Journal of clinical nursing
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To explore and explain nurses' use of readily available clinical information when deciding whether a patient is at risk of a critical event. ⋯ Practice developers and educators need to pay attention to the quality of nurses' clinical experience as well as the quantity when developing judgement expertise in nurses. Intuitive unaided decision making in the assessment of risk may not be as accurate as supported decision making. Practice developers and educators should consider teaching nurses normative rules for revising probabilities (even subjective ones) such as Bayes' rule for diagnostic or assessment judgements and also that linear ways of thinking, in which decision support may help, may be useful for many choices that nurses face. Nursing needs to separate the rhetoric of 'holism' and 'expertise' from the science of predictive validity, accuracy and competence in judgement and decision making.
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The objectives of this narrative review were to identify: (1) The information and support needs of carers of family members with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; (2) appropriate interventions to support carers in their caregiving role; (3) information on carers' needs as reported in studies of patients living with COPD in the community. ⋯ There is little research based knowledge of the needs of carers of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients and interventions to assist them in providing care. This knowledge is critical to ensure that carers receive the information they need to carry out this role while maintaining their own physical and emotional health.
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We aimed to encourage nurses to release information about drug administration errors to increase understanding of error-related circumstances and to identify high-alert situations. ⋯ Survey results suggest that nurses should double check medication administration in known high-alert situations. Nursing management can use snowball sampling to gather error details from nurses in a non-reprimanding atmosphere, helping to establish standard operational procedures for known high-alert situations.
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This study was carried out to identify the perceived adverse patient outcomes as related to nurses' workload. It also assessed nurses' perception of variables contributing to the workload and adverse patient outcomes. ⋯ Nurses' perception of variables contributing to adverse patient outcomes and their workload could significantly affect the provided nursing care and nursing care recipients. The findings could help in policy formulation and planning strategies to decrease adverse patient outcomes in many countries with a health care structure similar to that of Kuwait.