Nursing research
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The pain trajectory during treadmill testing in peripheral artery disease.
Ischemia-induced pain associated with walking (claudication) in peripheral artery disease limits mobility and diminishes quality of life. Self-reports of pain during standardized treadmill testing are used in clinical trials to assess the efficacy of interventions. ⋯ Change in the experienced claudication trajectory varied by type of exercise. Findings can inform design of future trials and aid decision making about exercise interventions for claudication.
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Researchers who examine the relationship between nurse staffing and quality of care frequently rely on the Medicare case mix index to adjust for patient acuity, even though it was developed originally based on medical diagnoses and may not accurately reflect patients' needs for nursing care. ⋯ Without an accurate method to incorporate acuity into measurement of nurse staffing, research on the relationship between staffing and quality of care will not reach the full potential to inform practice.
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Unit-level leadership and structural empowerment play key roles in creating healthy work environments, yet few researchers have examined these contextual effects on nurses' well-being. ⋯ This study provides a theoretical understanding of how unit leadership affects both unit- and individual-level outcomes.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Healthcare utilization in women after abdominal surgery for ovarian cancer.
Women undergoing surgery for ovarian cancer are severely ill and are high users of health services. Contributing to these increased utilization rates are the multiple modalities used to treat ovarian cancer and the complications and side effects from those treatments. ⋯ Women in the intervention group appropriately used the emergency room to manage their problems after hours, whereas more women in the attention control group reported significantly more primary care visits. These findings highlight the need for healthcare providers representing various disciplines to coordinate services across specialties, especially for women who have depressive symptoms.
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Latent transition analysis is a method of modeling change over time in categorical variables. It has been used in the social sciences for many years, but not in nursing research. ⋯ The results from the example provide useful information about for whom and in what direction the intervention resulted in change. Latent transition analysis is a valuable procedure for nurse researchers because it collapses large arrays of categorical data into meaningful patterns. It is a flexible modeling procedure with extensions allowing further understanding of a change process.