ABSTRACT
Unfinished nursing care is common in the inpatient setting and is associated with negative patient outcomes. This indicator is being assessed with increasing frequency to determine the quality of nursing services. Measurement bias was identified in this comparison of unfinished care surveys. Potential sources of bias should be considered when selecting and scoring unfinished nursing care surveys for quality assessment.
Subject(s)
Nursing Care/methods , Quality Indicators, Health Care , Self Report , Adult , Female , Health Care Surveys/methods , Humans , Male , Quality Improvement , Time FactorsABSTRACT
Culture has been defined as the thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups. A culture of nursing refers to the learned and transmitted lifeways, values, symbols, patterns, and normative practices of members of the nursing profession of a particular society. To serve the unique and diverse needs of patients in the United States, it is imperative that nurses understand the importance of cultural differences by valuing, incorporating, and examining their own health-related values and beliefs and those of their health care organizations, for only then can they support the principle of respect for persons and the ideal of transcultural care.
Subject(s)
Cultural Diversity , Nurse's Role , Transcultural Nursing/organization & administration , Attitude to Health/ethnology , Codes of Ethics , Cultural Characteristics , Cultural Competency/education , Cultural Competency/ethics , Cultural Competency/organization & administration , Cultural Competency/psychology , Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice , Humans , Models, Nursing , Nurse's Role/psychology , Nurse-Patient Relations/ethics , Patient Advocacy/education , Patient Advocacy/ethics , Patient Advocacy/psychology , Philosophy, Nursing , Practice Guidelines as Topic , Professional Competence/standards , Transcultural Nursing/education , Transcultural Nursing/ethics , Trust/psychology , United StatesABSTRACT
Uninsured patients put a strain on the health care system that ultimately results in increased health care costs for everyone. The challenges faced by the Harris County Hospital District in Houston, TX, as a result of an increasing number of uninsured and underinsured patients include overcrowding in its health care facilities, decreased reimbursement from government programs, and patients who postpone seeking medical treatment until their situation is emergent and whose care is therefore more expensive. Strategies for addressing these problems may include instituting an "everybody pays" program, improving access to care for the uninsured, and reducing or eliminating unnecessary services.
Subject(s)
Health Care Costs , Health Services Needs and Demand , Health Status Disparities , Medically Uninsured/statistics & numerical data , Financial Management, Hospital , Health Services Accessibility , Hospitals, County/economics , Hospitals, County/organization & administration , Humans , Medically Uninsured/ethnology , Texas , United StatesABSTRACT
This quantitative and qualitative study explored factors that influence nurses of different age groups to choose to work in and remain in the specialty of OR nursing, including the effect of work environment perceptions. Baby boomer nurses (n = 130) and Generation X nurses (n = 117) were surveyed, and seven RNs from each group also participated in semistructured interviews. Results showed that nurses of both age groups were more alike than different in the factors that influence them to choose and remain in OR nursing and in their perceptions of their work environment. Baby Boomers indicated a higher level of commitment to their jobs than did Generation Xers.
Subject(s)
Attitude of Health Personnel , Career Choice , Perioperative Nursing , Adult , Age Factors , Aged , Female , Health Facility Environment , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Patient Care Team , Southwestern United StatesABSTRACT
Detailed studies of the structure, conductivitity, magnetoresistance, optical spectra, and magnetic properties (susceptibility, EPR) for the new molecular metal tetrabenzporphyrin iodide (H(2)(tbp)I) and the electrical, spectral, and magnetic properties of Ni(tbp)I are reported. Paramagnetic transition-ion impurities were carefully excluded during the synthesis of H(2)(tbp)I and Ni(tbp)I, and both materials show much higher, metal-like conductivites than previously seen for less-pure Ni(tbp)I. Comparison of the specular reflectance data for Ni(tbp)I and H(2)(tbp)I allows a distinction between purely ring pi-transitions and metal-involved charge-transfer transitions, and the spectra fix the energy levels of the pi orbitals involved in conduction. Transport, magnetic, and optical properties show that both H(2)(tbp)I and Ni(tbp)I are ring-based conductors that have metal-like conductivities, varying as approximately 1/T, down to ca. 30-40 K. However, the remaining level of defects is higher in the tbp conductors than in H(2)(pc)I, and whereas the latter is metallic down to the mK temperature range, the defects in the (tbp) compounds localize the conduction electrons at approximately 10 K (Ni(tbp)I) and approximately 30 K (H(2)(tbp)I), leading to transport through one-dimensional variable-range hopping. EPR g-values for H(2)(tbp)I and Ni(tbp)I are close to that for the free electron and are nearly temperature-independent. The line widths for both samples are extremely narrow and also are nearly temperature-independent. These results show that Ni(tbp)I does not display doubly-mixed valence, as thought earlier: Paramagnetic impurities significantly altered the EPR signals of the prior samples. H(2)(tbp)I crystallizes in the space group P4/mcc with cell constants of a = 14.173(10) Å and c = 6.463(4) Å. Full-matrix least-squares refinement of 63 variables gave an R index of 0.061 on F(o)(2).
