Abstract Palliative care teams frequently use humour as a coping instrument. Humour used within the professional team has to be distinguished from in interaction with patients. among staff members working palliative settings is widely accepted and positive effect been demonstrated. Four humour-workshops were organized for unit. All participants completed State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory (STCI...

BACKGROUND Accurate measurement of core temperature is a standard component of perioperative and intensive care patient management. However, core temperature measurements are difficult to obtain in awake patients. A new non-invasive thermometer has been developed, combining two sensors separated by a known thermal resistance ('double-sensor' thermometer). We thus evaluated the accuracy of the d...

OBJECTIVES To assess the accuracy of a new noninvasive temporal artery (TA) thermometer in infants; to compare the accuracy of the TA thermometer with that of a tympanic thermometer, using rectal thermometry as the criterion standard; and to compare the tolerability of the TA thermometer with that of the tympanic and rectal thermometers. DESIGN Prospective evaluation of the accuracy of TA and...

OBJECTIVES Prehospital vital signs are an important and required component of patient assessment. We compared the temporal artery thermometer (TAT) to the digital thermometer currently used in our emergency medical service (EMS) system and then to the digital thermometer used in the emergency department. The primary objective of this study was to assess the usefulness of the TAT in the prehospi...

We studied the actual time taken to document temperature in a stable neonate by an electronic digital skin thermometer with automatic time beeper. We studied 100 neonates after initial stabilization. The mean time required for documenting the temperature by a electronic thermometer in axilla was 56.34+/-1.54 secs for term neonates (>2500g) and 54.87+/-1.23 secs for low birth weight (<2500g). Th...