive care unit experiences of the 15 participants during critical illness, and strategies to improve nursing practice, research, and education are presented.
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Dimens Crit Care Nurs · Jan 2010
Implementation of a multidisciplinary ventilator-weaning and sedation protocol in a community intensive care unit.
Prolongation of mechanical ventilation poses serious personal and financial threats to healthcare consumers. To that end, many healthcare-related groups have established mechanisms for rapid weaning and subsequent extubation of mechanically ventilated patients. Our objectives were to create and implement an evidenced-based, multidisciplinary care-driven ventilator-weaning protocol as well as revise existing ventilator sedation protocols to decrease length of stay in addition to time spent on the ventilator. Our findings are presented in this article.
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Dimens Crit Care Nurs · Nov 2009
Noninvasive positive pressure ventilation: an ABC approach for advanced nursing in emergency departments and acute care settings.
Noninvasive ventilation has become a widespread tool of treatment and support for patients in acute care settings. The treatment is used for various clinical conditions, particularly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and acute cardiogenic pulmonary edema. The utilization of a simple nursing care checklist allows treatment in a systematic fashion. This article discusses the respiratory features of this topic: criteria for noninvasive ventilation, choice of the interface for acute clinical conditions, ventilators and modes of ventilation in noninvasive ventilation, management of setting parameters, patient/ventilator interactions, and monitoring.