Intensive & critical care nursing : the official journal of the British Association of Critical Care Nurses
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Intensive Crit Care Nurs · Aug 1996
ReviewStaffing intensive care units: a consideration of contemporary issues.
Intensive care nurses are an expensive and scarce resource. The internal market within the National Health Service requires greater scrutiny of expenditure in all areas, not least staffing. ⋯ The nurse:patient ratio is lower in the USA, therefore a brief comparison between the two countries is provided in order to inform discussion and debate. The importance of these issues for all intensive care nurses is emphasised, together with a plea for a substantive study to provide evidence of nursing work and inform future decision-making by the purchasers and providers of intensive care services.
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Intensive Crit Care Nurs · Apr 1996
Practice Guideline GuidelineNursing implications of the department of health guidelines on admission to and discharge from intensive care and high dependency units. A joint statement from the British Association of Critical Care Nurses and The Royal College of Nursing Critical Care Forum.
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The purpose in this paper is to consider the importance of early nutrition for critically ill patients, briefly reviewing the effects of malnutrition, and the metabolic response to starvation and sepsis. Discussion includes assessment of nutritional status and nutritional requirements, with a suggested enteral feeding regime; and also the combined effect of enteral nutrition and glutamine on gut integrity and its relevance to nosocomial pneumonia, and the ability of the gut to accept food during critical illness.
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Intensive Crit Care Nurs · Apr 1996
Patients' experience of confusion in the intensive care unit following cardiac surgery.
This article reports a study of postoperative intensive care as experienced by coronary artery by-pass patients. The purpose is to describe and reflect upon the patients' experience of confusion in the intensive care unit (ICU). The study was performed according to the phenomenological-hermeneutic research tradition, with ten patients participating. ⋯ Patients' comments concerning their confusion verified the challenge this phenomenon poses in nursing care. A research methodology which highlights the individuality of the patients can uncover other hidden or unquestioned issues in nursing. Accordingly, further areas for study are suggested here.
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Three times every day in most of the hospitals and nursing homes in the UK, the so-called ritual of handover takes place. This ethnographic study examines that practice. The handovers of one ward were observed to see if they warrant the label of ritual as described by Helman (1990). ⋯ Ritual is examined in terms of its meaning and found to serve valuable psychological, social and protective functions for its unwitting participants. Ritual serves another function, it plays an important role in valuing and emphasising what comes to constitute working nursing knowledge. In conclusion, ritual should not be dismissed by a profession which claims a holistic approach as its espoused theory, but further investigated and utilised as a means for accessing nursing knowledge.