OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of clinicians' use of an online information retrieval system on their performance in answering clinical questions. DESIGN Pre-/post-intervention experimental design. MEASUREMENTS In a computer laboratory, 75 clinicians (26 hospital-based doctors, 18 family practitioners, and 31 clinical nurse consultants) provided 600 answers to eight clinical scenarios before...

PURPOSE Clinicians often are required to switch prescribed therapy for their patients in response to health plan initiatives for controlling drug expenditures. To explore the effect of these initiatives, we sought clinicians' feedback regarding their practices and processes for switching patients' medications to accommodate insurance coverage. DESIGN Self-administered Intranet-based survey of...

Role Preparation for Advanced Practice Nursing: Practicing Consultation and Collaboration Skills Nurse educators are charged with ensuring that graduates are well prepared to function in the context of an ever-evolving and increasingly complex health care environment. Professional consultation and collaboration skills have been identifi ed as necessary for the advanced practice nurse, yet teach...

BACKGROUND The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life. Recent statistics indicate that initiation and maintenance of exclusive breastfeeding are low in the United States. Unfortunately, little information is available on how clinicians and health care organizations can best promote continuation of exclusive breastfeeding. OBJECTIVE To ...

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To explore patients' quality of life (QOL) as defined by RNs in adult and pediatric oncology settings and to examine, from the perspectives of clinical nurses, the knowledge that is needed to apply QOL research outcomes in clinical practice. DESIGN Qualitative research design using a focus group technique to explore the research questions. SETTING Three sites (i.e., a ped...

It is 2 am in the cardiac step-down unit. A nurse needs to set up a secondary infusion on a new infusion pump, a procedure that she has never done before. She had attended the in-service training session before the pumps arrived the previous month, but there was a great deal of information to absorb. Clinical nurse specialists, who provide assistance with technology-related questions, are not a...

BACKGROUND Advances in DNA sequencing technology have resulted in an abundance of personalized data with challenging clinical utility and meaning for clinicians. This wealth of data has potential to dramatically impact the quality of healthcare. Nurses are at the focal point in educating patients regarding relevant healthcare needs; therefore, an understanding of sequencing technology and utili...

OBJECTIVE To analyze whether computer-generated reminders about infections could influence clinicians' practice patterns and consequently improve the detection and management of nosocomial infections. DESIGN The conclusions produced by an expert system developed to detect and manage infections were presented to the attending clinicians in a pediatric hospital to determine whether this informa...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Integrative medicine is a relatively new field that seeks to combine conventional and nonconventional approaches to patient care. Many academic health centers have now established integrative medicine clinics, yet little is known about the clinicians who practice at them. We used a nationwide survey to characterize the backgrounds, clinical practices, and involvement i...

A decade ago, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 24% of the global disease burden but was served by only 4% of the global health workforce. The chronic shortage of medical doctors has led other health professionals especially nurses to perform the role of healthcare providers. These health workers have been variously named clinical officers, health officers, physician assistants, nurse practition...