American journal of critical care : an official publication, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
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Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Outcomes of care managed by an acute care nurse practitioner/attending physician team in a subacute medical intensive care unit.
Many academic medical centers employ nurse practitioners as substitutes to provide care normally supplied by house staff. ⋯ In a subacute intensive care unit, management by the 2 teams produced equivalent outcomes.
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No publications describe the life experience of spouses who are designated caregivers of patients with a left ventricular assist device before transplantation. ⋯ The spouses who served as caregivers had strong emotions as they entered each stage of this life experience. The stages were characterized by the identified themes and subthemes, which otherwise might not have been revealed or might have remained private to the study participants. Critical care nurses should recognize and anticipate challenges for these stages of life experienced by the spouses as caregivers. Heightened awareness of this phenomenon will guide nurses in individualizing plans of care, educating patients and patients' families, and evaluating outcomes of care.