Search

The nurse mentor is important in the personal and professional development of undergraduate nurses, ensuring that nursing students are competent and well prepared for practice at the point of registration. The importance of a rigorous evidence base for mentors and fellow nurse educators to use to inform education and practice should not be overlooked. This article seeks to expand this knowledge base and acquire research data that is relevant, topical and in line with the latest thinking to support best practice in nurse mentorship and nursing student education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nurse mentor is important in the personal and professional development of undergraduate nurses, ensuring that nursing students are competent and well prepared for practice at the point of registration. The importance of a rigorous evidence base for mentors and fellow nurse educators to use to inform education and practice should not be overlooked. This article seeks to expand this knowledge base and acquire research data that is relevant, topical and in line with the latest thinking to support best practice in nurse mentorship and nursing student education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the views of a ward sister on how her experiences gave her the drive and determination to seek research-based solutions to some of the conditions that she encountered. Difficult problems encountered as a ward sister; Her role as a nurse; Decision to use a magnitude ratio scale as a means of designing an instrument; Opinion about a researcher.

The author discusses her participation in the Partnerships in Care in 2014, a programme made up of a mixture of leadership and effective team theory creatively mixed with innovative, relevant and practical exercises. She cites the 2 parts of the programme she found especially useful such as the session on challenging conversations and her meaningful difference project which aimed to ensure that staff throughout the hospital knew the issues that had caused conflict on the ward.

coll a.m., ameen j.r.m. & mead d. (2004) Journal of Advanced Nursing 46(2), 124–133 Postoperative pain assessment tools in day surgery: literature review Postoperative pain is an expected phenomenon. However, its passage beyond acceptable limits is a common and costly experience. This is particularly the case in day surgery, partly because of the increasing demand to reduce waiting lists for elective surgery, and partly because of lack of knowledge about patients’ experiences of postoperative pain and relevant published research. The latter is mainly concerned with different interpretations of the phenomenon of pain that appear to have led to a variety of often inappropriate pain measurement tools. This paper critically reviews some of the available objective and subjective measures of pain and establishes the suitability of a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for measuring the intensity of pain after day surgery. Nursing and health care papers published since 1983 were sought using the keywords: postoperative pain, day surgery, ambulatory surgery, rating scales, VAS, severity, assessment, tool, nursing, validity, sensitivity, reliability and their various combinations. The databases used were Medline, CINAHL, Nursing Collection, Embase, Healthstar, BMJ and several on-line Internet journals, specifically Ambulatory Surgery. The search included only papers published in the English language. A range of interpretations of pain have led to the development of various measurement tools that address different components of pain. This inconsistency has led to ineffective pain management. Based on established criteria, the VAS was found to be methodologically sound, conceptually simple, easy to administer and unobtrusive to the respondent. On these grounds, the VAS seems to be most suitable for measuring intensity of pain after day surgery. Common guidelines on the definition and measurement of pain are needed. In day surgery, the availability of a unified and reliable measure of pain that can address its sensory component, such as the VAS, will provide more reliable information about the pain experience and, hence, improve its overall management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focus groups are not simply a discussion between people, but are focused interviews exploring interactions between participants. In this paper, Ian Mansell, Glynis Bennett, Ruth Northway, Donna Mead and Laurie Moseley explore the complexities and practicalities of using focus groups in research, with reference to a study of palliative care services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background There have been significant conceptual developments regarding shared decision-making (SDM) and assessments of people's hypothetical preferences for involvement in treatment or care decisions. There are few data on the perceptions of patients and professionals about SDM in actual practice. Objective To explore, from paired doctor–patient interviews, participants’ perceptions of SDM in the consultation and the level of consensus between the participants in the consultation process. Design Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interview data. Setting and participants Twenty general practitioners received training packages in ‘risk communication’ (RC) and ‘SDM’ to use as tools within the consultation. Forty patients with one of four conditions, for which a range of treatment options is available, were selected. Patient/doctor pairs were interviewed separately following consultations at four stages –‘baseline’ [general practitioner's (GP) usual consultation style], SDM training, RC alone, and both RC and SDM training. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using NVivo software. Results Risk communication interventions by doctors appeared to result in a greater perception of decisions being made in the consultation. High levels of satisfaction with consultations were evident before application of the interventions and did not change after the interventions. Doctors’ and patients’ perceptions of the consultations were highly congruent at all phases of the study. Conclusion Shared decision-making and RC approaches were helpful in selected consultations and showed no detrimental effects to patients. However, the use of RC and SDM made only small differences to decision-making in consultations within the population studied. Increasing patient participation may be seen as more ethically justifiable than the traditional paternalistic approach but this needs to be set against the additional training costs incurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]