1,721,162 research outputs found
Team communications in surgery - creating a culture of safety
No full textAs a key department within a healthcare organisation, the operating room is a hazardous environment, where the consequences of errors are high, despite the relatively low rates of occurrence. Team performance in surgery is increasingly being considered crucial for a culture of safety. The aim of this study was to describe team communication and the ways it fostered or threatened safety culture in surgery. Ethnography was used, and involved a 6-month fieldwork period of observation and 19 interviews with 24 informants from nursing, anaesthesia and surgery. Data were collected during 2009 in the operating rooms of a tertiary care facility in Queensland, Australia. Through analysis of the textual data, three themes that exemplified teamwork culture in surgery were generated: ‘‘building shared understandings through open communication’’; ‘‘managing contextual stressors in a hierarchical environment’’ and ‘‘intermittent membership influences team performance’’. In creating a safety culture in a healthcare organisation, a team’s optimal performance relies on the open discussion of teamwork and team expectation, and significantly depends on how the organisational culture promotes such discussions
Psychosocial Predictors of Quality of Life among Jordanian Colorectal Cancer Patients: A Mixed-Method Study
No full textColorectal Cancer (CRC) is one of the most common forms of cancer worldwide (National Cancer Institute [NCI], 2007); its prevalence is also reflected in the Jordanian population (Jordanian Ministry of Health & Jordan Cancer Registry [MOH & JCR], 2008). It appears that CRC diagnosis and treatment modalities have a negative impact on patients’ physical, social, and emotional well-being and their quality of life (QOL). Alarmingly, up to 35% of CRC patients have clinically significant levels of psychological distress. Accordingly, better understanding of QOL and its psychosocial predictors will assist health professionals, especially oncology nurses, to recognize the effects of CRC and its treatment modalities on patients and to plan appropriate interventions to ameliorate these effects.
This study was conducted in two phases using mixed methods in a sequentional-explanatory design to: (1) explore the relationships between hope, coping, psychological distress (depression and anxiety), age, gender, marital status, income, time since diagnosis and QOL among Jordanian CRC patients; (2) identify to what extent hope, coping, psychological distress (depression and anxiety), age, gender, marital status, income and time since diagnosis predicts QOL among Jordanian CRC patients; and (3) describe Jordanian CRC patients’ experiences and perceptions about QOL during their treatment period.Thesis (PhD Doctorate)Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)School of Nursing and MidwiferyGriffith HealthFull Tex
Pressure Injury Prevention and the Role of the Patient: A Mixed Methods Study
No full textPressure injuries are acknowledged worldwide as a quality care indicator and a patient safety issue. Pressure injuries have negative impacts for patients, nurses and healthcare organisations in terms of physical and emotional distress, increased workloads and economic burden. Additionally, pressure injuries result in reduced community confidence in the healthcare system. Internationally and in Australia, pressure injury prevalence rates are concerning, with sustained reductions difficult to achieve despite the availability of prevention resources. International clinical practice guidelines recommend pressure injury prevention strategies that are widely adopted by clinicians. There is agreement these strategies may help prevent the development of pressure injuries, however, nurses’ planning and implementation of these strategies often does not reflect best practice standards, possibly placing patients at risk.
This mixed methods, multicentre study had two aims: first, to describe the pressure injury prevention clinical practices in hospitalised adult medical patients with reduced mobility; and second, to describe patients’ perceptions of their current and future role in pressure injury prevention care. Utilising a sequential, explanatory research design, this study used a priority-sequence model whereby the quantitative data was collected first, followed by the qualitative data. A consecutive sample of 241 participants with reduced mobility was recruited to the study. Chart audits and semi-structured observations were used to collect the quantitative data; with the observations conducted at 30-minute intervals over a continuous 24-hour period.Thesis (PhD Doctorate)Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)School of Nursing and MidwiferyGriffith HealthFull Tex
The Relationship between Culture, Pain Experience and Participation in Pain Management among Malaysian Patients after Breast Cancer Surgery
No full textPost-operative pain is one of the most common side-effects encountered by patients
after their surgery, and more than 50% of patients experience mild to severe pain. Postoperative pain may be influenced by factors such as age, gender, psychological factors,
pre-operative information and types of surgery. Additional factors that may be related to pain include culture and ethnicity, although understandings about their relationship have not been well expanded. Cultural practice is important as it may determine the patient’s way of dealing with his or her pain and influence participation in healthcare. This study aimed to determine the relationship between culture and patients’ pain experience, analgesic consumption and patients’ participation in their pain management after surgery. It focused on patients in Malaysia who had undergone breast cancer surgery, including patients who were ethnically Malay, Chinese and Indian.
This study used a cross-sectional design and was conducted in two tertiary government
hospitals in Malaysia. Eighty women who were undergoing breast cancer surgery were
recruited into this study. The biocultural pain model was used as the theoretical
framework for the study. The visual analogue scale was used for pain assessment, the
control preferred scale was used to determine participants preferred role in pain
management, and medication records were used to ascertain the participants’ analgesic
consumption. Face-to-face interviews were used for data collection and were conducted
at four time point phases: before the operation and 4, 24 and 48 hours after the operation.Thesis (Masters)Master of Philosophy (MPhil)School of Nursing and MidwiferyGriffith HealthFull Tex
Assessing the Impact of a Transforming Care Initiative in the Australian Context
No full textHospitalised patients experience harm as a consequence of adverse events, including inpatient falls and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. Nurses are attempting to address this situation with the development of international initiatives aimed at improving the safety and quality of nursing care. Evidence to support the implementation of these initiatives is limited, yet widespread implementation continues.
The aim of this study was to understand the implementation, impact and sustainment of an initiative to transform nursing care in four acute medical-surgical units. The focus of the initiative was to provide a patient centred framework to improve the safety and quality of nursing care. A number of interventions were implemented such as clinical bedside handover and rounding.
This study was conducted in two phases. Phase One used a non-equivalent control group design with historical controls and an uncontrolled interrupted time series. More than 10,000 patients discharged between July 2008 and December 2010 were included. Patients discharged during the initial three months of implementation, were excluded. Two nurse-sensitive indicators were used as outcome measures; inpatient falls and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. Coded administrative data were analysed using statistical process control to identify changes in the nurse-sensitive indicators over time.Thesis (PhD Doctorate)Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)School of Nursing and MidwiferyGriffith HealthFull Tex
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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