Hu li za zhi The journal of nursing
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This article describes an experience of providing nursing care to an eighty year-old patient with urinary tract infection (UTI). The author cared for this patient in the role of clinical geriatric nurse specialist from May 11 to 23 in 2005. Through comprehensive assessment, careful review of medical records, contact with family and nursing home healthcare workers, it was determined that the patient's cognition and physical function declines were due to delirium resulting from the last time the patient had been hospitalized in the intensive care unit (ICU). ⋯ No delirious event occurred during hospitalization and cognitive functions improved. From this experience, early assessment and intervention should be conducted for high-risk elderly patients in order to prevent delirious events and declines in cognitive and physical functions. The author hopes this case report will prove a useful reference to nurses charged with caring for elderly patients at risk for delirium.
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The process of being weaned from mechanical ventilation is a stressful transition for critically ill patients who are taken off ventilation assistance and regain spontaneous breathing. Degree of weaning success is being increasingly used as an outcome indicator in clinical practice and lay literature. ⋯ Following the concept analysis framework of Walker and Avant (1995), any such analysis that targets development of an operational definition of successful weaning should focus on two distinct sets of indicators, namely objective physiological and subjective psychological. Listing defining attributes and developing a model case will accurately reflect underlying relationships between weaning concepts.