Critical care nursing quarterly
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This article explores how the built environment can promote family interaction in the intensive care room and how the family can be supported within the room to care for their loved one. Four families with children in the intensive care unit were interviewed about their intensive care room environment. Patient care and the diagnosis and treatment of the child were not discussed. ⋯ All intensive care rooms were equipped with medical gas booms. All families were preparing for transfer to the inpatient area. This article summarizes the discussion with families and identifies guiding principles for designers and health care personnel to consider when creating a new intensive care room environment.
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What is the role of the built environment in healing? What aspects of the built environment promote healing, staff efficiency, and patient safety? How can we know if these assertions hold true? Can scientific research help us validate these assumptions? These questions are important to explore, especially for our most vulnerable patients-those in critical care settings. This article explores the historical influences on health care design, reveals how the current health care transformation movement has accelerated the incorporation of elements of the built environment into patient safety and quality improvement effort, discusses how healing environments are constructed, and examines how the literature of health care and health care design organizations have incorporated the impact of the built environment on patient, family, and staff outcomes and satisfaction. Finally, a case study of applying "design hypotheses" and a scientific method to the design of an intensive care unit setting is offered. This article will help critical care nurses understand the role the built environment has in creating optimal healing environments.
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Changing market demand, aging population, severity of illnesses, hospital acquired infection, clinical staff shortage, technological innovations, and environmental concerns-all are shaping the critical care practice in the United States today. However, how these will shape intensive care unit (ICU) design in the coming decade is anybody's guess. In a graduate architecture studio of a research university, students were asked to envision the ICU of the future while responding to the changing needs of the critical care practice through innovative technological means. This article reports the ICU design solutions proposed by these students.
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A number of elements contribute to a healing ICU environment. The layout of a critical care unit helps create an environment that supports caregiving, which helps alleviate a host of work-related stresses. A quieter environment, one that includes family and friends, dotted with windows and natural light, creates a space that makes people feel balanced and reassured. ⋯ The physical environment has an impact on patient outcomes; the psychological environment can, too. A healing ICU environment will balance both. The authors discuss the ways in which architecture, interior design, and behavior contribute to a healing ICU environment.
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Comparative Study
Compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress in heart and vascular nurses.
Objectives for this project were to determine the prevalence of compassion satisfaction (CS), burnout, and secondary traumatic stress (STS) in heart and vascular nurses to confirm whether differences exist between intensive care and intermediate care nurses. The Professional Quality of Life Scale Compassion Satisfaction and Compassion Fatigue: Version 5 developed by Stamm (2009) was used. ⋯ These findings suggest that leadership should be aware of the prevalence of STS and burnout in heart and vascular nurses. Raising awareness of STS and burnout in intensive care and intermediate care nurses can help in targeting more specific strategies that may prevent the onset of developing these symptoms.