How to make professional practice models work.

Professional practice models and shared governance have had much attention recently. They have been credited with being the answer to nurse retention, advancing the nursing profession, expanding nursing roles, and increasing autonomy for practice and work life. This article describes strategies for implementing and maintaining a professional practice model. Organizational support, nurse manager role change, unit readiness, salaried compensation, and incentives are areas that must be assessed before implementing a model. The models described are unit based and use the concepts of shared governance and group practice.

The ethics of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. II. Medical logistics and the potential for good response.

Mismatches between provision of paediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and potential to benefit are examined. Deficiencies are most likely to occur in peripheral maternity units but futile CPR is more common in emergency departments where the child is unknown. Decision making in individual cases is best retained by the medical profession for the sake of the child and family. American style intervention by the legislature is likely to dissipate scarce resources and perhaps harm infants not capable of benefiting.

The ethics of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I. Background to decision making.

Futile cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) may prevent humane care of the dying child and deprive parents of the opportunity to express their love, grief, and dedication at a critical moment, while appropriate and successful CPR may restore intact their child. Attempted resuscitation of corpses or children with terminal illness indicates inadequate knowledge, discrimination, and decision making. CPR is a medical procedure applicable to certain medical problems; weighing up the risks and benefits in each individual case is a medical function that is constrained by the law and must take full note of patient and family preferences, but cannot be governed by them and should not be over-ruled by laws based on complex but different cases. Time limits on occasions may curtail the full process of consultation and decision making. Applications of skills and resources in the right time and place requires understanding of the medical logistics and study of the potential for good outcome.

Expanded microporous polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) grafts in contaminated wounds: experimental and clinical study.

Autogenous vein graft is regarded as an ideal arterial substitute for its long-term patency and relative resistance to infection. A clinical instance of life-threatening hemorrhage from an infected disrupted vein graft stimulated a study in dogs, comparing vein and PTFE graft performance in wounds contaminated with S. aureus and E. coli cultured from the patient's wound. Infective disruption of vein wall occurred in three of ten animals resulting in exsanguination and death. Host artery disruption at PTFE suture line occurred in one of ten animals. Thrombosis of graft and host artery in this animal precluded hemorrhage and death. This led to favorable clinical experiences with PTFE grafts in contaminated wounds of 22 trauma patients. It is concluded that PTFE is better assurance against disruption and hemorrhage than vein graft in contaminated, potentially infected sites. PTFE may be used preferentially as a vascular substitute in trauma patients provided that all traditional surgical safeguards and principles are followed.

Experience with 115 civilian venous injuries.

Retrospective analysis of 115 patients with venous injuries managed at Lincoln Hospital in a 7-year period disclosed a total mortality of 15%. Retrohepatic caval injury was uniformly fatal; infrarenal caval injury was not. Fifty-six per cent of victims of truncal venoarterial injuries died. Isolated venous injury of the extremity was never lethal. Ligation of injured veins of the neck and upper extremities was well tolerated. Ligation of external iliac, or common femoral, or superficial femoral veins resulted in edema in 50% of the patients compared to 7% after repair (p less than 0.05). Venoarterial injuries of iliac or femoral-level veins resulted in 37% incidence of compartment syndrome against 5% in isolated arterial injuries (p less than 0.01). Therapeutic fasciotomy after the onset of clinically evident compartment syndrome did not prevent foot drop in any patient. We advocate that all major veins of the lower extremities be repaired with the same care as arterial injuries. Prophylactic fasciotomy for all patients with iliac or femoral venoarterial injuries should be considered as strongly as with popliteal venoarterial injuries. The caliber and patency of repaired veins must be assessed by venography at operation, and again before discharge from the hospital.

Myocardial function in acute pancreatitis.

Fifteen patients with acute pancreatitis had 68 physiologic cardiopulmonary assessments performed, and they were compared with 61 performed on normal postoperative patients, and 113 on 41 cirrhotics. It was found that the patients with pancreatitis have an elevated cardiac index (CI), which is not due to the hyperdynamic hemodynamic state found in cirrhotics. In spite of this, the Sarnoff curves demonstrated that pancreatitis was accompanied by a myocardial depression p less than 0.03, not found in hyperdynamic cirrhotics. Cirrhotics are unable to increase their oxygen consumption in response to an increase in CI, as do normal patients or those with acute pancreatitis. In cirrhotics the hemodynamic lesion occurs at the capillary level with the opening of arteriovenous shunts which rob the tissues of their nutritive blood supply, while the patient with acute pancreatitis has a primary myocardial depression and his peripheral vasculature reacts like that of a normal person.

The myocardial depressant factor (MDF) in acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis.

Myocardial depression (measured by ventricular function curves on response to a fluid load) has been shown in 10 patients with acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis. Significant inadequate responses were found on evaluation of both the left and right heart. The increased pulmonary vascular resistance associated with adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) of this disease was shown to correlate inversely with pulmonary wedge pressure, thereby excluding myocardial failure and pulmonary edema as mechanisms for the production of the ARDS.