Clinical nurse specialist CNS
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During these times of escalating health care costs and increased demand for critical care beds, hospitals are often unable to provide the intensive level of nursing care that is required. One large urban trauma center found that 36% of the surgical intensive care unit patients required a level of nursing care intermediate between the intensive care unit and the general ward. A multidisciplinary team met to plan and develop a surgical/trauma intermediate care unit to provide this level of care. ⋯ An educational program was developed based on a needs assessment of the staff. During the implementation phase and throughout the unit's operation, advanced practice nurses performed an integral role as resource personnel. The purpose of this paper is to describe the multidisciplinary process used in the development of a new unit and to highlight the advanced practice role in this activity.
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This paper is about the intense experience of being in the hospital in a comatose state resulting from an aneurysm with a massive brain hemorrhage and two subsequent surgeries. The event begins with a premonition of what will happen from a street name. ⋯ It suggests that a patient in a comatose state can exist in a deep state of emotions close to ecstasy. The paper concludes with gratefulness to all the people who followed me step by step on this journey.
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Comparative Study
A comparison of patient/nurse perceptions about current and future recovery status.
Research comparing patient and caregiver perceptions suggests that caregivers tend to be negatively biased in their assessment of patients. That is, they are more likely to judge the patients' status more negatively than the patients themselves. The data analyses, however, have not always been as informative about the extent of disagreement. ⋯ Nevertheless, with respect to both current and future status, the correlations between patients and nurses were low, indicating little, if any, shared variation. Because this study did not examine the relationship between either patients' or nurses' perceptions of recovery status, and the patients' actual recovery status, further research is needed to further determine the implications of this work. The meaning of these results for clinical nurse specialists (CNS) is discussed.