A qualitative research design that is explorative, descriptive and contextual in nature was employed in order to understand and describe the professional nurses' perception of the implementation of a quality circle programme in a public hospital in the Eastern Cape Province. The data-collection techniques were individual semi-structured interviews and field notes. The sample was drawn from a po...

This study investigated the association between environmental mastery and depression in a sample of 96 older adults (aged 64–98 years) in residential care. The participants completed a scale that assessed depression along with measures for risk factors for depression such as functional capacity, self-evaluated physical health, bereavement experiences and environmental mastery. The results showe...

OBJECTIVES This study focuses on the ways in which the organisational context can influence the development of severe pressure ulcers. Severe pressure ulcers are important indicators of failures in the organisation and delivery of treatment and care. We have a good understanding of patients' risk factors, but a poor understanding of the role played by the organisational context in their develop...

OBJECTIVES This article focuses on justification of psychoactive medication prescription for NH residents during their first three months post-admission. METHOD We extracted data from 73 charts drawn from a convenience sample of individuals who were residents of seven nursing homes (NHs) for at least three months during 2009. Six focus groups with NH staff were conducted to explore rationales...

Four separate focus group sessions were conducted in the Detroit metropolitan area to invite vital elders to speak freely about their health, health problems, health practices, and how they maintain their bio-psycho-social and spiritual well-being. Twenty-eight participants were interviewed. The majority were African American, female, widowed, Protestant, and had achieved a high school or great...

BACKGROUND Over a tenth of preventable adverse events in health care are caused by failures in information flow. These failures are tangible in clinical handover; regardless of good verbal handover, from two-thirds to all of this information is lost after 3-5 shifts if notes are taken by hand, or not at all. Speech recognition and information extraction provide a way to fill out a handover form...

Seth Eisen, MD, MSc;  Joseph Francis, MD The V eterans Health Administration (VHA) is the lar gest integrated healthcare sys tem in the United S tates, caring for nearly 6 million of the nation’s 23 million veterans annually. VHA provides a full range of primary care, mental health, medical specialty, surgical, and rehabilitative services to enrolled veterans. It employs over 240,000 staff (in...

conclusions many caring behaviors associate with aesthetic experience for both patients and nurses and despite two different views, findings of this study showed that these experiences were similar in most cases. the aesthetics of nursing care was defined as what reflects the holistic nature of nursing with an emphasis on spirituality and skill. results of this study are effective in identifica...

[Purpose] To clarify seasonal changes in activity levels among nursing care insurance service users in areas with different climates using the Life Space Assessment. [Subjects] A total of 72 nursing care insurance service users aged ≥65 years, who were from areas along the Sea of Japan or those around the Inland Sea. [Methods] The subjects were divided into 2 groups according to their home pref...

Editor’s note: The author was employed as a pharmacy consultant by the Healthcare Financing Administration (now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) until his retirement in 1999. He was one of the few officials who consulted with professional organizations outside government in the process of developing those regulations. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 (OBRA ’87) resulted in re...