The dual protective role of accountability: Mitigating missed nursing care and nurse moral distress in a nested diary study design.

AIMS: To examine a novel moderated-mediation model, investigating whether personal accountability moderates the link between nurse workload and missed nursing care and whether missed nursing care mediates the association between workload and moral distress. DESIGN: Nested diary study. METHODS: Data spanning from February 2019 to February 2023 were collected from 137 nurses working in various inpatient wards in two medium-sized hospitals. Nurses reported care given to specific patients on three to five occasions across different shifts, establishing nurse-patient dyads. Validated measures of missed nursing care, personal accountability, moral distress and workload were analyzed using mixed linear models to test the nested moderated-mediation model. RESULTS: Under high workload conditions, nurses with higher personal accountability reported lower frequencies of missed nursing care compared to those with lower personal accountability. In contrast, under low workload conditions, personal accountability did not significantly influence missed nursing care occurrences. Furthermore, the interaction between workload and personal accountability indirectly affected nurses' moral distress through missed nursing care. Specifically, higher personal accountability combined with lower missed nursing care contributed to reduced levels of moral distress among nurses. CONCLUSION: The study highlights accountability's dual role-safeguarding against care omissions and influencing nurses' moral distress amid rising workload pressures. IMPLICATION FOR THE PROFESSION AND/OR PATIENT CARE: Cultivating a culture of accountability within healthcare settings can serve as a protective factor against the negative effects of workload on patient care quality and nurse psychological distress, highlighting the need for organizational interventions to promote accountability among nursing staff. IMPACT: By recognizing accountability's pivotal role, organizations can implement targeted interventions fostering accountability among nurses, including training programs focused on enhancing responsibility/ownership in care delivery and creating supportive environments prioritizing accountability to achieve positive patient outcomes. REPORTING METHOD: The study has adhered to STROBE guidelines. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: No patient or public contribution.

Medical encounters with patients diagnosed with cancer: The association between physicians' behavior and perceived patient centered care and anxiety.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the association between physicians' behavior and cancer patients' perceived patient-centered care (PCC) and anxiety following medical encounters. METHODS: A prospective study design with 100 encounters, including 100 cancer patients and 22 oncology/surgery physicians, was performed between November 2019 and July 2021. Before the medical encounters, patients were asked to complete the validated State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and physicians and patients completed sociodemographic and clinical data. During the medical encounters, structured 'real-time' observations of the physicians' behaviors were performed using the Four Habits Coding Scheme (4HCS). Following the medical encounters, patients were asked to re-complete the STAI and to fill the validated Perceived PCC questionnaire. RESULTS: Mean 4HCS was positively associated with perceived PCC (ß = 0.351, p < 0.001) and contributed 10.5% to the total 25.3% explained variance beyond the sociodemographic and clinical variables. Of the 4HCS sub scales, 'Demonstrate Empathy' displayed the lowest correlation with perceived PCC as compared to informational behaviors. In contrast, mean 4HCS was not associated with post-meeting anxiety (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION: Our 'in-vivo' observations of medical encounters expands on previous studies in educational settings in showing how physicians' behaviors impact real patients' experience. The findings may provide a more accurate picture of physicians' supportive and unsupportive behaviors that impact on perceived PCC and anxiety. Patients may prefer their physicians to focus on the informational content related to their disease trajectory rather than focusing on empathy with their emotions. Physicians should be trained in ways to support patients on how to regain emotional control in stressful medical situations.

Accountability focus and nurses' performance: A moderated-mediation model by using experiment design simulations.

AIM: The aim of this study was to test a moderated-mediation model, explaining how and under which circumstances a process- or an outcome-accountability focus affects performance. DESIGN: Randomized controlled design, using screen-based simulations. METHODS: Data were collected during 2021. Two screen-based simulations of medication administration (for low- and high-complexity tasks) were used. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of the six experimental conditions. Nurses completed validated questionnaires on strain levels and their perceptions of the simulated task complexity and accountability focus. Performance was assessed via validated checklists assessing nurses' performance of the simulation. RESULTS: Task complexity significantly moderated the relationship between accountability-focus conditions and strain. For the process-accountability-focus condition, strain levels were lower during high-complexity tasks compared with low-complexity tasks, while for the outcome-accountability-focus condition, strain levels were lower during low-complexity tasks compared with high-complexity tasks. The highest strain levels were observed under the no accountability-focus condition. Additionally, this interaction had an impact on performance, with nurses' strain playing a mediating role. CONCLUSIONS: Any accountability focus reduces strain levels and enhances performance compared with having no accountability focus. The choice of accountability focus should be based on task-complexity considerations. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PROFESSION AND PATIENT CARE: Managers can effectively reduce nurses' strain and improve performance by prioritizing outcome accountability focus for simpler tasks and process accountability focus for complex tasks. IMPACT: The study addressed previous ambiguous findings regarding the type of accountability focus that better motivates nurses' performance. By considering accountability focus, nurse managers can balance nurses' strain levels with improved performance. REPORTING METHOD: We have adhered to the relevant EQUATOR guidelines: CONSORT. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: There is no patient or public contribution, as the study only concerns the providers of the service, that is the nurses themselves.

Job crafting strategies of nurse mentors as mentors and nurses and their impact on missed nursing care: A cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Nurse mentors face challenging circumstances because of their dual role as nurses and mentors. As nurses, they are expected to provide high-quality care for patients and as mentors, they are concomitantly engaged with developing the next generation of nurses. OBJECTIVES: To examine the relationship between job crafting strategies and missed nursing care among nurse mentors, in their roles as nurses and mentors. DESIGN: A cross-sectional design. SETTING: Various wards and hospitals during 2021. PARTICIPANTS: Eighty nurse mentors responsible for supervising nursing students. METHODS: Participants completed on-line survey, including the MISSCARE questionnaire, the Job Crafting Scale, and control variables. SPSS was used to conduct two multivariable linear regressions. RESULTS: As a nurse, higher enhancing structural job resources was significantly associated with lower missed nursing care, while higher enhancing social job resources was significantly associated with higher missed nursing care. As a mentor, higher enhancing structural job resources was significantly associated with lower missed care, while higher enhancing challenging job demands was significantly associated with higher missed care. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that not all job crafting strategies are effective in maintaining high-quality care among nurse mentors. In their dual role as nurses and mentors, nurse mentors often face a Catch-22 situation, namely, meeting expectations of both students and patients. Thus, they increase their job resources and challenging demands; however, not all strategies improve the quality of care. Nursing policymakers and managers should provide tailored interventions that enhance the structural job resources of nurse mentors and avoid the use of challenging job demands and social job resource strategies when mentoring nursing students.

The paradoxical effects of professional stereotypes on the quality of care by interprofessional teams: The contingent effects of team faultlines, team stereotypes, and championship behaviors.

Background: Despite calls for interprofessional teamwork to ensure quality care in healthcare settings, interprofessional teams do not always perform effectively. There is evidence that professional stereotypes inhibit effective interprofessional teamwork, but they haven't been explored as a phenomenon that impacts team's performance and quality of care. Objectives: To focus on professional stereotypes emerging in interprofessional teams and examine the contingency effects of interprofessional team's faultlines, professional stereotypes, and leader's championship behaviors on team's quality of care. Methods: A cross-sectional nested sample of 59 interprofessional teams and 284 professionals, working in geriatric long-term-care facilities in Israel. Additionally, five to seven of the residents of each facility were randomly sampled to obtain the outcome variable. Data collection employed a multisource (interprofessional team members), multimethod (validated questionnaires and data from residents' health records) strategy. Results: The results indicated that faultlines are not directly harmful to team's quality of care; instead, they are likely to impact quality of care only when team stereotypes emerge. Furthermore, whereas teams typified by high professional stereotypes require person-oriented championship leadership, for teams typified by low team stereotypes, championship leadership harms the quality of care they provide. Conclusion: These findings have implications for handling interprofessional teams. Practically, leaders must be well-educated to better analyze team members' needs and maintain the appropriate leadership style.

Toward understanding nurses' decisions whether to miss care: A discrete choice experiment.

BACKGROUND: Studies of missed nursing care suggest that it results from ward-level, patient-related, and task-type factors, while nurses' decision-making style was scarcely studied. Studying the effect of nurses' decision-preference structures, namely a pattern of joint ward and patient factors, on missed care may also contribute to understanding the phenomenon. OBJECTIVES: To examine the relationships between decision-preference structures and missed care and the moderating effects of decision-making styles and task type in these links. DESIGN: A discrete choice experiment with a between- and within-participants design. PARTICIPANTS: A sample of 387 registered nurses working in acute medical surgical wards in Israel. METHODS: Based on the protocol for discrete choice experiments, a survey was developed to assess the decision-preference structure, considering five factors: overload, presence of head nurse, clinical complexity, difficult patient, and presence of relatives. Participants were randomly assigned to four task-type conditions and completed a survey regarding their task. Decision-making style was assessed using a validated questionnaire. RESULTS: Extensive workload (b = -0.46; p = 0.001), difficult patient (b = -0.20; p = 0.001), and patient clinical complexity (b = -0.10; p = 0.006) were negatively linked to the probability of missed care. The interaction between workload and task type (b = 0.252; p = 0.017) indicated that the probability of missed care under extensive compared with regular workload was lowest for developing a discharge plan and highest for providing emotional support. The interaction of patient complexity and task type (b = 0.230; p = 0.013) indicated that the probability of missed care in developing a discharge plan and medication administration was lower for patients having high compared with low clinical complexity. The interaction between difficult patient and task type (b = -0.219; p = 0.044) indicated that the probability of missed care in emotional support, developing a discharge plan, and patient's mobility was lower for difficult than for non-difficult patients. Finally, the interaction between workload and decision-making style (b = -0.48; p = 0.001) indicated that the probability of missed care under heavy compared with regular workloads was lower for the dual-preference or the dominantly intuitive styles. CONCLUSIONS: This design enabled examining the prioritizing processes nurses use when deciding about whether to miss care. The likelihood of missing more in structured tasks is lower under a heavy overload and when patients appear difficult or clinically complex. Dual-preference styles or dominantly intuitive styles are more suitable for the routine high workload.

Haemodialysis patient's adherence to treatment: Relationships among nurse-patient-initiated participation and nurse's attitude towards patient participation.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the relationship between nurse-patient-initiated participation, nurses' attitudes towards patient's participation, and patients' adherence to treatment. Specifically, to (1) explore nurse-patient participation during haemodialysis and quantify the information into measurable indices; (2) determine the haemodialysis patient's adherence to treatment; (3) describe nurses' attitudes towards patient participation; and (4) establish the relationships between nurse-patient-initiated participation, nurses' attitudes towards patient participation and patients' adherence to treatment. BACKGROUND: To improve haemodialysis patients' health, it is crucial to identify nurses' and patients' factors facilitating adherence to treatment. DESIGN: An exploratory-sequential mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) design. METHODS: All nurses working at a dialysis ward (n = 30) and their randomly selected patients (n = 102) participated. Qualitative data on nurse-patient-initiated participation were derived from transcribed nurse-patient conversations and quantified for further analyses. Nurses' attitudes towards patient participation were collected via questionnaire, and adherence to treatment via observed reduction in prescribed haemodialysis time. [CONSORT-SPI guidelines]. RESULTS: Content analysis of the conversations indicated that nurse-initiated participation focused on patient's medical condition, treatment plan and education; while patients initiated more small talk. Non-adherence to treatment was significant (Mean = 0.19 h; SD = 0.33). Regression analyses indicated that nurses' attitude towards participation was negatively linked to patient adherence, while patient-nurse-initiated participation was unrelated. Nurses' attitudes towards patient participation moderated the relationship between nurse-patient-initiated participation and patient adherence: the more positive the attitude towards inclusion the more negative the link between patient or nurse-initiated participation and patient adherence. CONCLUSIONS: The findings provided paradoxical insights: Nurses' positive attitudes towards participation lead them to accept the patient's position for shortening haemodialysis treatment, so that adherence to care decreases. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Nurses require education on negotiating methods to help achieve patient adherence while respecting the patient's opinion. Patients should be educated how to approach nurses, seeking the information they need.

Nurse champions as street-level bureaucrats: Factors which facilitate innovation, policy making, and reconstruction.

Background: Nurse champions are front-line practitioners who implement innovation and reconstruct policy. Purpose: To understand through a network theory lens the factors that facilitate nurse champions' engagement with radical projects, representing their actions as street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). Materials and methods: A personal-network survey was employed. Ninety-one nurse champions from three tertiary medical centers in Israel participated. Findings: Given high network density, high levels of advice play a bigger role in achieving high radicalness compared with lower levels advice. High network density is also related to higher radicalness when networks have high role diversity. Discussion: Using an SLB framework, the findings suggest that nurse champions best promote adoption of innovation and offer radical changes in their organizations through professional advice given by colleagues in their field network. Healthcare organizations should establish the structure and promote the development of dense and heterogeneous professional networks to realize organizations' goals and nurses' responsibility to their professional employees, patients, and society.

Picking the 'proper hat?' Emerging ethical dilemmas while juggling nursing and research roles.

AIM: The aim of this study is to explore ethical dilemmas inherent in two potentially conflicting roles: practising nurse and researcher. BACKGROUND: Ethical guidelines for practice and research in nursing have been widely discussed. Yet examining ethical dilemmas that emerge from engaging in the dual role of nurse-researcher is rare. METHOD: A qualitative approach was employed, using semi-structured interviews with 15 nurse-researchers. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: One theme emerged with three subthemes of nurse-researcher role definitions: primarily nurse, primarily researcher and combined nurse-researcher. Each subtheme had three dimensions: (a) how ethical dilemmas were expressed in encounters with role colleagues, (b) coping strategies and (c) implications for nurse-researchers. CONCLUSION: Primarily nurses or primarily researchers experienced conflict in encounters with role colleagues, developed less effective coping strategies and reported impaired well-being. Conversely, combined nurse-researchers said each role nourished the other. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Nursing policymakers and managers should support the nurse-researcher role by developing a code of ethics that acknowledges the dual role's inherent dilemmas, assimilate organisational routines and roles that support nursing research and encourage forums for discussing staff dilemmas.

The Effect of Outcome vs. Process Accountability-Focus on Performance: A Meta-Analysis.

Background: The foundation of a safe practice is accountability, especially outcome- rather than process-focused accountability, particularly during pandemics such as COVID-19. Accountability is an essential behavior that promotes congruence between nursing actions and standards associated with quality of care. Moreover, the scant research examining whether one accountability focus is superior in motivating humans to better task performance yields inconclusive results. Aims: Systematically examine the effect of an outcome- vs. process-accountability focus on performance and identify any moderating variables. Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Data sources: PsycINFO, Medline, PubMed, Scopus, and CINAHL databases, with all publications to November 2020. Review methods: A systematic search using Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines was performed. Statistical analysis and forest plots were performed using MetaXL 5.3. Heterogeneity was presented using I2 statistics and Q tests, and possible publication bias was assessed with a Doi plot and the LFK index. Results: Seven studies representing nine experiments involving 1,080 participants were included. The pooled effect of the nine experiments on task performance failed to show significant differences (mean = -0.09; 95% Confidence Interval [95%CI]: -0.21, 0.03), but a significant moderating effect of task complexity was demonstrated. Specifically, outcome accountability exerts a beneficial effect in complex tasks (mean = -0.48 [95%CI: -0.62, -0.33]) whereas process accountability improves the performance in simpler tasks (mean = 0.96 [95%CI: 0.72, 1.20]). Conclusion: These findings demonstrated that accountability focus by itself cannot serve as a sole motivator of better performance, because task complexity moderates the link between accountability focus and task performance. Outcome accountability exerts a beneficial effect for more-complex tasks, whereas process accountability improves the performance of simpler tasks. These findings are crucial in nursing, where it is typically assumed that a focus on outcomes is more important than a focus on processes.

Work interruptions and missed nursing care: A necessary evil or an opportunity? The role of nurses' sense of controllability.

AIM: To explore nurses' experiences with work interruptions (WIs) through the lens of missed nursing care (MNC). DESIGN: A qualitative descriptive design. METHODS: Eleven small focus groups involving 34 nurses (three nurses per group on average) from acute-care hospital wards were conducted. Nurses shared their experiences with WIs (sources, reactions and decisions) from the MNC perspective. Data analysis was conducted via content analysis. RESULTS: A preponderant theme emerged-the dynamic of controllability. Nurses who perceived a sense of controllability felt that they could decide whether to accept or reject the WI, regardless of WI type, and emotions of anger emerged. Conversely, nurses who did not perceive sense of controllability attended the secondary task: MNC occurred, and distress emotions emerged. Results emphasized that nurses are active agents prioritizing whether to omit or complete care in the face of WIs. Controllability, accompanied by active negative emotions, perpetuate a prioritization process that makes it less probable that MNC occurs.

A multi-level examination of nursing students' resilience in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak: A cross-sectional design.

AIMS: To examine nursing students' stress and coping with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic through an ecological model of resilience. Specifically, to examine the relative contribution of different resilience levels in decreasing nursing students' strain symptoms: at the individual level, resilience trait; at the relational level, students' coping strategies; at the university level, nursing students' perceptions on their university's readiness to handle the virus outbreak; and at the national level, nursing students' trust in policymakers' decisions. DESIGN: The study used a cross-sectional design. METHODS: Undergraduate students of five universities were recruited via an electronic link sent to their emails during the first months of the COVID-19 outbreak: May-July 2020. Of them, 492 participants completed the research questionnaire. RESULTS: Hierarchical Regression Analysis revealed that nursing students' resilience, as a multi-level factor, decreased the students' level of strain symptoms above and beyond their stress levels and control variables. Specifically, the nursing students' trait resilience, perceptions of their university's positive response to the pandemic and trust in their national policymakers were negatively associated with their strain symptoms. Conversely, disengagement-in-emotion coping strategies was positively associated with the students' strain symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Nursing students' resilience should be seen as a flexible resource that can be developed and influenced by their academic and clinical training, and by the intentions and actions of their university and the nursing administration at the Ministry of Health (MOH). IMPACT: The findings call for the nursing administration at the MOH and for the university deans and department heads to prepare in advance a crisis plan that could be rapidly and effectively implemented when needed. Furthermore, topics such as developing flexible coping strategies should be integrated into the nursing curricula. These would allow students to prepare and cope better with adversity in their routine and in times of crisis.

Effect of nurses' resilience on fall prevention in acute-care hospital: A mixed-methods qualitative study.

AIMS: To understand the distinctive experience and use of strategies of high- and low-resilience nurses aiming to prevent patient falls. BACKGROUND: Falls among inpatients continue to threaten patient safety in the hospital. Nurses may have the greatest impact on reducing patient falls. However, little is known about whether nurses' personal resilience is associated with patients' fall prevention strategies. METHOD: The study employed a descriptive mixed-methods design combining quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (observations, semi-structured interviews). RESULTS: One major theme, from maintaining routine to taking control over patients' falls, and three subthemes, scepticism, anticipation and proactivity representing feelings, cognitions and behaviours characterizing high- versus low-resilience nurses emerged from the findings. CONCLUSION: Three successive resilience strategies, starting with hunches that elicit scepticism, through cognitions of anticipation the worst-case scenario that could happen to the patient, and concluding with proactive behaviours characterize resilient nurses, helping them to prevent patients' falls. IMPLICATION FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Nursing managers seeking to decrease the devastating rate of patient falls can encourage nurses to have an inquiring mind (scepticism), be alert for the unexpected (anticipation) and take control over the environment (proactive behaviours) to make things happen instead of watching them happen.

A novel reflective practice intervention improves quality of care in the emergency department.

INTRODUCTION: Most interventions to improve clinical outcomes in the emergency department (ED) are based on structural changes. This study embraced a different strategy and examined the impact of a reflective practice intervention (RPI) on ED quality of care. METHODS: A pre-post-intervention quasi-experimental nested design was conducted between January 2017 and June 2018 in an Israeli public tertiary academic ED. Nighty-six ED teams (triage and staff nurses and a physician) were included pre and post RPI. Data were collected pre and post RPI at patient-triage nurse encounters using triage-accuracy questionnaires. Time to decision, length-of-stay, and hospitalization and mortality rates were retrieved from the medical charts of 1920 patients (20 per team). RESULTS: Accurate triage was significantly higher post than pre intervention (4.84 ± 1.45 vs. 3.87 ± 1.48; range 1-7; p < .001), whereas time to decision (253.30 ± 246.75 vs. 304.64 ± 249.14 min), hospitalization rates (n = 291, 30.3% vs. n = 374, 39.0%; p < .001), and hospital length-of-stay (5.73 ± 6.72 vs. 6.69 ± 6.20; p = .04) significantly decreased. CONCLUSIONS: By adapting organizational reflective practice principles to the ED dynamic environment, the RPI was associated with a significant improvement in ED quality-of-care measures.

Whose fault is it? Attribution of causes of patient violence among exposed and unexposed community-based family physicians.

Extensive research has dealt with violence directed at healthcare workers in hospital settings; however, few studies have examined community-based settings. Furthermore, there is also scant literature regarding the perceptions of healthcare providers who were exposed to violence, compared to those who were not. This study aims to narrow these gaps in the literature by examining community-based family physicians' (CBFPs) perceptions in a large national Health Maintenance Organisation (HMO) regarding patient-initiated violence. Using a voluntary online survey, directed at all CBFPs working at the HMO, 412 CBFPs were surveyed on the following issues: exposure to violence initiated by patients or their family members; perceptions of violent occurrences and possible safety measures. The differences between CBFPs who had been exposed to violence and those who had not were compared. The majority of CBFPs reported experiencing verbal attacks (64%), and a small percentage experienced property-related violence (11.7%) or physical violence (3.4%). Comparing CBFPs who were exposed to violence with those who were not, regarding their perceptions of the 'causes of violence', revealed three differentiating factors: 'waiting time', 'failure to meet the patient's expectations' and 'the nature of the physician-patient encounter'. Regarding the desired preventive actions, the four differentiating factors were as follows: 'reduction in the number of patients per physician', 'improved queue management processes', 'longer meetings' and 'violence prevention training'. Conducting separate analyses, according to violence type (verbal abuse, vandalism or physical violence), indicated finer differentiations. In terms of Attribution Theory, one might argue that CBFPs who were directly exposed to patients' aggression attributed internal locus to the attacker, and tended to blame the attacker's personal characteristics and cultural values. Conversely, family CBFPs who were not attacked attributed external locus to situational factors such as waiting time, not receiving service, and the nature of the interaction between the attacker and the CBFP.

The Effects of a Novel Mindfulness-based Intervention on Nurses' State Mindfulness and Patient Satisfaction in the Emergency Department.

INTRODUCTION: The objective of this study was to examine the effect of a novel mindfulness-based time-out intervention on state of mindfulness among emergency nurses and, accordingly, on patient satisfaction. METHODS: A pre-post intervention design among nurses in the emergency department was used with a between-subjects factor of patients who were nested within each nurse. The study was conducted between January 2017 and June 2018 among 48 nurses in the emergency department of a public tertiary academic hospital. For each nurse, a consecutive sample of 20 patients who attended the emergency department was recruited (n = 1920 patients; 960 in each phase). The mindfulness-based time-out intervention was based on theoretical mindfulness principles and carried out every 4 hours with direct communication to the patient at their bedside. Nurses' sociodemographic and professional characteristics and trait mindfulness were collected preintervention. Pre- and postintervention, data was collected on patients' sociodemographic and satisfaction, nurses' state mindfulness, and ED workload. RESULTS: An increase in nurses' state mindfulness and patients' satisfaction was found after the mindfulness-based time-out intervention compared with before the intervention (4.35 [SD = 0.64] vs 4.03 [0.82], P < .001 and 4.03 [0.41] vs 3.16 [0.44], P < .001, respectively). A positive correlation was found between patients' satisfaction and nurses' state mindfulness (r = 0.29, P < .001). The findings also demonstrated that state mindfulness was higher among nurses, characterized by high trait mindfulness, after the mindfulness-based time-out intervention implementation. DISCUSSION: By adapting mindfulness principles to the dynamic environment of the emergency department, we showed that the mindfulness-based time-out intervention was associated with a significant improvement in state mindfulness and patient satisfaction. The findings elucidate the interrelation among several conceptualizations of mindfulness that are increasingly reported in the literature, namely trait and state mindfulness, and interventions to promote mindfulness.

A personal network approach to the study of nurse champions of innovation and their innovation projects' spread.

AIMS: To develop and test the relationship between nurse champions' personal social networks and innovation success in terms of spread. DESIGN: A cross sectional. METHOD(S): Data were collected on 94 nurse champions at three medium-large tertiary medical centres from 2015-2016. Data from champions on their personal network were assessed via a standardized and acceptable three-step network survey. Success in terms of innovation spread was assessed via perceived extent of spread. Network structural and relational characteristics were depicted by level of spread. Multivariate linear regression was used to assess the relationship between network characteristics and innovation spread. FINDINGS: Above and beyond various project and network control variables, network density was significantly and positively related to project spread, tie-strength diversity was significantly and negatively related to project spread and difference in ethnic origin between champions and alters was significantly and positively related to project spread. Maximum age of network members was marginally significantly related to project spread. CONCLUSION(S): Our findings show that high-density personal social networks; networks where tie strength among network members is similar, thus, creating liking and trust among members; having at least one older network member who might have close access to professional and organizational resources acquired throughout their career; and having ties with network members from different ethnic groups to prevent knowledge stickiness, all promote innovation spread. Champions should be carefully nominated based on their ability to engage network members and to build ties with various network members inside and outside the nursing unit; once selected, champions should be aware of their social networks. IMPACT: The current study explored champions' personal-network structure, composition and variance measures and their implications for innovation project spread. The findings demonstrated that nursing champions' personal social networks matter for innovation spread. This finding has implications for the nominating and the coaching of champions.

The nurse's experience of decision-making processes in missed nursing care: A qualitative study.

AIMS: To explore nurses' perspectives regarding the decision-making processes that lead to missed nursing care and to identify the personal and contextual attributes involved in these processes. DESIGN: A qualitative study was undertaken between April - October 2018. METHODS: A total of 28 registered nurses working in different wards in hospital settings participated in nine focus groups with semi-structured interviews. An interview guide encouraged nurses to share perceptions of missed care and the personal and contextual attributes shaping their decision-making. RESULTS: Content analysis revealed three themes related to nurses' decision-making processes for whether to omit or delay care. First, nurses emphasized the role of nurses' agency, suggesting explicit or implicit rationing of care, regardless of scarce resources. Second, nurses distinguished between two modes of thinking that they labelled "automated thinking," activated in routine situations and "effortful thinking," initiated in more novel situations. Finally, nurses identified situational factors triggering fluctuations in their awareness such as task type, difficult patients and the presence of relatives and the head nurse. CONCLUSIONS: Nurses are aware of the processes guiding a decision to omit or delay care. They pointed to patient, nurse and ward conditions that serve as cues in their decision whether to miss care. Identifying these cues supports Hammond's cognitive continuum theory of decision-making and may serve in the development of training programmes for nurses aimed at limiting the phenomenon. IMPACT: The study addressed missed nursing care through a decision-making lens. The findings pointed to nurses' agency as shaping decisions about whether to miss care and identified the personal and contextual cues that guide nurses' decisions. These findings call for organizational training programmes encouraging nurses to identify barriers and facilitators of missed nursing care and how to overcome them.

Systems, economics, and neoliberal politics: Theories to understand missed nursing care.

The phenomenon of missed nursing care is endemic across all sectors. Nurse leaders have drawn attention to the implications of missed care for patient outcomes, with calls to develop clear political, methodological, and theoretical approaches. As part of this call, we describe three structural theories that inform frameworks of missed care: systems theory, economic theory, and neoliberal politics. The final section provides commentary on the strengths and limitations of these three theories, in the light of structuration theory and calls to balance this research agenda by reinstating nurse agency and examining the interactions between nurses as agents and the health systems as structures. The paper argues that a better understanding of variations in structure-agency interaction across the healthcare system might lead to more effective interventions at strategic leverage points.