Journal of nursing scholarship : an official publication of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing
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To investigate differences in mortality of intensive care unit (ICU) patients according to the ratio between total patient care demands and nurse staffing. ⋯ The findings indicate that not only differences among nurse characteristics, but also differences in patient care demands, are important when investigating the effect of nurse understaffing on mortality of ICU patients. Proper nurse staffing levels should be based on the estimation of total patient acuity, rather than on the absolute number of patients.
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To describe the development and psychometric testing of the Patient Safety Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge Scale (PS-ASK). ⋯ A tool to measure clinicians' attitudes, skills, and knowledge about patient safety might be useful to evaluate nurses and other clinicians during educational preparation and in practice.
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To review the concepts of reliability and validity, provide examples of how the concepts have been used in nursing research, provide guidance for improving the psychometric soundness of instruments, and report suggestions from editors of nursing journals for incorporating psychometric data into manuscripts. ⋯ Planning for psychometric testing through design and reducing nonrandom error in measurement will add to the reliability and validity of instruments and increase the strength of study findings. Underreporting of validity might occur because of small sample size, poor design, or lack of resources. Lack of information on psychometric properties and misapplication of psychometric testing is common in the literature.
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To provide an update on the representational approach to patient education. ⋯ The representational approach to patient education appears to be adequately flexible to guide interventions in different patient care situations, while also sufficiently structured to be replicable and testable.
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To assess the key variables used in research on nurse staffing and patient outcomes from the perspective of an international panel. ⋯ These results provide a snapshot of the state of the science on nurse-staffing and patient-outcomes research as of 2005. The results portray an area of nursing science in evolution and an understanding of the connections between human resource issues and healthcare quality based on both empirical findings and opinion.