American journal of critical care : an official publication, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
-
Communication is key to understanding the emotional state of critical care patients. ⋯ The communicative intervention CONECTEM was effective in improving psychoemotional state among critical care patients during medical transport.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Nurses' Perceptions of Workload Burden in Pediatric Critical Care.
Quantifying nurses' perceptions of workload burden when managing critically ill patients is essential for designing interventions to ease nurses' workday. ⋯ This study describes the workload burden perceived by PICU nurses when managing critically ill patients in general and when managing protocolized therapies.
-
Despite increased emphasis on providing higher-quality patient- and family-centered care in the intensive care unit (ICU), there are no widely accepted definitions of such care in the ICU. ⋯ Although survival was important, most participants qualified this preference. Simple measures of mortality rates may not represent patient- or family-centered outcomes in evaluations of ICU-based interventions, and new measures that incorporate functional outcomes and patients' and family members' views of life quality are necessary to promote patient-centered, evidence-based care.
-
Despite advances in treatment strategies, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) after cardiac surgery remains associated with high morbidity and mortality. A method of screening patients for risk of ARDS after cardiac surgery is needed. ⋯ The ARDS prediction score can be used to identify high-risk patients from the first day after cardiac or aortic surgery. Patients with a score of 3 or greater should be closely monitored. The score requires external validation before clinical use.
-
Elderly patients frequently experience deteriorating health after critical illness, which may threaten their independence and predispose them to unplanned hospital readmissions and premature death. ⋯ A comprehensive home-based palliative care intervention is operationally feasible in elderly multi-morbid survivors of critical illness and may result in improved physical functioning and quality of life and fewer unplanned emergency department visits.