Personal perception of chronic illness.

Nurses caring for patients in the home must see them as a complex collection of many parts that require a holistic approach. With the plethora of therapies blending the relationship between mind and body, patients are seeking to be treated as a whole person rather than a physical illness. A diagnosis of cancer or other serious illness affects the physical, psychologic, spiritual, and economic aspects of the person's life, and patients with these diagnoses know the illness and its treatment will decrease many of their normal activities and limit their effectiveness. Because of this disruption, chronic illness causes stress and anxiety in both patient and the family. Therefore nurses must be ready to assess, intervene, and monitor the ongoing progress of both patient and family.

Nursing law violations. A threat to competent and safe nursing practice.

Nurse Practice Act violations pose threats to consumers of nursing services and lead to disciplinary actions against nurses by boards of nursing. To analyze nursing law violations, the actions and decisions of boards of nursing, and evaluate trends in negligent and unsafe nursing practice, the authors reviewed nursing law violations as well as rates of recidivism among nurses who received actions against their nursing licenses in Kentucky. The authors discuss how their findings can assist nurse administrators in investigating nurse care givers before employment and in initiating safeguards against nurse violations that affect client safety.

Continuing education in state hospitals using external consultants.

A continuing education project for registered nurses in a state psychiatric hospital was implemented collaboratively by a nurse administrator and two nurse consultants. This program sought to enhance the nurses' knowledge of psychiatric-mental health nursing practice and prepare them to take the American Nurses Association certification examination for psychiatric-mental health nursing. The project was based on the premise that the nursing departments that offer educational services for their nurses foster professional competency and maintain current standards of nursing care. Twenty-one registered nurses volunteered for and completed the 16-week program. Improvements in their knowledge base were evidenced by mean test scores. A t-test analysis indicated a significant difference. The pretest mean score was 70.2%, the posttest mean score 79.4%. Mean scores varied with the education level of the nurses.

Health locus of control beliefs and alcohol-related factors that may influence treatment outcomes.

Treatment programs have based their treatment approach on the premise that alcoholics should exert internal control over situations and events that affect them. Since chronic alcohol use affects the health of an individual, Walston and Walston's Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale was administered to 47 alcoholics in a treatment program. The population reflected a higher belief that health status is more under their own control than under the control of chance or powerful others. However, the results indicated that recovering alcoholics with a more powerful other health orientation tended to maintain membership longer with Alcoholics Anonymous, would seek help sooner, would begin heavy drinking at a later age, and would attempt formal treatment more often.