Intensive & critical care nursing : the official journal of the British Association of Critical Care Nurses
-
Paracetamol is a common cause of fatal self-poisoning in the UK every year. Despite this, it continues to be sold freely without medical supervision and can be found in quantity in most household medicine cabinets.
-
Intensive Crit Care Nurs · Jun 1997
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical TrialPatient-controlled analgesia compared with nurse-controlled infusion analgesia after heart surgery.
A randomized, controlled clinical trial was conducted on 66 patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery to compare patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) to nurse-controlled analgesia (NCA) with continuous morphine infusion. Hourly assessment of pain (at rest and on movement) using a visual analogue scale (VAS), of respiratory rate, and level of sedation took place for the 24 h following extubation. The incidence of nausea was also recorded. ⋯ The PCA group also consumed significantly more morphine (P = 0.0001). The study suggests a beneficial effect from PCA after cardiac surgery in reducing nausea, compared to NCA. It confirms nurse-controlled infusion analgesia as an effective form of pain relief in an intensive care and high-dependency setting.
-
Intensive Crit Care Nurs · Jun 1997
ReviewFocus of nursing in critical and acute care settings: prevention or cure?
The fluidity of the boundaries of critical and acute care can lead to challenges for nurses working on acute general wards when caring for post-critical care patients and for those in whom a critical care situation arises during a period of acute care. The development and use of critical care skills pose special difficulties for acute care nurses, because of the acuteness and infrequency of such incidents and the diversity of skills the nurses need to possess. Nonetheless, critical care is an important component of an acute ward nurse's repertoire, particularly in relation to preventing episodes of critical illness. ⋯ They may, in addition, lead to an over-reliance on the use of such facilities and must be implemented carefully in order to bridge, rather than widen, the gap between acute and critical care. Critical care is used in this paper as a global term, to encompass all settings where patients are usually more highly dependent and critically ill than patients on general wards. It includes intensive therapy, high-dependency, coronary care and other specialist critical care units.
-
Intensive Crit Care Nurs · Apr 1997
Exploring dichotomies of caring, gender and technology in intensive care nursing: a qualitative approach.
Intensive care nursing involves combining caring, seen as a feminine trait, with the ability to work with technology, often viewed as masculine. This study explored nurses perceptions of their work, particularly in relation to whether there are differences between the sexes in caring ability and the planned career paths of female and male nurses. ⋯ The results challenge previous studies which state that male nurses are attracted to these areas because of the technology and that they wish to climb the career ladder more quickly than their female colleagues. Nurses in intensive care units generally chose such work because they were able to provide, in their own opinions, a high standard of nursing care to patients and were able to maintain direct patient contact if they wished to achieve sister/charge nurse posts.
-
Intensive Crit Care Nurs · Feb 1997
ReviewCritically ill children: the case for short-term care in general intensive care units.
This paper contests the claim that all children should be nursed in paediatric intensive care units (PICUs). Although there is an undoubted need for prolonged care to be undertaken within PICUs, they are a scarce resource and many children's critical illness is of short duration. Following a discussion on the negative aspects of transferring a critically ill child this paper then establishes how a general intensive care unit (GICU) can maintain-awareness and standards which make it a safe environment for children with a short-term critical illness, as well as contribute towards future management and practice.