International journal of nursing studies
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The Trent Regional Health Authority funded a study in 1995 to train nurses in an accident and emergency (A&E) department to screen all adult attendees for alcohol problems with a view to identifying a sample of problem drinkers to participate in a randomised controlled trial (RCT). In the RCT identified drinkers were to be assigned either to health education plus brief counselling intervention or, as controls, to health education alone. Despite 16654 attendance's at A&E during the recruitment phase of the study only 20% of attendees were screened of whom a further 19% were identified as problem drinkers by the CAGE screening questionnaire. ⋯ A number of in-depth interviews were undertaken with the nurses in an attempt to understand ways in which the overall conduct of the study might have been improved. This paper outlines in some detail some of the reasons for the lack of success with the study which include; general environmental factors that undoubtedly led to stress and poor morale amongst the nursing team, the differences in perception between managers and clinical nurses concerning the value of research and the inadequacy of the initial training programme. The paper concludes that there are problems in the NHS which do not provide a helpful backcloth to the successful conduct of health services research.
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Thirty older adults, without chronic pain, were interviewed about the acute pain reduction strategies that they used at home and strategies that they might use if hospitalized. Verbatim transcripts from the audiotapes were content analyzed. ⋯ If hospitalized, 16 (53.3%) would request analgesics; four (13.3%) would talk with a health care provider; five (16.7%) would continue their own pain reduction strategies; four (13.3%) provided no pain reduction strategies. Results suggest that many older adults possess pain reduction strategies that may be helpful to incorporate in their pain management when hospitalized.
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This descriptive study examined the relationship between nurses' memory of patient's pain and patient stereotyping. The patient vignette information recalled by 148 nurses was content analyzed for accurate items, accurate analgesic items, and how accurately the patient's pain was recalled. ⋯ Nurses either recalled the patient's pain accurately (n = 58), inaccurately (n = 18), or completely omitted (n = 70) this information. Further study is needed to explore why nurses recalled the patient's pain differently, and how this might impact pain relief efforts.
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Saudi Arabia is a developing country with a tremendous potential for growth and development. In an attempt to endorse Primary Health Care (PHC) concepts, it abolished all its former dispensaries and maternal and child health centers, and amalgamated their services into health centers that deliver PHC services. This expansion in centers development created a need for evaluation to assess the extent at which the new objectives are being achieved. ⋯ Three centers were chosen purposefully and the consumers of the respective centers were interviewed as to their satisfaction with the services provided. The results show that there was a discrepancy between the findings obtained from the centers' resources evaluation and those derived from the satisfaction portion. It is recommended that the Saudi Ministry of Health would upgrade its centers' resources, and that more studies would be conducted in the other centers of the country.
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A qualitative study was undertaken to describe how parents and nurses respond to hospitalized young children experiencing pain from surgical interventions. Participant observation was used to identify care behaviours and the care context within which the children experienced, and caregivers witnessed, post-operative pain. Interviews with parents, nurses, and children were also conducted during the observation periods and prior to discharge to augment the observational data. ⋯ Nurses primarily provided technical care, used limited pain assessment approaches, and were not able to adequately alleviate the children's pain. Factors, strategies, and feelings associated with these care behaviours are described. The most salient recommendations arising from these findings are that nurses: (a) be provided with education about pain assessment and management, and (b) be empowered by policies that allow them to sensitively and effectively respond to children in pain.