Nursing forum
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What methods, if any, should be used to practice healthcare rationing? This article looks at healthcare rationing in the United States, identifies ethical issues associated with implementing healthcare rationing, and addresses legal implications. The author utilizes sources from published literature and her own experience. Society must recognize that it does not have the resources available to fulfill all healthcare needs of all its members. Resolution will bring conflict and compromise.
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This article discusses creating a caring learning environment for undergraduate nursing students. The purpose is to apply the results of a research study in which students described their lived experience with caring in the nursing environment. Students (N = 23) shared caring and uncaring stories about their curricula. The study identified two patterns: "The Power of the Faculty" and "Creating a Caring Learning Environment." The authors discuss the implications of these patterns for developing caring faculty practices and a caring learning environment.
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The issues of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have been debated in classrooms, courtrooms, medical and ethical journals, on television talk shows, and at the bedsides of patients. This article discusses in broad perspective the topic of physician-assisted suicide. ⋯ The presentation of the arguments is by no means exhaustive but rather reflective of current nursing, medical, and ethical journal articles published on the topic of physician-assisted suicide. An attempt has been made to balance each argument without bias, thus allowing the reader to make an individual judgment.
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The purpose of this paper is to reevaluate the nursing diagnosis of spiritual distress in relation to Marjory Gordon's criteria of discriminatory power, generality, flexibility, usefulness, and inclusiveness. The author suggests that nursing's perspective of the spiritual dimension and spiritual distress is both narrow and inadequate in today's multicultural, multidimensional healthcare setting. ⋯ Reevaluation of spiritual distress and spirituality must come in the form of holistic and humanistic approaches in nursing education and research, integration of the spiritual dimension within nursing curricula, and recognition of multidisciplinary, global perspectives of the spiritual phenomenon. The author stresses the importance of the spiritual dimension and its impact upon a person as a multidimensional being.
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Primary health care in the accident and emergency department has been a philosophy of care that reacts to more than a client's presenting complaint (reactive care). It aims not only to manage the presenting complaint, but also to integrate continuing care with disease prevention and health promotion. Primary health care in the AED is intended to build fences around the cliffs forming our healthcare problems. At the same time it also encourages the provision of intensive care ambulances for those clients unfortunate to fall before the fences are finished or who fall over the fences.