Search results

This paper aims to explore the perspectives of registered nurses towards communication with family members of older people with a tracheostomy.

A qualitative design was used. Ten participants were recruited through purposive sampling. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were used in collecting data. Data were analysed by thematic analysis.

The four themes identified were as follows: communication by considering time difference; considering factors related to effective communication, either family member–related factors or registered nurse–related factors; strategies of communicating to support family members, such as giving an opportunity to ask for accurate information, communicating to build self-confidence and communicating through cases; and using the art of communication by speaking slowly and clearly, using colloquialisms, being steady and calm, as well as using positive language.

Having strategies and using the art of communication are important to help family members in obtaining accurate information and in building self-confidence in the care of older people.

The paper indicates that registered nurses consider factors related to communication, and they gave more information to family members using effective strategies and the art of communication. Therefore, effective communication training to nursing teams should be performed to promote adherence to treatment and family members’ satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to describe family caregivers’ experiences of providing care for older people with a tracheostomy during hospitalization.

A descriptive phenomenological approach was used in this study. A total of 40 family caregivers were interviewed face-to-face in medical-surgical wards. Data was analyzed using Giorgi’s phenomenological method.

Family caregivers described meanings of providing care, learning how to provide care, caring activities, impacts of caregiving, support needs and qualities of being a caregiver. Meanings included filial responsibility, spousal attachment and end of life care. Caring activities were varied. Impacts experienced were reported as physical, psychological, social and financial. Caregivers expressed the need for information from the nursing team and assistance from their relatives. Positive caregiver qualities that were described included loving to provide care for older people and confidence and sincerity in caregiving.

Although caring for older people with a tracheostomy was difficult and came with challenging impacts, family caregivers were willing to support their loved ones due to feelings of family responsibility.

The paper addresses family participation in providing care for people with a tracheostomy. They experience physical, psychological, social and financial consequences of caregiving. Therefore, health-care professionals should support family caregivers with education, training and awareness of supports and resources for dealing with problematic impacts and other expressed needs.

Elderly patients requiring prolonged mechanical ventilation are treated with a tracheostomy. Oftentimes, the family caregivers need to participate in the care for elderly patients with a tracheostomy during hospitalization. Therefore, this paper was conducted to acknowledge what family caregivers experience while caregiving for hospitalized elderly patients with a tracheostomy.

This literature review identifies family caregiver participation in caregiving for the elderly patient, the impact of caregiving, and the needs of family caregivers.

Family caregivers participate in the planning and provision of care to elderly patients. Furthermore, they also collaborate in the therapeutic process for elderly patients as well. Albeit the former sentiments, they experience physical, psychological, social and financial consequences of caregiving. It has been revealed that during the process of caring for their loved ones, family caregivers often experience poor sleep quality, strain, reduction in social interaction and insufficient income. Thus, health-care professionals should support and provide care for the needs of family caregivers. This can be achieved through providing information on prognosis, the care plan, emotional support and collaboration during the therapeutic process to provide better care for elderly patients with a tracheostomy. In addition, family caregivers’ relatives can also provide financial support and rotation of caregiving schedules to avoid burnout.

The paper indicates that family caregivers experience the impacts of caregiving. They should be supported by health-care professionals and their relatives.

This chapter describes the efforts of a team of health care workers to make a sub-acute health care facility (SCF) serving profoundly damaged children into a high reliability organization (HRO). To obtain this goal, the health care team implemented change in four behavioral areas: (1) risk awareness and acknowledgment; (2) defining care; (3) how to think and make decisions; and (4) information flow. The team focused on five reliability enhancement issues that emerged from previous research on banking institutions: (1) process auditing; (2) the reward system; (3) quality degradation; (4) risk awareness and acknowledgment; and (5) command and control. These HRO processes emerged from the change effort. Three additional HRO processes also emerged: high trust, and building a high reliability culture based on values and on beliefs. This case demonstrates that HRO processes can reduce costs, improve safety, and aid in developing new markets. Other experiences in implementing high reliability processes show that each organization must tailor make processes to its own situation (e.g. BP, U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazards Board, Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Navy Aviation Program, and Kaiser Permanente Health Care System). Just as in the flexibility called for in organizing for high reliability operations, flexibility is called for in deciding which HRO processes work in specific situations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the medical incident responses from two public hospitals in Hong Kong, namely, Kowloon Hospital and Caritas Medical Centre, in order to improve the strategic preparation for crisis management in hospitals.

The paper analyses two medical incidents using Situational Crisis Communication Theory by Coombs (2007). The two case studies presented herein demonstrate the importance of consistency in terms of crisis responses.

For the first case, the crisis responses from different parties after the incident, including Hospital Authority, the doctor and the nurses from Kowloon Hospital, are contradicting to each other. First, Hospital Authority confirmed that the incident is solely an accident which is a denial response. Second, the doctor passed the responsibility to the nurses which is a scapegoating response. Third, the nurses tend to reduce the responsibility for the death of patient by excusing strategy. As a whole, their responses are inconsistent to each other. For the second case, Caritas had initially denied the responsibilities, but finally had given partial apology under public pressure. That makes people think that Caritas does not really regret.

Rebuilding posture should be used instead of denial and diminishment posture. However, public organization and civil servants are reluctant to use a full apology due to possible legal consequences. The apology ordinance would ease the pressure to express regret and sympathy.

This study aims to investigate the characteristics, as well as the purpose and posts of the COVID-19 Facebook groups.

A systematic search for COVID-19 Facebook groups was conducted on June 1, 2020. Characteristics of the groups were examined using descriptive statistics. Mann-Whitney test was used to study the differences between groups. The study of the most popular groups’ posts was also carried out using the content analysis method.

The groups had a combined membership of 2,729,061 users. A total of 147,885 posts were received. There were about approximately 60% public groups. A high percentage of the groups (86.5%) had descriptions. The results showed a significant relationship between the groups’ description status and the number of members (p-value = 0.016). The majority of COVID-19 Facebook groups (56%) were created to meet their members’ information needs. The highest number of studied posts were related to vaccination (35.2%), followed by curfew rules (19.6%) and symptoms (10.6%).

Translating these insights into policies and practices will put policymakers and health-care providers in a stronger position to make better use of Facebook groups to support and enhance public knowledge about COVID-19.

Reporting a death to the coroner by a doctor is not a statutory duty. It is, however, expected good practice. This article discusses some of the concerns arising out of current everyday practice that can lead to problems for doctors and their employing organisations. The author considers the importance of risk management, clinical audit and clinical governance in identifying what systems may need to be addressed within hospital and primary care trusts to ensure that deaths arising out of, or occurring during, medical care are investigated appropriately. As part of risk management and controls assurance, NHS Trusts should be able to demonstrate that lessons are learnt from adverse outcomes. This article explores the roles of postgraduate tutors, risk managers and the protection organisations in promoting good practice from the start of a doctor’s career.

Word truncation is a familiar technique employed by online searchers in order to increase recall in free text retrieval. The use of truncation, however, can be a mixed blessing since many words starting with the same root are not semantically or logically related. Consequently, online searchers often select words to be OR‐ed together from an alphabetic display of neighbouring terms in the inverted file in order to assure precision in the search. Automatic stemming algorithms typically function in a manner analogous to word truncation, with the added risk of the word roots being incorrectly identified by the algorithm. This paper describes a two‐phase stemming algorithm that consists of the identification of the word root and the automatic selection of ‘well‐formed’ morphological word variants from the actual inverted file entries that start with the same word root. The algorithm has been successfully used in an end‐user interface to NLM's Catline book catalog file.