Caring for the home ventilator-dependent patient: a case management model.

As home care services become more specialized, nurses can meet the complex needs of ventilator-dependent patients in the comfort and privacy of their own homes. The case management model can help providers deliver cost-effective, high-quality home care to these vulnerable patients.

Supplemental staffing. Nurse manager views of costs, benefits, and quality of care.

The authors identified nurse managers' perceptions of supplemental staffing costs, benefits, and quality of care related to patient care delivery and knowledge of the setting. Qualitative responses related to perceptions of costs and benefits were analyzed. Perceptions of quality of care were more positive when related to actual patient care delivery, but relatively negative for items relating to knowledge of policies, procedures, and care delivery setting.

Extending a critical path for patients who are ventilator dependent: nursing case management in the home setting.

A case management model is prepared to extend nursing care of the patient who is ventilator dependent from the hospital to the home setting. The model focuses on decreasing the hospital length of stay and major critical pathway elements. Effective discharge planning is emphasized.

Teaching health promotion: motivating students through collaboration.

The collaborative model provided a number of benefits. Personalizing general health risks enabled the students to translate health promotion knowledge to individuals and groups in the community. The presence of the community health nurse permitted confidential dialogue with students regarding their personal appraisals. In the clinical setting the community health nurse served as a role model and demonstrated use of the tool among a variety of groups. Nurses are expected to identify populations at risk for various health problems and to promote healthful outcomes. This model was useful in assisting students to apply and synthesize health promotion concepts in an active and creative manner. Collaboration with an effective nurse role model was critical to the project.

Protocols for college health nurses: alive and well in the 1990s.

This article seeks to assist college health nurses in developing appropriate protocols for patient care. In addition, the authors outline factors influencing protocol content, design, and development and describe steps in creating individualized protocols by practice setting. To provide college health nurses with a basic understanding of protocols, the authors offer definitions and examples of appropriate and inappropriate use, and show how protocols can influence the delivery of patient care. Although protocols may provide college health nurses with directives for managing specific health problems, they require a sophisticated level of judgment and skill in their implementation.

Nursing diagnosis: a strategy for teaching etiologies.

In teaching the nursing process, educators ask students to identify nursing diagnoses for patients in the clinical area. Nursing diagnoses provide structure and focus for the student's plan of care. However, beginning nursing students have little or no clinical knowledge upon which to base decisions in the area of etiology determination. A model is presented which limits etiologies to four categories. The four categories can also assist the nurse in practice to assess needs in order to comprehensively plan and implement care. Examples of nursing diagnoses pertaining to the neuroscience patient using the four categories of etiologies are described.