PURPOSE This study introduces the first National Nursing Assistant Survey (NNAS), a major advance in the data available about certified nursing assistants (CNAs) and a rich resource for evidence-based policy, practice, and applied research initiatives. We highlight potential uses of this new survey using select population estimates as examples of how the NNAS can be used to inform new policy di...

BACKGROUND Career planning in nursing is often haphazard, with many studies showing that nurses need personal motivation, education, and the support of workplaces, which are often dominated by political and fiscal agendas. Nurses often need institutional and personal support to plan their careers and make decisions regarding their career aspirations. METHOD A descriptive qualitative design wa...

Development of the comprehensive care plan (CCP) is a requirement for nursing homes participating in the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs, referred to as skilled nursing facilities. The plan must be developed within the context of the comprehensive interdisciplinary assessment framework-the Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI). Consistent compliance with this requirement has been difficul...

Health care is a knowledge-based community that critically depends on knowledge management activities in order to ensure quality. Nurses are primary stakeholders and need to ensure that their information and knowledge needs are being met in such ways that enable them, to improve the quality and efficiency of health care service delivery for all subjects of health care. This paper describes a sy...

BACKGROUND Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor therapies are now a standard treatment for advanced melanoma and other tumor types. The immune-related adverse events (irAEs) associated with PD-1 inhibitor therapy are drastically different from the AEs associated with chemotherapy. Because these irAEs reflect immune system activation rather than side effects of therapy, nurses should...

The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice provides a framework for building the baccalaureate education for the twenty-first century. One of the exemplars included in the essentials toolkit includes student participation in an actual root cause analysis (RCA) or failure mode effects analysis. To align with this exemplar, faculty at the University of Michigan Sc...

Focal seizures are divided into simple and dyscognitive, with the latter resulting in the alteration of consciousness. In the ictal and postictal stages, patients may present with confusion, delirium, and psychosis, presenting a risk of safety to themselves and others. This article presents 3 case studies where patients have been admitted for visual and electroencephalographic monitoring. Seizu...

In summary, the broad term "head injury" represents a large variety of more specific injuries. In order to anticipate and plan appropriate patient care, nurses need information regarding the cause of injury, the impact site, and the patient's clinical course in addition to current assessment findings. The nurse must also anticipate sequelae from secondary brain injury due to hypoxia, edema, inc...