Pflege
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Research results show that health literacy is an important concept in nursing. It has a positive effect on the health of individuals as well as on the costs of the healthcare system. The results of a comprehensive literature search (1980 - March 2009) revealed that the concept of health literacy is being increasingly discussed; however, the concept is barely addressed in literature specific to nursing. ⋯ The specific terms relevant to health literacy were identified. Moreover, an operational definition for health literacy was developed for the professional nursing setting. Possibilities for nursing practice, due to the conceptualization of health literacy, are discussed.
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Inpatient hospice settings as facilities of health services are obliged to the quality assurance and internal quality development in Germany. The meaning of the patient's satisfaction as one of the indirect indicators for the judgement of nursing and care quality is indisputable by now. However, a subjective evaluation of the hospices by guests is practically and ethically problematic. ⋯ The development of the questionnaire enclosed the formation of an item pool, the item choice, the critical discussion of the questions in the body of experts as well as a standardised and cognitive pretest beside a comprehensive literature research. A five-dimension questionnaire was developed that integrates physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and organisational aspects of the care at the end of life. The instrument encompasses 53 items, predominantly closed questions.
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Pain treatment of surgical patients is still a deficient area, even if there are evidence-based possibilities of pain management. The aim of this study is to identify patients with a higher risk of severe postoperative pain at an early stage and improve nurses' pain management by identifying pain predictors whilst including them in analgesic treatment. In addition to the identification of predictors by a literature review, a cross-sectional study with 84 surgical patients of a convenience sample was undertaken to find possible predictors. ⋯ Correlation analysis was applied to verify the statistical significance of patient characteristics as well as surgical variables. Out of the 14 variables preoperative pain was found to increase the risk of postoperative pain. Comparison with other studies showed inconsistent results for pain predictors, and therefore nursing pain management based on pain predictors seems questionable.
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Review
[Pain prevalence and patient preferences concerning pain management in the emergency department].
Pain is one of the most common problems for patients who present to the Emergency Department (ED), thus a timely and effective pain management intervention is essential for quality patient care. A comprehensive literature review was undertaken in an effort to document the prevalence of pain and to increase knowledge about patients' preferences regarding pain management in emergency situations. Results indicated that the prevalence of pain is high and pain management, including treatment, is often unsatisfactory in the ED. ⋯ Relationships between sociodemographic factors and patient preferences could not clearly be elicited from the literature. A weakness is that the reviewed studies were descriptive and published primarily in the United States in the last five years. There is a need for further research in this area, particularly studies that investigate patients' preferences regarding pain management in European EDs.