International journal of nursing studies
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One out of seven patients is involved in an adverse event. The first priority after such an event is the patient and their family (first victim). However the involved health care professionals can also become victims in the sense that they are traumatized after the event (second victim). They can experience significant personal and professional distress. Second victims use different coping strategies in the aftermath of an adverse event, which can have a significant impact on clinicians, colleagues, and subsequent the patients. It is estimated that nearly half of health care providers experience the impact as a second victim at least once in their career. Because of this broad impact it is important to offer support. ⋯ Second victim support is needed to care for health care workers and to improve quality of care. Support can be provided at the individual and organizational level. Programs need to include support provided immediately post adverse event as well as on middle long and long term basis.
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Long-term care facilities have difficulty facilitating elders' independent self-care. Promoting self-care independence among residents of long-term care facilities cannot be ignored and needs to be further understood. ⋯ This study provided important information that, elders, family members, and staff caregivers of long-term care facilities should build a partnership and set a mutual goal, to improve self-care performance among residents in long-term care facilities.
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Review
Evaluation of Quality of Life instruments for use in COPD care and research: a systematic review.
Quality of Life (QoL) measurements to quantify disease burden have become an important outcome measure in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) research and treatment. A large variety of QoL instruments is available. The objective of this review was to comprehensively evaluate content and psychometric properties of available QoL instruments used in COPD care and research. ⋯ Despite the comprehensive overview we could not uniformly recommend the best instrument to evaluate QoL in COPD patients. However, we could recommend the disease specific instruments CRQ, CAT, SGRQ, or LCOPD. In addition to the best evidence synthesis, the decision to use one instrument over another, will be driven by study purpose and research questions in combination with the domains of the instrument. Given the large availability of instruments we discourage to develop new instruments, instead we encourage to design studies according the COSMIN standards to evaluate the psychometric properties of the existing instruments.
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Continuous palliative sedation has been the focus of extensive international debates in the field of end-of-life decision making. Although nurses may be important participants in the performance of continuous palliative sedation, research has focused primarily on the role and experience of physicians. Nurses' experiences differ from that of physicians; they more often describe that continuous palliative sedation is used with the intention of hastening death and to have experienced serious emotional burden. Therefore, it is important to understand the experience of nurses in continuous palliative sedation. ⋯ Nurses seem to play an important role in the use of continuous sedation. This role is mainly supportive toward physicians and patients during the decision-making process, but shifts to an active performance of sedation, particularly in settings where they explicitly participate as members of a team. Nurses could develop the practice of palliative sedation by anticipating procedural obstacles in the performance of continuous palliative sedation. We recommend them to become more active participants in the decision-making to improve the care of patients receiving continuous palliative sedation.