To develop a trigger tool for parents and lay caregivers of children with medical complexity (CMC) at home and to validate its content.
This was a multi-method study, using qualitative data, a Delphi method and a concept mapping approach.
A three-round electronic Delphi was performed from December 2021 to April 2022 with a panel of 23 expert parents and 30 healthcare providers, supplemented by a preliminary qualitative exploration of children's signs of deterioration and three consensus meetings to develop the PArents' Trigger Tool for Children with Medical Complexity (PAT-CMC). Cognitive interviews with parents were performed to assess the comprehensiveness and comprehensibility of the tool. The COREQ checklist, the COSMIN guidelines and the CREDES guidelines guided the reporting respectively of the qualitative study, the development and content validity of the trigger tool and the Delphi study.
The PAT-CMC was developed and its content validated to recognize clinical deterioration at home. The tool consists of 7 main clusters of items: Breathing, Heart, Devices, Behaviour, Neuro-Muscular, Nutrition/Hydration and Other Concerns. A total of 23 triggers of deterioration were included and related to two recommendations for escalation of care, using a traffic light coding system.
Priority indicators of clinical deterioration of CMC were identified and integrated into a validated trigger tool designed for parents or other lay caregivers at home, to recognize signs of acute severe illness and initiate healthcare interventions.
The PAT-CMC was developed to guide families in recognizing signs of deterioration in CMC and has potential for initiating an early escalation of care. This tool may also be useful to support education provided by healthcare providers to families before hospital discharge.
Parents of CMC were directly involved in the selection of relevant indicators of children's clinical deterioration and the development of the trigger tool. They were not involved in the design, conducting, reporting or dissemination plans of this research.
To determine the prevalence and clustering of NANDA-International nursing diagnoses in patients assisted by pre-hospital emergency teams.
Retrospective descriptive study of electronic record review.
Episodes recorded during 2019, including at least a nursing diagnosis, were recovered from the electronic health records of a Spanish public emergency agency (N = 28,847). Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the sample and determine prevalence. A two-step cluster analysis was used to group nursing diagnoses. A comparison between clusters in sociodemographic and medical problems was performed. Data were accessed in November 2020.
Risk for falls (00155) (27.3%), Anxiety (00146) (23.2%), Acute pain (00132), Fear (00148) and Ineffective breathing pattern (00032) represented 96.1% of all recorded diagnoses. A six-cluster solution (n = 26.788) was found. Five clusters had a single high-prevalence diagnosis predominance: Risk for falls (00155) in cluster 1, Anxiety (00146) in cluster 2, Fear (00148) in cluster 3, Acute pain (00132) in cluster 4 and Ineffective breathing pattern (00032) in cluster 6. Cluster 5 had several high prevalence diagnoses which co-occurred: Risk for unstable blood glucose level (00179), Ineffective coping (00069), Ineffective health management (00078), Impaired comfort (00214) and Impaired verbal communication (00051).
Five nursing diagnoses accounted for almost the entire prevalence. The identified clusters showed that pre-hospital patients present six patterns of nursing diagnoses. Five clusters were predominated by a predominant nursing diagnosis related to patient safety, coping, comfort, and activity/rest, respectively. The sixth cluster grouped several nursing diagnoses applicable to exacerbations of chronic diseases.
Knowing the prevalence and clustering of nursing diagnoses allows a better understanding of the human responses of patients attended by pre-hospital emergency teams and increases the evidence of individualized/standardized care plans in the pre-hospital clinical setting.
What problem did the study address? There are different models of pre-hospital emergency care services. The use of standardized nursing languages in the pre-hospital setting is not homogeneous. Studies on NANDA-I nursing diagnoses in the pre-hospital context are scarce, and those available are conducted on small samples.
What were the main findings? This paper reports the study with the largest sample among the few published on NANDA-I nursing diagnoses in the pre-hospital care setting. Five nursing diagnoses represented 96.1% of all recorded. These diagnoses were related to patients' safety/protection and coping/stress tolerance. Patients attended by pre-hospital care teams are grouped into six clusters based on the nursing diagnoses, and this classification is independent of the medical conditions the patient suffers.
Where and on whom will the research have an impact?
Knowing the prevalence of nursing diagnoses allows a better understanding of the human responses of patients treated in the pre-hospital setting, increasing the evidence of individualized and standardized care plans for pre-hospital care.
STROBE checklist has been used as a reporting method.
Only patients' records were reviewed without further involvement.
To gain a deeper understanding of what is important to nurses when thinking about shift patterns and the organisation of working time.
A cross-sectional survey of nursing staff working across the UK and Ireland collected quantitative and qualitative responses.
We recruited from two National Health Service Trusts and through an open call via trade union membership, online/print nursing profession magazines and social media. Worked versus preferred shift length/pattern, satisfaction and choice over shift patterns and nurses' views on aspects related to work and life (when working short, long, rotating shifts) were analysed with comparisons of proportions of agreement and crosstabulation. Qualitative responses on important factors related to shift preferences were analysed with inductive thematic analysis.
Eight hundred and seventy-three survey responses were collected. When nurses worked long shifts and rotating shifts, lower proportions reported being satisfied with their shifts and working their preferred shift length and pattern. Limited advantages were realised when comparing different shift types; however, respondents more frequently associated ‘low travel costs’ and ‘better ability to do paid overtime’ with long shifts and ‘healthy diet/exercise’ with short shifts; aspects related to rotating shifts often had the lowest proportions of agreement. In the qualitative analysis, three themes were developed: ‘When I want to work’, ‘Impacts to my life outside work’ and ‘Improving my work environment’. Reasons for nurses' shift preferences were frequently related to nurses' priorities outside of work, highlighting the importance of organising schedules that support a good work-life balance.
General scheduling practices like adhering to existing shift work guidelines, using consistent and predictable shift patterns and facilitating flexibility over working time were identified by nurses as enablers for their preferences and priorities. These practices warrant meaningful consideration when establishing safe and efficient nurse rosters.
This survey was developed and tested with a diverse group of stakeholders, including nursing staff, patients, union leads and ward managers.
The Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies (STROBE) checklist for cross-sectional studies was used to guide reporting.
Medication self-management (MSM) is defined as a person's ability to cope with medication treatment for a chronic condition, along with the associated physical and psychosocial effects that the medication causes in their daily lives. For many patients, it is important to be able to self-manage their medication successfully, as they will often be expected to do after discharge.
The aim of this study was to describe the willingness and attitudes of patients with schizophrenia spectrum or bipolar disorders regarding MSM during hospital admission. A secondary aim was to identify various factors associated with patient willingness to participate in MSM and to describe their assumptions concerning needs and necessary conditions, as well as their attitudes towards their medication.
A multicentre, quantitative cross-sectional observational design was used to study the willingness and attitudes of psychiatric patients regarding MSM during hospitalisation. The study adhered to guidelines for Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE).
In this study, 84 patients, of which 43 were patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and 41 were patients with bipolar disorders, participated. A majority of the patients (81%) were willing to participate in MSM during their hospitalisation. Analysis revealed patients are more willing to MSM if they are younger (r = −.417, p < .001) and a decreasing number of medicines (r = −.373, p = .003). Patients' willingness was positively associated with the extent of support by significant others during and after hospitalisation (Pearson's r = .298, p = .011). Patients were convinced that they would take their medication more correctly if MSM were to be allowed during hospitalisation (65%).
Most of the patients were willing to self-manage their medication during hospitalisation, however, under specific conditions such as being motivated to take their medication correctly and to understand the benefits of their medication.
From a policy point of view, our study provided useful insights into how patients look at MSM to enable the development of future strategies. Since patients are willing to self-manage their medication during hospitalisation, this may facilitate its implementation.
Patients were recruited for this study. Participation was voluntary, and signed informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to the questionnaire.
To explore nurse-midwives' perceptions of safety culture in maternity hospitals.
A descriptive phenomenological study was conducted using focus groups and reported following the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research.
Data were obtained through two online focus group sessions in June 2022 with 13 nurse-midwives from two maternity hospitals in the central region of Portugal. The first focus group comprised 6 nurse-midwives, and the second comprised 7 nurse-midwives. Qualitative data were analysed using content analysis.
Two main themes emerged from the data: (i) barriers to promoting a safety culture; (ii) safety culture promotion strategies. The first theme is supported by four categories: ineffective communication, unproductive management, instability in teams and the problem of errors in care delivery. The second theme is supported by two categories: managers' commitment to safety and the promotion of effective communication.
The study results show that the safety culture in maternity hospitals is compromised by ineffective communication, team instability, insufficient allocation of nurse-midwives, a prevailing punitive culture and underreporting of adverse events. These highlight the need for managers to commit to providing better working conditions, encourage training with the development of a fairer safety culture and encourage reporting and learning from mistakes. There is also a need to invest in team leaders who allow better conflict management and optimization of communication skills is essential.
Disseminating these results will provide relevance to the safety culture problem, allowing greater awareness of nurse-midwives and managers about vulnerable areas, and lead to the implementation of effective changes for safe maternal and neonatal care.
There was no patient or public contribution as the study only concerned service providers, that is, nurse-midwives themselves.
Health professionals witness pain and suffering when they care for sick people and their families. Compassion is a necessary quality in their work as it combines the will to help, alleviate suffering and promote the well-being of both the people they are attending and the professionals themselves. The aim of the study was to design and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Capacity for Compassion Scale (CCS).
A quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out to evaluate the psychometric properties of the scale (reliability, temporal stability, content validity, criterion validity and construct validity).
The study was carried out in two phases: pilot study and final validation. The data were collected between April and May 2022. The sample was selected by convenience sampling and was made up of a total of 264 participants, 59 in the pilot phase and 205 in the final validation.
The Capacity for Compassion Scale has been shown to have good psychometric properties in relation to reliability, temporal stability, and content, criterion, and construct validity. Factor analysis showed that there were four subdimensions of the scale: motivation/commitment, presence, shared humanity and self-compassion. The results also indicate that compassionate ability is significantly correlated with age and work experience.
The Capacity for Compassion Scale shows adequate psychometric properties. This instrument measures the compassion capacity of health professionals, which is a valuable discovery for new lines of research in this field.
Through this scale, low levels of capacity for compassion can be detected that negatively influence the quality of care provided by health professionals. The Capacity for Compassion Scale can therefore contribute to the identification of needs and promote training around compassion for health professionals.
No patient or public contribution.
Compassion in health professionals has positive effects on improving the quality of care, the satisfaction of professionals and the work environment. There are compassion cultivation programmes whose validity has been proven for the development of the dimensions of compassion. There is no specific instrument that measures capacity for compassion in healthcare professionals.
A scale is designed to measure capacity for compassion in health professionals. This is the only such scale available up until now. The scale measures four dimensions of compassion: motivation/commitment, presence, shared humanity and self-compassion.
The development of specific programmes that can increase the compassion of health professionals with all the benefits that this can bring to health care is encouraged. It will be possible to analyse the effects of training programmes on the cultivation of compassion.
The study aims to analyse the principal causes of patients' care calls and compare differences before and after inpatient beds' technological modernization in a surgical breast oncological ward.
A prospective observational study was conducted under the STROBE guidelines. Data were collected from June to September 2022.
Statistical analyses were performed to compare each reason for care calls, by shifts and pre and post-inpatient bed modernization.
Two thousand five hundred and fifty-nine care request calls were analysed during the 202 observed shifts. The most frequent reason was related to the requests for positions.
Technological modernization of the beds has not led to effective—positive—changes; on the contrary, it seems at first glance to show an upward trend in calls above all in the short period after the changes.
What problem did the study address? By analysing the principal causes of care calls and comparing the differences before and after inpatient beds' technological modernization, this study evaluates if inpatient gear or device modernization can impact care call requests. What were the main findings? The results show that the most frequent reasons for care calls were position, possession and other. These findings seem not superimposable; the hypothesis supported by the international literature in which the causes relating to potty and pain were found among the main reasons. Where and on whom will the research have an impact? These results could impact the care organizational area in nursing care and could improve care quality, patient satisfaction and safety.
This prospective observational study was conducted following STROBE guidelines.
After adequate information (presentation, design methods and objectives), all unit healthcare staff agreed to collaborate in the study.
To describe the health literacy (HL) levels of hospitalised patients and their relationship with nursing diagnoses (NDs), nursing interventions and nursing measures for clinical risks.
Retrospective study.
The study was conducted from December 2020 to December 2021 in an Italian university hospital. From 146 wards, 1067 electronic nursing records were randomly selected. The Single-Item Literacy Screener was used to measure HL. Measures for clinical risks were systematically assessed by nurses using Conley Index score, the Blaylock Risk Assessment Screening Score, Braden score, and the Barthel Index. A univariable linear regression model was used to assess the associations of HL with NDs.
Patients with low HL reported a higher number of NDs, interventions and higher clinical risks. HL can be considered a predictor of complexity of care.
The inclusion of standardised terms in nursing records can describe the complexity of care and facilitate the predictive ability on hospital outcomes.
HL evaluation during the first 24 h. From hospital admission could help to intercept patients at risk of higher complexity of care. These results can guide the development of interventions to minimise needs after discharge.
No patient or public contribution was required to design or undertake this research. Patients contributed only to the data collection.
To psychometrically assess the Spanish version of the Self-Care of Chronic Illness Inventory (SC-CII-Sp) in community-dwelling older adults with chronic multimorbidity.
A methodological study.
A total of 1260 older adults participated in the study between May 2020 and February 2022. The data were analysed using SPSS Statistics® 26 and AMOS® 24. The items' content validity index and the Fleiss' kappa were calculated to assess the SC-CII-Sp's content validity. Convergent validity was assessed by calculating the Pearson correlation coefficient between the participants' scores on the SC-CII-Sp and their scores on the Spanish Chronic Disease Self-Efficacy scale (SCD-SE). Construct validity was tested by performing a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The SC-CII-Sp's reliability was tested by computing the Cronbach's alpha.
The SC-CII-Sp showed good content and convergent validity. The CFA showed that the SC-CII-Sp has three sub-scales. The 8-item Self-Care Maintenance sub-scale has good internal consistency and is comprised of two dimensions: illness-related and health-promoting behaviour. The Self-Care Monitoring sub-scale had excellent internal consistency and its five loaded items belonged to a single dimension. The 6-item Self-Care Management sub-scale has adequate internal consistency and two dimensions: autonomous and consulting behaviour.
The Spanish version of SC-CII is a valid and reliable instrument to be used in the assessment of self-care behaviours amongst Spanish-speaking, community-dwelling older adults with chronic multimorbidity.
Nurses need valid and reliable tools to assess self-care behaviours in Spanish-speaking community-dwelling older adults with chronic multimorbidity. This study provides a 19-item tool that allows for the comprehensive evaluation of self-care behaviours in healthy and ill states.
Using the SC-CII-Sp in clinical or research settings could help nurses to examine the effects of different interventions on self-care behaviours amongst Spanish-speaking, community-dwelling older adults with chronic multimorbidity.
None to be reported.
To identify and synthesize the experiences and attitudes of nursing staff regarding the deaths of COVID-19 patients.
A qualitative evidence synthesis was carried out, using Noblit and Hare's meta-ethnographic approach. The review protocol was listed in PROSPERO (CRD42022330928). Studies published from January 2020 to January 2022 that met the criteria were searched in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, CINAHL, CUIDEN and PsycInfo. A total of 12 articles were included.
Thirty-three metaphors emerged, which were grouped into three main themes: Determining factors of care, Feelings about death and Strategies for coping with death. Nurses reported the high emotional toll, the absence of family and the lack of staff, protocol and training as determining factors. Furthermore, staff had doubts about the quality of care that COVID-19 patients received. As coping strategies, nurses developed avoidance behaviours towards COVID-19 patients, selective memories, resilience, and/or leaving the profession.
The difficulty in providing adequate nursing care and the high number of deaths has increased anxiety and stress among nurses. These factors, alongside their lived experiences of seeing patients suffering, many dying alone without family members, have had psychological repercussions on nursing staff.
The results demonstrate a high emotional toll and doubts surrounding their caregiving role caused by the lack of professional training needed to face a pandemic. This research shows what has been learned for future pandemics and highlights basic components that could provide a foundation for coping interventions for healthcare professionals.
The challenges posed by COVID-19 patient deaths for nursing staff around the world and also by the pandemic circumstances in which those deaths occurred.
The high number of deceased patients who were isolated from family members, communication with family members and doubts surrounding care given during the pandemic have created feelings of fear, stress and anxiety, as well as obsessive thoughts that have changed nursing staff's perception of death due to COVID-19.
Results will be useful for preparing for future pandemics, and for policymakers and health staff in supporting healthcare professionals by creating programmes to help them cope with the emotional toll they have felt after dealing with death in such unprecedented circumstances.
The authors have adhered to the PRISMA guidelines and the eMERGe Reporting Guidance.
No patient or public contribution.