An essential outcome of professional practice environments is the provision of high-quality, safe nursing care. To mitigate the quality and safety chasm, nursing leadership at St. Michael's Hospital undertook a strategic plan to enhance the nursing professional practice environment. This case study outlines the development of the strategic planning process: the driving forces (platform); key st...

Healthcare equity, defined as rightful and fair care provision, is a key objective in all health systems. Nurses commonly experience cases of equity/inequity when caring for patients. The present study was the first to explain nurses' experience of equal care. A qualitative study sought to describe the experiences of 18 clinical nurses and nurse managers who were selected through purposive samp...

Through improved technology and treatment and ongoing de-institutionalisation, nurses will encounter growing numbers of people with disabilities in the New Zealand community and hospitals. Quality of nursing care is influenced by attitude and this study was to evaluate the effect of a curriculum change on the attitudes of two different streams of student nurses towards people with disabilities....

Spirituality is a highly contested concept. Within the nursing literature, there are a huge range and diversity of definitions, some of which appear coherent whereas others seem quite disparate and unconnected. This vagueness within the nursing literature has led some to suggest that spirituality is so diverse as to be meaningless. Are the critics correct in asserting that the vagueness that su...

The integration between basic science and research in the field of nursing is an emerging subject and expanding in many countries. However, in Brazil, researchers have shown little interest in exploring this line of research, in spite of the numerous benefits it may bring to nursing care practice. In this article, by means of a bibliographic review, we will focus on the importance of basic rese...

The aim of the study was to identify nurses' ethical values, which become apparent through their behaviour in the interactions with older patients in caring encounters at a geriatric clinic.Descriptions of ethics in a caring practice are a problem since they are vague compared with the four principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice.A Grounded Theory methodology was used....

INTRODUCTION To provide high-quality nursing care, a reliable and feasible competency assessment tool is critical. Although several questionnaire-based competency assessment tools have been reported, a tool specific for obstetric nurses in rooming-in wards is lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to develop a competency assessment tool for obstetric rooming-in ward nurses. METHO...

Implementing evidence based-practice and research findings into nursing care has been identified as a challenge to nursing staff. This article identifies key barriers to the use of research in the international literature, however, there are limited suggestions as to how to improve this in the clinical arena. This article aims to identify how nurses could optimize the implementation of evidence...

This article discusses findings from a mixed method literature review that investigated cancer patients' perceptions of what constitutes a good nurse. To find pertinent articles, we conducted a systematic key word search of five journal databases (1998-2008). The application of carefully constructed inclusion criteria and critical appraisal identified 12 relevant articles. According to the pati...

OBJECTIVES to assess the construct validity and reliability of the Pediatric Patient Classification Instrument. METHODS correlation study developed at a teaching hospital. The classification involved 227 patients, using the pediatric patient classification instrument. The construct validity was assessed through the factor analysis approach and reliability through internal consistency. RESUL...