A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis of the Challenges Perceived by Nurses in Home Health Nursing.

PURPOSE: To aggregate and synthesize the findings of qualitative studies exploring the challenges perceived by nurses in home health nursing. DESIGN: A qualitative meta-synthesis. METHOD: A comprehensive search of multiple databases was conducted in December 2020 and updated in October 2022. Data were analyzed using the meta-aggregation method, and the analytical process used to derive themes was inductive. FINDINGS: Eleven qualitative studies were included, and four major challenges perceived by nurses were identified: (1) challenges in the performance of duties, (2) struggles with specific and restricted factors related to practice, (3) underestimation of the value of emotion, and (4) a difficult-to-surmount relationship gap. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL EVIDENCE: Home health nursing is associated with numerous challenges due to its complexity and high demand. The findings of this study are beneficial with respect to obtaining a deeper understanding of the challenges associated with home nursing. After considering the existing problems, it is necessary to take measures to overcome these challenges, and individuals, families and society should make efforts to develop this profession further.

Blocking vicious cycle of cardiac dysfunction by external cardiopulmonary resuscitation is the key to rescue acute aluminium phosphide poisoning.

Aluminium phosphide (ALP) and aluminium zinc phosphide (ZnP), the two main ingredients of fumigation drugs, are commonly used to kill insects or rodents in grain. When exposed to water, highly toxic phosphine gas is released and absorbed through the respiratory or digestive tract. Phosphine gas could non-selectively block cytochrome oxidase, inhibit electron transfer and suppress oxidative phosphorylation, leading to cellular hypoxia and organ dysfunction. The characteristic clinical manifestations are refractory shock and metabolic acidosis with high mortality. However, patients with ALP poisoning have a chance to be cured. Here, we report a case of oral ALP poisoning that was successfully treated by extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) combined with continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) during frequent ventricular fibrillation and cardiac dysfunction.

Relationships Among Cognitive Function, Frailty, and Health Outcome in Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

BACKGROUND: Frailty and cognitive impairment are significant problems faced by older adults, which have a significant impact on their activities of daily living, social activities, and quality of life. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. METHODS: A total of 252 older adults in two communities in Yangzhou were randomly selected. The cognitive function of the elderly was assessed using the Memory and Executive Screening (MES). The frailty phenotype was used to evaluate the frail situation of older adults. The activity of daily living (ADL), functional activities questionnaire (FAQ), and European quality of 5-dimensions (EQ-5D) were used to evaluate health outcomes in the elderly. SEM was used to explore the direct and indirect relationship among cognitive function, frailty and health outcomes. RESULTS: There was a significant direct correlation between cognitive function and frailty; the direct effect was -0.521. The influence path of cognitive function on health outcomes included direct and indirect effects; the total effect was -0.759. The effect of frailty on health outcomes included direct and indirect effects; the total effect was 0.440. CONCLUSION: According to SEM, cognitive function interacts with frailty and may reduce the quality of life, the ADL, and social activities among older adults directly and indirectly, so future assessments of older adults should consider both cognitive function and frailty, so as to further improve the health outcome of the elderly. When formulating relevant intervention measures in the future, we need to consider that it cannot only improve the cognitive function, but also improve the frail situation, so as to jointly improve the health outcomes of older adults.

Calibration-Free Vector Magnetometry Using Nitrogen-Vacancy Center in Diamond Integrated with Optical Vortex Beam.

We report a new method to determine the orientation of individual nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in a bulk diamond and use them to realize a calibration-free vector magnetometer with nanoscale resolution. Optical vortex beam is used for optical excitation and scanning the NV center in a [111]-oriented diamond. The scanning fluorescence patterns of NV center with different orientations are completely different. Thus, the orientation information on each NV center in the lattice can be known directly without any calibration process. Further, we use three differently oriented NV centers to form a magnetometer and reconstruct the complete vector information on the magnetic field based on the optically detected magnetic resonance(ODMR) technique. Compared with previous schemes to realize vector magnetometry using an NV center, our method is much more efficient and is easily applied in other NV-based quantum sensing applications.

Experimental Observation of Equilibrium and Dynamical Quantum Phase Transitions via Out-of-Time-Ordered Correlators.

The out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOC), a fundamental concept for quantifying quantum information scrambling, has recently been suggested to be an order parameter to dynamically detect both equilibrium quantum phase transitions (EQPTs) and dynamical quantum phase transitions (DQPTs). Here we report the first experimental observation of EQPTs and DQPTs in a quantum spin chain via quench dynamics of OTOC on a nuclear magnetic resonance quantum simulator. We observe that the quench dynamics of the OTOC can unambiguously detect the DQPTs and the equilibrium critical point, while conventional order parameters such as the longitudinal magnetization can not. Moreover, we investigate the two-body correlations throughout the quench dynamics, and find that OTOC can extract the equilibrium critical point with higher accuracy and is more robust to decoherence than that of two-body correlation. Our experiment paves a way for experimentally investigating DQPTs through OTOCs and for studying the EQPTs through the nonequilibrium quantum quench dynamics with quantum simulators.

Floquet-engineered quantum state transfer in spin chains.

Quantum state transfer between two distant parties is at the heart of quantum computation and quantum communication. Among the various protocols, the counterdiabatic driving (CD) method, by suppressing the unwanted transitions with an auxiliary Hamiltonian Hcd(t), offers a fast and robust strategy to transfer quantum states. However, Hcd(t) term often takes a complicated form in higher-dimensional systems and is difficult to realize in experiment. Recently, the Floquet-engineered method was proposed to emulate the dynamics induced by Hcd(t) without the need for complex interactions in multi-qubit systems, which can accelerate the adiabatic process through the fast-oscillating control in the original Hamiltonian H0(t). Here, we apply this method in the Heisenberg spin chains, with only control of the two marginal couplings, to achieve the fast, high-fidelity, and robust quantum state transfer. Then we report an experimental implementation of our scheme using a nuclear magnetic resonance simulator. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this method in complex many-body system and thus provide a new alternative to realize the high-fidelity quantum state manipulation in practice.