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Managing nurses and nursing: short courses as role development.

This paper describes the development over a 3-year-period of short management courses for registered nurses offered as part of a professional development educational programme by Oxfordshire Health Authority (OHA) Clinical Education and Practice Team (OXCEPT). The courses were seen as role development for staff nurses, team leaders, sisters, charge nurses and senior sisters, and the content and length of courses were altered, extended and developed in response to evaluation of the courses by tutors and participants. The emphasis is on integrating participants' clinical, managerial and educational roles, as professional practitioners managing nurses and nursing.

Curriculum↗

Promote recruitment and retention by meeting the unique learning needs of the off shifts.

With the advent of flexible scheduling, the traditional 3-to-11 and 11-to-7 off-shifts can now be defined in a variety of manners. However, generally speaking, the off shift is still considered to be those hospital hours when routine daytime activities have slowed down and evening and nighttime activities are in full swing. The many nurses who are required or elect to work these off-shift hours possess a wide range of learning needs. For a variety of reasons, in many institutions, the number of educational manpower resources considerably diminishes when daytime staff development personnel finish their workday. This article examines the off-shift environment and the nurses who work these shifts as well as proposes methods to meet the learning needs of the off-shift staff. If these learning needs are addressed, staff development efforts can, in fact, become a major professional benefit and recruitment/retention tool for off-shift nurses.

Circadian Rhythm↗

Teaching old dogs new tricks--a personal perspective on a decade of efforts by a clinical ethics committee to promote awareness of medical ethics.

To incorporate medical ethics into clinical practice, it must first be understood and valued by health care professionals. The recognition of this principle led to an expanding and continuing educational effort by the ethics committee of the Vancouver General Hospital. This paper reviews this venture, including some pitfalls and failures, as well as successes. Although we began with consultants, it quickly became apparent that education in medical ethics must reach all health care professionals--and medical students as well. Our greatest successes came in the formative years of a medical career (i.e., in medical school and residency training programmes), but other efforts were not wasted, particularly among nurses and other health care professionals. Although this is a personal review of the experience in one institution, the lessons learnt in Vancouver are applicable to the further development of medical ethics in the UK.

Awareness↗

Some implications of a community mental health model for developing countries.

The aim of this paper is to call attention to certain problems facing many developing countries which are bound to lead to further difficulties in psychosocial adjustment. Almost all these problems are inherent in the process of socioeconomic change, urbanization, and industrialization. These changes may not only lead to an increase in the rate of mental illness, but because of their impact on the basic family structure and living conditions, will result in a reduced tolerance of deviation on the part of the community. Moreover, the spread of public education and mass media is also likely to lead to a change in the expectations and attitudes of developing nations making it no longer possible to endure psychological suffering as part of one's destiny. Even the improvement of public health services leading to reduction of infant mortality and a rise in life expectancy may lead to a gross increase in demands for mental health services by the very young and the aged sections of the population. It is the contention of this paper that a community mental health model, with certain modifications to fit the local culture, will best serve the increasing mental health needs of developing nations. Of particular relevance are such aspects of the model as population and prevention orientation, community involvement, extension of prefessional resources through consultation, utilization of non-professional manpower, continuity and comprehensiveness of care as well as an open systems conceptualization of the whole process of the organization and delivery of mental health services. The latter approach will help bring about an integration of mental health services within the wider framework of human service agencies, e.g., public health, general and adult education, family planning, and community development.

Affective Symptoms↗

Development and evaluation of an ODL course on Medical Image Processing.

Recent developments in the field of Biomedical Engineering have led to considerable improvement in health care delivery, but also impose continuous change and improvement in education and training schemes of its professionals, in order to assure appropriate front-line knowledge, competencies and skills. Open and distance learning provides a very effective means for continuous education and training purposes. Image processing may be used as an attractive case for exploring the Collaborative Learning Model (CLM) paradigm in Open Distance Learning (ODL). An on-line course on Medical Image Processing, following the principles of collaborative learning, has been developed and evaluated. Each concept of the course is available in three levels of complexity. The first level shows only a very general description, actually the main idea. If the user is interested to continue, a second level is accessible, where the concept is explained in a more detailed manner. Moreover, for some concepts requiring complicated mathematical proofs, a third level is available. The course has been used at the European Course on Biomedical Engineering organized by the Department of Medical Physics, University of Patras, Greece, and was positively evaluated by the students.

Biomedical Engineering↗

How do people with cancer wish to be cared for in primary care? Serial discussion groups of patients and carers.

BACKGROUND: In most economically developed countries, patients, their informal and professional carers and policy makers are calling for more care in the community. OBJECTIVES: To involve patients with cancer, and their carers, in designing a framework for providing effective cancer care in primary care. METHODS: Two discussion groups comprising 18 people with current cancer and carers met monthly over a year in the south of Scotland. RESULTS: Patients with cancer and their carers identified five key times in the cancer journey as being especially significant from their perspective: around diagnosis, during treatment, after discharge, at recurrence and the final weeks. At each key time, there were five major issues of concern: information, communication, equity, a holistic approach and patient-centred care. Using these, the group members developed a checklist of recommended interventions for each stage in the illness trajectory and suggested how they might be implemented in primary care. Proactive and ongoing contact, if wished by the patient, was considered the central plank of cancer care in the community. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with cancer and their carers believe that there is an important and unique role for primary care in offering continuity of care and information that is patient-centred and holistic, throughout the cancer trajectory, from first presentation. This study successfully brought patient, carer and professional perspectives to the development of a care framework for primary care.

Adult↗

Consensus statement for the prevention and management of pain in the newborn.

OBJECTIVE: To develop evidence-based guidelines for preventing or treating neonatal pain and its adverse consequences. Compared with older children and adults, neonates are more sensitive to pain and vulnerable to its long-term effects. Despite the clinical importance of neonatal pain, current medical practices continue to expose infants to repetitive, acute, or prolonged pain. DESIGN: Experts representing several different countries, professional disciplines, and practice settings used systematic reviews, data synthesis, and open discussion to develop a consensus on clinical practices that were supported by published evidence or were commonly used, the latter based on extrapolation of evidence from older age groups. A practical format was used to describe the analgesic management for specific invasive procedures and for ongoing pain in neonates. RESULTS: Recognition of the sources of pain and routine assessments of neonatal pain should dictate the avoidance of recurrent painful stimuli and the use of specific environmental, behavioral, and pharmacological interventions. Individualized care plans and analgesic protocols for specific clinical situations, patients, and health care settings can be developed from these guidelines. By clearly outlining areas where evidence is not available, these guidelines may also stimulate further research. To use the recommended therapeutic approaches, clinicians must be familiar with their adverse effects and the potential for drug interactions. CONCLUSION: Management of pain must be considered an important component of the health care provided to all neonates, regardless of their gestational age or severity of illness.

Analgesia↗

A professional development pathways scheme.

The professional development pathways scheme is a local innovation in the North Bristol NHS Trust. While responding to national drives for personal, professional and organisational development to achieve and maintain service quality, the pathways are structured to focus on the individual development of every nurse who joins the scheme. The pathways scheme has been operational in the trust for over a year and is proving to be a positive experience for the staff, as well as a valuable recruitment tool. This article reviews the structure of the pathways scheme and some of the experiences of staff undertaking the scheme.

Education, Nursing, Continuing↗

The role of the academic medical center library in training public librarians.

PURPOSE: This project enhanced access to and awareness of health information resources on the part of public libraries in western Pennsylvania. SETTING/PARTICIPANTS/RESOURCES: The Health Sciences Library System (HSLS), University of Pittsburgh, conducted a needs assessment and offered a series of workshops to 298 public librarians. BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The National Library of Medicine-funded project "Access to Electronic Health Information" at the HSLS, University of Pittsburgh, provided Internet health information training to public libraries and librarians in sixteen counties in western Pennsylvania. Through this project, this academic medical center library identified the challenges for public librarians in providing health-related reference service, developed a training program to address those challenges, and evaluated the impact of this training on public librarians' ability to provide health information. RESULTS/OUTCOME: The HSLS experience indicates academic medical center libraries can have a positive impact on their communities by providing health information instruction to public librarians. The success of this project--demonstrated by the number of participants, positive course evaluations, increased comfort level with health-related reference questions, and increased use of MEDLINEplus and other quality information resources--has been a catalyst for continuation of this programming, not only for public librarians but also for the public in general. EVALUATION METHOD: A training needs assessment, course evaluation, and impact training survey were used in developing the curriculum and evaluating the impact of this training on public librarians' professional activities.

Academic Medical Centers↗

Critical success in management development.

Details the results of an attempt to identify the impact of a comprehensive management development programme on organizational effectiveness within the health service public sector. Concludes that management development programmes must have a prespecified set of strategically linked outcomes, identifying the benefits to the organization, and a set of critical success factor measures to determine their achievement or otherwise. Programmes which do not result in managers feeling empowered will be criticized in not impacting positively on the organization.

Decision Making, Organizational↗

The "every child deserves a medical home" training program: more than a traditional continuing medical education course.

OBJECTIVES: 1) To develop and implement an innovative, interactive, and nontraditional continuing medical education (CME) curriculum to educate primary care physicians, pediatric office staff, child health advocates, allied health care professionals, and parents of children with special health care needs (CSHCN) about the medical home concept of care and 2) to identify key partners in communities to plan the CME program and ultimately plan for fostering medical homes at the community and state levels. METHODS: Participant outcomes for the CME program and planning process include 1) explaining the elements of the medical home concept as applied to their practice environment or child's care; 2) understanding the concepts, skills, and information necessary to care successfully for CSHCN who are enrolled in managed care organizations; 3) accurately describing trends and developments in caring for CSHCN; 4) identifying programs in the community that serve CSHCN; and 5) assessing and, if necessary, improving pediatric office practices to ensure that they are sensitive to families of children and youths with special health care needs. CONCLUSION: A diverse national committee that included physicians, nonphysicians, and family members developed the Medical Home Training Program curriculum. The medical home curriculum was written to meet the needs of the local community. The training program can offer CME credit and use a direct, outcome-based adult learning technique (eg, determine short- and long-term goals). Furthermore, the program parallels and complements the Healthy People 2010 goals and objectives.

Child↗

Sustainable production: a proposed strategy for the work environment.

BACKGROUND: In the future, competitive industries will need to design for environment, health and safety as well as for productivity. Although the new areas of pollution prevention and clean production have evolved to address the design of production processes with concerns for the ambient environment, current pollution prevention models do not include explicit concerns for health, safety, and the work environment. The field of occupational health and safety has much to contribute to improve current pollution prevention approaches and solutions. METHODS: The application of work environment disciplines will need to be expanded from the conventional focus on "end-of-pipe" assessment and solutions, which take the production processes and resulting hazards as a given, to include a new focus on materials selection and process redesign. To make this shift, a new framework called "sustainable production" is proposed. The basic unit of sustainable production is the production process. The framework integrates a focus on the ambient and work environment along with a focus on productivity and the economic viability of the business enterprise in setting production process design parameters. RESULTS: By shifting the focus of occupational and environmental health and safety from exposure control to process design, sustainable production reduces the likelihood that concerns for health, safety, and the environment will be seen as antagonistic to productivity and economic development. To move a firm toward sustainable production, occupational health and safety professionals will need to participate in interdisciplinary workplace teams that design and build new production processes and that continuously evaluate and redesign existing processes. CONCLUSIONS: This new strategy requires an expansion of the role of the occupational health and safety professional to include evaluation and redesign of processes that produce goods and services as well as the conventional evaluation of chemical, physical, and biological agents, work practices, and ergonomics. This expansion of occupational and environmental health and safety requires new research to develop the scientific and public policy basis of sustainable production.

Economic Competition↗

Evaluation of telemedical services.

With the rapidly increasing development of telemedicine technology, the evaluation of telemedical services becomes more and more important. However, professional views of the aims and methods of evaluation are different from the perspective of computer science and engineering or from medicine and health policy. We propose that a continuous evaluation strategy should be chosen which guides the development and implementation of telemedicine technologies and applications. The evaluation strategy is divided into four phases in which the focus of evaluation is shifted from technical performance of the system in the early phases to medical outcome criteria and economical aspects in later phases. We review the study design methodology established for clinical trials assessing therapeutic effectiveness and diagnostic accuracy and discuss how it can be adapted to evaluation studies in telemedicine. As an example, we describe our approach to evaluation in a teleconsultation network in ophthalmology.

Evaluation Studies as Topic↗

Overview of Athletic Training Education Research Publications.

OBJECTIVE: To provide an overview of the limited amount of peer-reviewed literature on athletic training education that has been published in athletic training journals. Publications that related specifically to the development of evaluation tools or specific addenda to the required athletic training curriculum were not included. BACKGROUND: As education reform continues to unfold in athletic training, it is important for all certified athletic trainers to understand the research that undergirds the educational practices in athletic training. Many of the profession's educational practices have been taken from standards and methods developed by the discipline of education, with very little validation for applicability to the discipline of athletic training. A very limited number of comprehensive scientific investigations of the educational standards and practices in athletic training education have been carried out; however, for more research to be conducted, it is essential that the currently available research be reviewed. DESCRIPTION: The summaries of athletic training educational research in this article include the topics of learning styles, facilitation of learning and professional development, instructional methods, clinical instruction and supervision, predictors of success on the National Athletic Trainers' Association Board of Certification certification examination, program administration, and continuing education. The amount of research in athletic training education is limited when compared with the amount and quality of educational research available in other professions, such as medicine, nursing, dentistry, physical therapy, and occupational therapy. In this article, I attempt to describe the existing literature and identify what is needed to expand the breadth and depth of research in athletic training education. CLINICAL ADVANTAGES: This article is intended to help educators identify areas within athletic training education that require further validation and to provide both educators and clinicians with insight into the current validated educational practices that may be appropriate to incorporate into educational settings or practice.

Journal Article↗