Articles: intensive-care-units.
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The purpose of this study was to identify and compare parental perceptions of their stress and coping experiences with children in pediatric intensive care units (PICU) and the neonatal intensive care units (NICU). The sample consisted of 31 NICU and 20 PICU parents. ⋯ Parents with children in the PICU perceived problems-focused coping more helpful than parents with children in the NICU; parents of children in NICU found emotion-focused coping more helpful than parents of children in PICU. Parents in both units considered problem-focused coping more helpful than appraisal- or emotion-focused coping.
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To evaluate the safety of percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy. ⋯ In the hands of the experienced, percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy is a safe and quick bedside procedure. It is also less expensive and incurs minimal stress for the patient compared with the surgical method. The technique can be easily mastered by non-surgical physicians and we feel that it is the method of choice for elective tracheostomy in the majority of intensive care patients.
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Reports and guidelines concerning intensive care practice have been issued recently. However, the introduction of such centrally issued recommendations may be difficult because of marked heterogeneity between intensive care units. ⋯ There were significant differences in the distribution of patients' ages, severities of illness, diagnoses, durations of admission and outcomes. Such heterogeneity may make multicentre trials more difficult to conduct and create problems when uniform measures designed to improve intensive care services are being planned.
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Intensive care medicine · Jun 1997
Validation of the simplified therapeutic intervention scoring system on an independent database.
To evaluate the performance of the Simplified Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System on an independent database and determine its relation with the Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System in the quantification of nursing workload in intensive care. ⋯ TISS-28 was validated on this independent population. The results indicate that TISS-28 can replace TISS-76 for the measurement of the nursing workload in Portuguese ICUs.
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Critical care medicine · Jun 1997
Utilization and diagnostic yield of blood cultures in a surgical intensive care unit.
To evaluate the diagnostic yield of blood cultures obtained in a surgical intensive care unit (ICU) and to assess factors potentially influencing yield. ⋯ Blood culture yield in this surgical ICU was relatively low in comparison with other published studies. The data further suggest that concurrent use of systemic antibiotics and inappropriate or excessive culturing may negatively influence blood culture yield.