International journal of nursing studies
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Comparative Study
Recognising pain in older adults living in sheltered accommodation: the views of nurses and older adults.
Sixty-six randomly selected older adults and their contact nurses participated in interviews based on standardised assessments of pain and open-ended questions focusing how pain was expressed and recognised. The sample included older adults with normal as well as cognitively impaired function. Seventy-nine percent of older adults with normal cognition were often in pain. ⋯ Contact nurses of cognitively impaired older adults judged immobility as the source of pain, that it was possible to see when the person was in pain and that pain was expressed by paralinguistic and body language more often than contact nurses of cognitively healthy older adults. Characteristics of nurses and older adults could facilitate or hinder pain recognition. The findings indicate a need for reflective discussions in the staff group focusing on how to perform systematic assessments of verbal and non-verbal expressions and of hindrances and facilitators for recognising pain in older adults.
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This paper explores the complex interrelationships between knowledge and decision making as nurses and doctors interacted with each other in a critical care unit, which comprised a combined general intensive care and cardiothoracic surgical unit. The critical ethnographic study upon which this paper is based, involved a research group of six nurses who worked in the unit. ⋯ They were also involved in decision making based on their differential visibility in the process. Nurses' specialised knowledge of the critical care unit played a major role in influencing how they interacted during decision making.
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The aim of this research was to obtain information concerning knowledge of the pain management practices of Tasmanian nurses. We examined the knowledge of Tasmanian Registered Nurses in relation to pain management issues such as addiction, use of analgesics and the assessment of pain. In addition, we queried them about their satisfaction with information they had received about how to manage pain in both workplace programs and in their initial education. ⋯ Nurses specifically lacked up-to-date knowledge concerning the pharmacological management of pain, but displayed a more up-to-date knowledge concerning the effect of patient variables on pain perception. Nurses also rated the information they received about pain management during workplace programs as poor, feeling that they acquired significantly more in-depth information during their initial education. The results of this study have implications for institutions involved in both patient pain management and pain management education.
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This study explored the perceptions of 12 patients attending a day care unit in June/July 1996, with the purpose of finding out what was important to these people about their day care experiences. It used a phenomenological methodology derived from Paterson and Zderad's Humanistic Nursing Theory. The patients described numerous aspects of the day care service that were important to them. ⋯ The interpretation of the findings suggests that the reason patients expressed such satisfaction with the service offered was because the care was humanistic. It responded to individual opinions, feelings and understandings of health and well-being, by giving people time and responding to their individual concerns. In this way, it was flexible enough to support people in managing their illness using their own preferred style.
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Multicenter Study
When nurses cry: coping with occupational stress in Thailand.
Anecdotal reports of people feeling better after they cry support theories that link crying to the reduction of stress after a period of prolonged sympathetic activation. A sample of 200 nurses were asked to rate their occupational stress, job satisfaction, and crying as a coping strategy. Crying was found to be an important symptom of home/work conflicts and pressures related to dealing with patients, but did not substantially reduce these sources of stress. Supporting the stress-buffering hypothesis, nurses with lower intrinsic job satisfaction seemed to benefit from emotional crying whereas dissatisfied nurses who cry infrequently reported the highest levels of stress.