Critical care nursing clinics of North America
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Crit Care Nurs Clin North Am · Sep 2008
ReviewA brief overview of some of the changes of the American Heart Association's Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care.
The American Hospital Association's Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care 2005 were announced in November 2005. One of the most significant changes in the 2005 guidelines was the simplification of cardiopulmonary resuscitation instruction, which emphasizes reducing the frequency and length of interruption of chest compressions and increasing the number of compressions delivered per minute. This article outlines the guidelines' recommendations with particular attention to defibrillation, cardiac arrest, and symptomatic bradycardia and tachycardia.
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Crit Care Nurs Clin North Am · Sep 2008
Hypothermic coma: catapulting evidence-based research into everyday practice.
Nurses using Rosswurm and Larrabee's conceptual model are guided through a systematic approach to translating evidence-based research into everyday clinical practice. Based on research outcomes, a protocol for hypothermic coma to be used on patients after cardiac arrest was developed at a Midwest hospital. This article presents a case study explaining the use of the protocol and identifies research outcomes.
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Inflammation is a physiologic response to irritants, injury, and infection. Inflammatory dysregulation is believed to contribute to mortality and morbidity in illnesses common to critical care units, such as burns, trauma, sepsis, and cardiovascular disease. This article reviews the approaches used to investigate the molecular basis of inflammatory function. Genomic findings are providing insight into clinical diagnosis and treatment of inflammatory derangements in critically ill patients.
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Crit Care Nurs Clin North Am · Mar 2008
ReviewEmergency medical support units to critical care transport teams in Iraq.
Early in the author's deployment in the United States Air Force to southern Iraq, his unit was exposed to the first of many mass casualties sent to his Expeditionary Medical Support System unit. Within minutes of the injured military members' arrival, the four-bed evaluation station was transformed into an open bay trauma room where patients were treated and supported until they could be evacuated to more definitive care. Patients were transitioned with awe-inspiring speed and professionalism to Critical Care Air Transport teams for care during aeromedical evacuation. The lessons learned from the frequency of these events are valuable to any similar transport case with critically ill and injured patients.
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Crit Care Nurs Clin North Am · Mar 2008
ReviewMilitary nursing research: translation to disaster response and day-to-day critical care nursing.
Where to begin? How do you identify nursing care requirements for military operations, disaster, and humanitarian response, and how do you modify care under these unique conditions? This article presents a framework for identifying areas of critical care nursing that are performed on a day-to-day basis that may also be provided during a contingency operation, and discusses how that care may be changed by the austere conditions associated with a contingency response. Examples from various disasters, military operations, and military nursing research are used to illustrate the use of this framework. Examples are presented of how the results of this military nursing research inform disaster nursing and day-to-day critical care nursing practice.