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There is a need for rigorous research documenting the important role of school nurses in facilitating positive health outcomes among students. Poorly managed care can affect student absenteeism rates, which are associated with academic performance and school funding, and students in underresourced schools are at particularly higher risk of suffering chronic conditions (e.g., asthma, diabetes) that necessitate proper care and management. The San Jose Unified School District (SJUSD) Nurse Demonstration Project was developed as a five-year endeavor to expand school nursing and formally link school nurses to a school-based health clinic. The initiative provides for full-time school nurses at four elementary and middle schools in SJUSD, and a nurse practitioner at School Health Clinics of Santa Clara County. The objectives are to: (1) improve access to primary care and prevention services, specifically asthma and chronic condition management and (2) facilitate the establishment of a medical home for students. Evaluation of the project employs a mixed methods research design, including a logic model, an intervention and control study design (comparing outcome measures in the four demonstration schools with five “control” schools), parent, teacher, and school administrator feedback, systematic nurse reports, and quantitative analysis of school health and administrative data, including health conditions and absenteeism information. Key findings in Phase I of the project are discussed, including improvement in screening and referrals, follow-up care among students with asthma, and mean days absent due to illness. With increasing budget cuts to public schools, documenting the impact of full-time school nurses will remain crucial in leveraging support and resources for school health services. Findings of this project indicate that school nurses provide valuable services and could be a major player in providing and coordinating effective management and prevention of chronic disease among children.

Nurse leaders are challenged by ethical issues in today’s complex health-care settings. The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze key elements of moral distress identified by nurse leaders from health-care systems in the USA, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The aim was to develop an understanding of distressing ethical issues nurse leaders face in the USA and three German-speaking European countries.

This descriptive cross-sectional study surveyed a convenience sample of nurse leaders in the USA, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The voluntary, anonymous survey also included qualitative questions and was distributed using the Qualtrics® platform. A thematic analysis of the qualitative data in each country was carried out and a comparative analysis identified similarities and differences between the groups of nurse leaders comparing the US data to that from three German-speaking European countries.

The survey was completed by 316 nurse leaders: Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (n = 225) and the USA (n = 91). Similar themes identified as causing all nurse leaders moral distress included a lack of individual and organizational integrity, hierarchical and interprofessional issues, lack of nursing professionalism, patient care/patient safety concerns, finances negatively impacting care and issues around social justice. Within these six themes, there were also differences between the USA and the three German-speaking European countries.

Understanding the experiences associated with distressing ethical situations can allow nurse leaders and organizations to focus on solutions and develop resilience to reduce moral distress in the USA and three German-speaking European countries.

The purpose of this study is to examine the sociocultural implications of caring for persons with COVID-19 in a developing country context.

In total, 156 nurses participated in the study. Stratified random sampling methodology was used. Data were collected via online self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential statistics, including ANOVA tests were done.

Nurses experienced stigmatization, discrimination and reduced income. Nurses functioned on the frontline during the COVID-19 pandemic and encountered negative sociocultural experiences from a personal, social and professional perspective. ANOVA showed statistically significant relationships between the conflicts between their work role, family commitments and level of physical interactions with a number of variables.

Data were collected from one Regional Health Authority and may not be representative of the national population of nurses. Further, as the researchers depended on gatekeepers to access participants, the recruitment process may not have been entirely based on randomization as originally agreed.

The findings from this study can be used as a framework to develop context specific programmes and policies to support health professionals, including nurses.

Pandemics, while not new, contribute to serious sociocultural challenges for individuals and families, as well as nurses, as part of their professional roles. In this regard, maintaining effective social networks must be central to effective functioning in crisis situations, such as pandemics.

Nurses have played a key role, working both to identify, isolate and manage those with COVID-19 and supporting those who have non-COVID-19 related health needs. While nurses have been at the forefront delivering care in these uncertain times, doing so puts them at great risk, for not only contracting COVID-19 but also for experiencing negative psychosocial effects that may be due to the nature of their jobs.

The study aims to investigate how pregnant and nursing mothers’ stories have been neglected in writing about gender, security and spaces.

The study chronicles Agogo Traditional Area’s pregnant and nursing mothers’ resistance and survival in this conflicted environment. The author used photo voices in a participatory photography design to give conflict-area women a voice. Interviews and observations supported this. Pregnant and nursing mothers were sampled using the purposive and snowball sampling techniques. The data analysis considered narrative analysis, photographic and inductive approaches.

The findings highlighted how these mothers in vicious settings experienced healthcare access and problems, societal issues including gender dynamics, food insecurity, and emotional and psychological well-being.

The findings in this study expand the socio-cultural narratives of pregnant and nursing mothers in violent spaces.

Nursing students encounter a combination of academic rigor, clinical demands and emotional hurdles. Juggling coursework, practical training and patient interaction can be stressful, and exposure to such situations may impact their psychological well-being. This study aims to highlight the top strengths among nursing students and identify the strengths associated with well-being.

Convenience sampling was used to select a sample of 150 nursing students studying in first, second and third year from colleges of Gujarat and Rajasthan. Students were administered the Values In Action character strengths inventory, the satisfaction with life scale and scale of positive and negative experience. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation.

Results show that among nursing students, kindness emerged as the foremost strength with the highest mean, followed by honesty, creativity, spirituality and teamwork, and the strengths of curiosity, gratitude, perseverance, self-regulation, social intelligence, and zest were positively associated with life satisfaction and positive emotions and negatively related to negative emotions.

The small sample size was a limitation; however, this study has been conducted at different locations to improve generalizability.

This study has profound implications for nursing students, both in their personal development and their future roles as health-care professionals, as fostering these attributes can contribute to the students’ growth, well-being and effectiveness as compassionate and competent caregivers. Working on strengths is associated with well-being; therefore, using strengths identified by this study will have a beneficial effect on the students’ well-being.

Curiosity and social intelligence, for instance, can help nurses better understand patient needs and emotions, developing strengths like perseverance and self-regulation can equip nursing students with tools to cope effectively with the challenges inherent in health-care settings. Traits such as gratitude and social intelligence can enhance communication and empathy which are vital skills for establishing rapport with patients and their families. Emphasizing teamwork as a strength aligns with the collaborative nature of health care. By embodying values like kindness and spirituality, nursing students can create a more compassionate and meaningful experience for patients, as well as themselves.

The research paper identifies and emphasizes the five character strengths that are most commonly observed in a sample of Indian nursing students. In addition, this study delves deeper into these identified strengths to understand how they relate to the overall well-being of nursing students within this specific population. The existing literature has not explored it exhaustively.

Drawing on the challenge–hindrance stressor framework and the “too-much-of-a-good-thing” principle, this study examined the curvilinear effects of two emic social challenge stressors (guanxi beliefs and participative decision-making (PDM)) and the moderating effect of an etic social hindrance stressor (perceived organizational politics) on Hong Kong and United States nurses’ job satisfaction.

A quantitative survey method was implemented, with the data provided by 355 Hong Kong nurses and 116 United States nurses. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the degree of measurement equivalence across Hong Kong and US nurses. The proposed model and the research questions were tested using nonlinear structural equation modeling analyses.

The results show that while guanxi beliefs only showed an inverted U-shaped relation on Hong Kong nurses’ job satisfaction, PDM had an inverted U-shaped relation with both Hong Kong and United States nurses’ job satisfaction. The authors also found that Hong Kong nurses experienced the highest job satisfaction when their guanxi beliefs and perceived organization politics were both high.

The results add to the comprehension of the nuances of the often-held assumption of linearity in organizational sciences and support the speculation of social stressors-outcomes linkages.

Managers need to recognize that while the nurturing and development of effective relationships with employees via social interaction are important, managers also need to be aware that too much guanxi and PDM may lead employees to feel overwhelmed with expectations of reciprocity and reconciliation to such an extent that they suffer adverse outcomes and become dissatisfied with their jobs.

First, the authors found that influences of guanxi beliefs and PDM are not purely linear and that previous research may have neglected the curvilinear nature of their influences on job satisfaction. Second, the authors echo researchers’ call to consider an organization’s political context to fully understand employees’ attitudes and reactions toward social interactions at work. Third, the authors examine boundary conditions of curvilinear relationships to understand the delicate dynamics.

This study investigated the relationship of strengths-based leadership with nurses’ turnover intention and the mediating roles of job crafting and work fatigue in the relationship.

Data comprising 318 valid participants from three hospitals in Beijing were gathered at two points in time, spaced by a two-month interval. Structural equation modeling with a bootstrapping analysis was applied to test hypotheses.

This study found that strengths-based leadership negatively relates to nurses’ turnover intention, and job crafting and work fatigue mediate the relationship of strengths-based leadership with turnover intention, respectively.

The findings of this study highlight the importance of strengths-based leadership in decreasing nurses’ turnover intention and reveal two potential mechanisms through which strengths-based leadership is related to nurses’ turnover intention. In order to retain nursing staff better, nurse leaders should execute more strengths-based leadership behaviors and make more efforts to promote nurses’ job crafting and to reduce nurses’ experience of work fatigue.

Through the discussion of two case studies, the purpose of this paper is to suggest that nurses may drive themselves to achieve the impossible. Professional bodies and health care expert emphasise the importance of always putting the interests, health and wellbeing of patients first. Could this be at the expense of nurses’ health, thus limiting their capacity to provide quality care for their patients?

The two case studies discussed offer examples of how two nurses nearly lost their lives in their personal drive to deliver quality nursing care in adverse conditions. The paper is based upon the hypothesis that an organisation which invests in the development of a healthy workplace culture, in which staff are put first, will not only enhance the health and wellbeing of its staff, but will ultimately result in the development of a culture which will empower staff to deliver the highest quality of care.

These case studies not only offer an example of the risk of neglecting self-care, the risk to Ben and Lily who quickly changed roles from nurse to patient, but also the risk to the quality of health care as a consequence of not paying due attention to the health and wellbeing of nurses (Crane and Ward, 2016). This paper suggests a radical and no doubt controversial shift of focus. Treat nurses as patients, obsess about the quality of their care, to create a culture in which nurses are nurtured so that they can in turn, and they will, nurture their patients.

The Royal College of Nursing, the nursing professional body and trade union for all nurses have actively campaigned for a safe and health workplace for the last three years. They support RCN Safety Representatives to work with employers to develop a safe and health working environment for Staff. An important part of this work is the Healthy You Campaign. This has resulted in a series of learning and development workshops for nurses and the development of supporting resources to empower nurses to take care of themselves (www.rcn.org.uk/healthy-workplace).

These case studies and the resulting discussions are the author’s own original work, and have not previously been submitted for publication elsewhere.

Nurses heavily influence patient care quality and safety. This paper aims to examine socioeconomic and organizational/system factors affecting patient safety and quality perceptions.

A questionnaire was constructed to gather demographic, managerial support, information technology implementation and integration information. Data were collected from nurses in five Riyadh hospitals, Saudi Arabia. Registered nurses working in hospital departments participated in the survey. A total of 566 completed questionnaires were returned. Subsequent data were analyzed through binary logistic regression.

Factors that improve patient safety and the likelihood that nurses use their own facility include: fewer visible errors; ability to communicate suggestions; information technology support and training; and a confidential error reporting system.

The survey was a cross‐sectional study. Consequently, it is difficult to establish causation. Furthermore, nursing in these hospitals is dominated by foreign nationals. Also, as with all surveys, this research may be subject to response bias. Although the questionnaire was randomly distributed, there were no mechanisms to assure privacy and minimize peer influence. The high positive patient safety perceptions may be influenced by either individual or peer biases.

Nurses are important communicators; especially about hospital safety and quality. The research informs leaders about areas that need considering and improving. Findings indicate that system factors, including functional feedback, suggestions, and error reporting significantly affect patient safety improvements. Likewise, nurse education to operate their information systems has positive effects. Healthcare leaders need to understand factors that affect patient safety perceptions when creating a patient safety culture.

Few international articles examine the factors that influence nurses' patient safety perceptions or examine those factors that affect these perceptions. This paper adds value by researching what influences patient safety perceptions among Riyadh nurses.