BACKGROUND Antipsychotic medications are routinely prescribed in nursing homes to address the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. Unfortunately, inappropriate prescribing of antipsychotic medications is common and associated with increased morbidity, adverse drug events, and hospitalizations. Multifaceted interventions can achieve a 12-20 % reduction in antipsychotic prescribing ...

The objective of this investigation was to identify nurses' practice in heath audit. The hermeneutic-dialectic method was used for the analysis. The study was performed in three loci: the internal audit service of a hospital; the external audit service of a private health service buyer, and the state audit service of the public health system (SUS, acronym in Portuguese for Sistema Unico de Saúd...

AIM The aim of this study was to describe the accuracy and quality of nursing documentation of the prevalence, risk factors and prevention of pressure ulcers, and compare retrospective audits of nursing documentation with patient examinations conducted in nursing homes. DESIGN This study used a cross-sectional descriptive design. METHOD A retrospective audit of 155 patients' records and pat...

Since its adoption from the US some 20 years ago, the nursing process and its essential component the individualised patient care plan, have been promoted as the theoretical and philosophical basis of British nursing and the method of organising and delivering care. It was introduced against a background of discontent with existing ways of nursing and its aim was to integrate nursing theory and...

This study was conducted to evaluate nursing documentation on patient hygienic care and to analyze the consistency between actual care given by nurses and that of documented in nursing record. Data were collected from 85 nurses employed at critical care units, on whom 255 sets of observations were performed through a structured participant observation form, which could be used to record the obs...

BACKGROUND Quality in nursing documentation facilitates continuity of care and patient safety. Lack of communication between healthcare providers is associated with errors and adverse events. Shortcomings are identified in nursing documentation in several clinical specialties, but very little is known about the quality of how nurses document in the field of psychiatry. Therefore, the aim of thi...

Efficacy of clinical guidelines to improve patient care is highly dependent on the ability of hospital teams to interpret and implement advised standards of care. Trimester and bi-annual rotation changes often see transference and loss of acquired experience and knowledge from wards with ensuing shortfalls in patient safety and care quality. Such shortfalls were noticed in the ability of our un...

BACKGROUND Nursing home (NH) administrators need tools to measure the effectiveness of care delivered at the end of life so that they have objective data on which to evaluate current practices, and identify areas of resident care in need of improvement. METHODS A three-phase mixed methods study was used to develop and test an empirically derived chart audit tool aimed at assessing the care de...

The purpose of this audit was to find out the efficiency of our system in providing premedication to surgical day care patients. This audit was conducted in the Surgical Day Care (SDC) Unit of a University Hospital. All patients anaesthetised in the SDC unit on day care basis were included in this audit. Nursing notes and preoperative orders of all patients to be anaesthetised were checked to s...