Intention to sign an advance directive among nephrology medical staff and its related factors.

BACKGROUND: Advance care planning enables people to record their future health and care wishes and appoint someone as an advocate. An advance directive can be made in the event that a person is incapacitated, so that their wishes are still upheld. The beliefs of the nephrology team might affect patients' choices and willingness to sign an advance directive. To increase the number of dialysis patients who have signed an advance directive, it is necessary to educate the nephrology medical staff. AIM: To explore the intention to sign an advance directive and its related factors among nephrology medical staff. METHODS: A cross-sectional and correlational design was used. This study recruited 160 nephrology medical staff. Data were analysed by using the Statistical Package for Social Science 21.0 for Windows. FINDINGS: The results found that the longer someone has worked as part of the nephology medical staff, the more knowledgeable they were about an advance directive. This led to them being more likely to want to sign an advance directive for themselves. CONCLUSION: In order to improve the knowledge and awareness of advance directives among nephrology medical staff, hospital managers should provide continuing education on this topic.

The effect of workplace bullying and self-efficacy on emotional distress among hospital nurses.

AIMS: This study intended to explore the workplace bullying, self-efficacy and emotional distress of the nursing staff and determine the predictors of nursing staff's emotional distress. METHODS: Cross-sectional and correlation designs were used, collecting data including socio-demographic data, workplace bullying, self-efficacy and emotional distress scales. RESULTS: Results showed that the frequency of poor sleep quality in the recent 2 weeks, working in the intensive care centre or emergency room, high workplace bullying and low self-efficacy were the main predictors of emotional distress in nursing staff. CONCLUSION: Nursing supervisors are advised to design suitable shift schemes to allow adequate time for nurses to maintain proper rest and develop a safety notification system to give bullied victims the assurance of safety. The design and implementation of the programs are encouraged to improve self-efficacy among nurses by strengthening the training of social skills, improving employees' communication skills and their relationships with other employees.

A study of regular exercise, social support and depression in the community-dwelling older people.

AIMS: This study aims to explore the relationship between regular exercise, social support and depression in community-dwelling older people and find out the predictors of depression. METHODS: Cross-sectional and correlation designs were used. The participants were recruited from August to October in 2020. The STROBE was used as a checklist for this study. RESULTS: The study found that female gender, older age, poor sleep quality, irregular exercise and low social support were the main predictors of depression among the community-dwelling older people. CONCLUSION: It is suggested that healthcare professionals motivate the older people to exercise regularly in the community using individualized exercise routines designed according to their physical conditions such as different types, frequencies and intensity of exercise. Providing social support to each other at the community care site should be encouraged, and regular assessment of the mental health of community-dwelling older people should be done. It is also recommended to organize a timely depression-related education course for older people in the community.

Workplace bullying, personality traits and health among hospital nurses: The mediating effect of social support.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to explore the status of nursing staff's workplace bullying, personality traits, social support and mental health, to find out the predictors of nursing staff's health, and to explore whether social support is a mediator to regulate the impact of workplace bullying on mental health. BACKGROUND: Bullying could cause physical and psychological problems, and nursing workplace bullying causes not only health problems of nursing staff but also patient safety problems. "Workplace bullying" is a worthy topic to pay attention to. Only limited studies could be discovered about the mediating effects between workplace bullying and health. METHODS: Cross-sectional and correlation designs were used. The STROBE was used as a checklist for this study. RESULTS: The results showed that the frequency of poor sleep quality ≥3 days in recent 2 weeks (p < .001), external control personality traits (p = .016), workplace bullying (p < .001) and less social support (p = .001) were the main predictors of the health problems among nurses, and social support was the mediator between workplace bullying and health problems. CONCLUSION: It is recommended that hospital managers should apply regular sleep-wake schedule by designing a biological clock-compliant shift in order to promote good sleep hygiene of the nurses. Providing educational programmes and building up policies to decrease workplace bullying and increase social supports are suggested. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Hospital managers should provide education and training related to the prevention of bullying and establish communication and consultation channels for the bullied. Nursing managers should also educate nurses to establish effective social networks with family, friends and colleagues to prevent health problems.

Predictors for the intentions of signing advance directives among dialysis patients: A quantitative study.

Background: Ineffective medical treatment could be avoided if patients had completed advance directives documents in advance. Aims: This study aimed to explore the predictors for the intentions of signing advance directives among dialysis patients. Methods: This cross-sectional study recruited 209 dialysis patients by using structured questionnaires. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (Version 17) (SPSS/IBM Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used for data analysis. Results: The predictors for the intention of signing the advance directives documents were having information on palliative care, the participants' knowing about the advanced directives documents, and their having more knowledge of advance care plans. Conclusions: Health care workers may strengthen the patient's knowledge of an "advance care plan" by health education during the dialysis treatment and provide information on websites for the patients. Impact statement: Hospital managers should train their staff to provide health teachings for an advance care plan.

Student nurses' bullying, social support and their health status during clinical practicum programmes.

AIMS: This study was to explore the student nurses' bullying, social support and their health status during clinical practicum programmes and the predictors of health status among student nurses during clinical practicum programmes. METHODS: A cross-sectional design with structured questionnaires was used, recruiting 200 student nurses in a 5-year junior college programme in south Taiwan. RESULTS: The significant predictors of nursing students' health status during clinical practicum programmes were 'whether experiencing bullying situations during clinical practicum' and 'low social support'. CONCLUSION: In order to prevent bullying during clinical practicum, encouraging nursing students to report all the clinical practicum bullying incidents, providing counselling to nursing students and arranging clinical practicum bullying prevention courses to students were important. Moreover, providing instructors and nursing staff with teaching, communication and feedback skills might help nursing students prevent bullying incidents during clinical practicum programmes. A longitudinal study design was suggested for the future study in order to assess the cause-effect relationship of the bullying and social support on health among students during clinical practicum.

Effects of assertiveness and psychosocial work condition on workplace bullying among nurses: A cross-sectional study.

AIMS: This study aims to explore nurses' demographic data, assertiveness, psychosocial work condition, and workplace bullying, and find the predictors of workplace bullying. METHODS: This study adopted a cross-sectional design. A stratified sample comprising 241 nurses from a regi onal teaching hospitals in Taiwan was selected from the 10th to the 23rd September, 2018. Data were analysed by using the SPSS Statistics 17.0. Descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation), one-way Anova, t test, Pearson's correlation, and multiple linear regressions were used. RESULTS: The results showed that the participants with "past bullying experience," "lower self-assertiveness," "higher work psychological demands," "lower workplace justice," "lower labour participation," and "lower overall social support" are more likely to experience workplace bullying. CONCLUSIONS: Hospital managers should pay attention to the problem of nursing workplace bullying. First of all, hospital managers should encourage curriculum on nursing workplace bullying and incorporate nursing workplace bullying prevention training courses in curriculum planning.

Associations of work stress and humor with health status in hospital nurses-A cross-sectional study.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To analyse the relationship among hospital nurses' socio-demographic data, work stress, humor and health conditions, and to determine the predictors of nurses' health status. BACKGROUND: Humor can decrease the feelings of helplessness, fear and anxiety, and that may result in the development of positive emotions, which might have a good impact on health. DESIGN: This research applied cross-sectional designs and used structured questionnaires which included socio-demographic data, an Effort-Reward Imbalance questionnaire (ERI), humor and 12-item Chinese health questionnaires (CHQ). A total of 236 nurses in a regional hospital in Taiwan were recruited. SPSS was used for the data analysis in the study. The STROBE was chosen as a checklist for this study. RESULTS: The results showed that the significant predictors of the participants' health were "whether experienced significant life events during the past 3 months," "the degree of work stress" and the level of "humor." CONCLUSIONS: It is recommended that administrators pay attention to the cultivation of nursing staff's humor, such as providing nurses with musical CDs or humorous books and providing stress management training courses to nurses. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: It is necessary for hospital managers to determine and deal with the causes of work stress to avoid the development of health problems in the nursing personnel. Furthermore, in order to develop stress-releasing strategies, it is necessary to provide nurses with stress management and resilience enhancement courses. Cultivating a humor competency of nurses is also recommended to alleviate the work stress.

The associations with work stress, social support and overweight/obesity among hospital nurses: A cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Nurses with obesity will lead to health problems as well as their high turnover rate and low retention rate. OBJECTIVES: This study explored the associations with female nurses' work stress, social support and overweight/obesity, and tried to find the predictors of the female nurses' overweight/obesity. METHODS: The study applied a cross-sectional and correlational design. FINDINGS: The results of this study showed that "regular exercise frequency lower than or equal to 2 days a week", "rotating night shifts greater than or equal to 4 times a month", "nursing working hours higher than 44 hours a week", "high work stress", and "low social support" were the main predictors of "overweight/ obesity". CONCLUSIONS: Conducting workshops were recommended to nurse managers to motivate female nurses' exercise frequency, remind female nurses of keeping a healthy diet during night shifts, and provide female nurses with some relaxing skills to release their work stress.

Workplace bullying among Nurses in South Taiwan.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: This study was to investigate bullying among hospital nurses and its correlates. BACKGROUND: Chinese people were unlikely to express their opinions or pursue individual rights. Workplace bullying took place more easily among the educated people within Chinese culture. However, studies related to workplace bullying among hospital nurses in Taiwan were still limited. DESIGN: A cross-sectional design. METHODS: Two hundred and eighty-five nurses who worked in the regional teaching hospital in south Taiwan were recruited. The significant predictors of workplace bullying were identified by using linear regression analysis. RESULTS: The mean of overall bullying was 1·47, showing that the frequency of the nurses having experienced workplace bullying was between 'never' and 'now and then'. The most frequent bullying item was 'being yelled at or being the target of anger', followed by 'being the objects of untruthful criticism' and 'having views ignored'. Hospital nurses working in the Emergency room would gain 10·888 points more in the overall bullying scale compared with those who worked in operation rooms or haemodialysis rooms. They were more likely to be bullied. Hospital nurses with one year increase in nursing experience were 0·207 points less likely to be bullied. CONCLUSIONS: Reducing workplace bullying among hospital nurses was an essential method to provide quality assurance to health care. Nurse managers should build up zero tolerance policy to decrease nurses' exposure to workplace bullying. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Training programmes related to bullying prevention are suggested to avoid workplace bullying. The contents of the educational training programmes or workshops should incorporate the characteristics and consequences of the workplace bullying, and the strategies to deal with bullying.

The effects of aromatherapy in relieving symptoms related to job stress among nurses.

Workplace-related stress has become today's most serious occupational hazard. Aromatherapy is a simple, convenient and non-invasive method of stress relief. There is little research regarding the efficacy of aromatherapy by means of inhaling essential oil in reducing workplace stress-related symptoms among nurses. Therefore, this study was to examine the effectiveness of lavender oil inhalation in reducing job stress-related symptoms among nurses. The 53 nurses in the experimental group pinned small bottles containing 3% lavender oil on the clothes of their right chests, whereas 57 participants in the control group pinned bottles with no lavender oil. Aromatherapy was shown to be effective in the reduction of the number of stress symptoms for 3 or 4 days. The stress symptoms of the experimental group decreased from 6.1 to 2.8 after aromatherapy was carried out (P = 0.126, 0.159, 0.035 and 0.026). This represented a significant decrease in stress, whereas the stress symptoms in the control group increased from 5.6 to 5.8. Hospital staff managers are still encouraged to include aromatherapy concepts and techniques in the continuing education of nursing staff. Concurrently, future research should focus on the possible side effects of aromatherapy to assure safety.

Retraction: The Predictors of the Job Stress among Female Married Hospital Nurses.

This article has been retracted by the Editorial Board of INDUSTRIAL HEALTH due to violation of our publishing policies and procedures as of September 26, 2014.

The Predictors of the Job Stress among Female Married Hospital Nurses.

The purposes of this study were to explore the relationships among family stress, social support and job stress in female married hospital nurses. Married female nurses had to face both paid hospital work and unpaid domestic work, and double workloads might lead to more stress of female married nurses. Most studies were limited to explore the correlations of job stresses caused from jobs only, and ignored the affecting factors from family stresses. 233 hospital nurses were recruited in this study. The results showed that the family stresses (p<0.01) and working units (p=0.01) were important predictors of the Effort-Reward imbalance (high job stress). Nurses' ladder levels (p=0.004) and family stress (p=0.002) were the main factors related to married female nurses' presence of high overcommitment. Family stress, working units and nurse's ladder levels have a significant difference on job stresses among hospital married female nurses. Nurse managers may provide educational programs related to family stress reliefs to married female nurses and their husbands to alleviate their family stresses. Future studies might incorporate personalities and coping strategies to further investigate the relationships between social supports and job stresses.

The effects of cryotherapy in relieving postarthroscopy pain.

AIM: The aim of this study was to examine whether the application of cryotherapy with ice in a plastic bag is effective in reducing the severity of wound pain after arthroscopy. BACKGROUND: In most studies, analgesic medication were administered prior to surgery; postoperative pain may be reduced by analgesics, but they are known to confound the effects of cryotherapy. Cryotherapy by Cryocuff system has commonly been used to manage post arthroscopy patients' pain. Few studies have tested the effects of cryotherapy by simply applying ice in a plastic bag to relieve postarthroscopy pain. DESIGN: This was a prospective, double-blinded, quasi-experimental study with two groups, interrupted time-series design and multiple treatment replications. METHOD: Fifty-nine patients who received arthroscopy between July-August 2007 were assigned to receive cryotherapy (the experimental group, 33 people) or no cryotherapy (the control group, 26 people). For the experimental group, three 10-minute sessions of ice packing were conducted over a three-hour period, with 50-minute intervals between each session. The first session of ice packing was applied immediately after recovery from anaesthesia. RESULTS: Cryotherapy with ice in a plastic bag was shown to be effective in lessening the degree of pain in postarthroscopy patients. The pain score of the experimental group decreased from 5·12-1·82 after cryotherapy, representing a significant decrease, while the pain score in the control group decreased from 4·04-2·88 (p = 0·047, 0·012 and 0·005). CONCLUSIONS: Cryotherapy with ice in a plastic bag can be applied in standard protocols for patients who have just undergone arthroscopic surgery. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Cryotherapy with ice in a plastic bag is a simple, readily attainable and cost-effective technique for relieving postarthroscopy pain. We recommend that it be included in standard treatment protocols. Techniques for cryotherapy should be incorporated into in-service education.

Factors affecting the unplanned peripheral reinsertion in pediatric patients from a teaching hospital in Taiwan.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting the unplanned peripheral intravenous reinsertion in pediatric inpatients at a teaching hospital in Taiwan. Researchers recruited 206 pediatric inpatients and their caretakers for the study and used multivariate regression in calculating their results. The results showed the following: whether pediatric patients received drugs (P < .001), whether the appropriate height of the drops was adhered to (P = .053), and whether the adjustment of the drip rate was done by the clients or caretakers themselves (P = .046) were significant determinants of unplanned peripheral intravenous reinsertions. It may be worthwhile to incorporate the findings regarding factors affecting the unplanned peripheral intravenous reinsertion into pediatric nurses' educational programs.

Collecting factors related to the haemolysis of blood specimens.

AIM: The purpose of the study is to explore the collecting factors for the haemolysis of the blood specimens in a regional hospital in South Taiwan. BACKGROUND: Blood collecting is one of the most common procedures used in hospital. However, it often faces the risk of haemolysis of blood specimens during laboratory testing and the specimens collected can be easily rejected by the laboratory. METHODS: This is a descriptive and cross-sectional study. The purposive samples were collected from the blood specimens of the hospitalized patients or the emergency-room patients by using structured observational checklists which included demographic characteristics, caring factors and material factors. A total of 274 blood specimens was collected. RESULTS: Specimens obtained from non-antecubital sites were 3.35 times at risk of haemolysis as many as those from antecubital sites (p = 0.001). Blood collected into tubes through steel needles were 3.7 times more at risk of haemolysis as that through syringes (after removing needles) (p = 0.002). Specimens delivered by ward assistants were 8.7 times more at risk for haemolysis as those by the laboratory staff (p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that nurse supervisors establish a protocol related to preventing haemolysis. Future research should explore the effectiveness of this protocol to verify the relationship between different gauges of steel needles or catheters and haemolysis. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Nurse educators are encouraged to include the factors affecting and preventing haemolysis into the in service education. Therefore, findings may assist healthcare professionals in minimizing the risk of haemolysis and improve the quality of care.