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Integration of home-based palliative care (PC) enables patients to receive care at home, fosters family involvement, and reduces healthcare costs. Despite its benefits, nurses report challenges in delivering competent PC, and limited research has explored how home care nurses perceive their own competence and self-efficacy within this context.
Objectives
The study aimed to explore Ontario nurses’ perceived competence and self-efficacy in home-based PC delivery. It also examined the relationship between both constructs, perceived competence and self-efficacy.
Methods
A cross-sectional design was used with 2 validated survey tools: the 10-domain Palliative Care Nursing Self-Competence scale and the 2-domain Palliative Care Self-Efficacy scale. Ontario home care and nursing organizations were contacted to assist with recruitment by disseminating a Qualtrics survey link via mass email to nurses who had provided home-based PC. A minimum of 219 participants was required based on a G*Power analysis. Data were collected over 2 months with 2 reminder emails. Descriptive analysis and Spearman’s rank correlation were conducted to address the research questions.
Results
Seventy-two registered nurses and 38 registered practical nurses reported the highest levels of perceived competence in addressing functional care, while spiritual care emerged as the most challenging domain. Self-efficacy was higher in psychosocial care than in symptom management. A strong positive correlation was found between perceived competence and self-efficacy (ρ = .69, p <.001), highlighting the interconnected nature of these constructs in home-based PC.
Significance of results
Nurses’ low perceived competence and self-efficacy in spiritual care and symptom management highlight gaps in meeting patients’ holistic care needs. Nurses must be better equipped to manage the psychosocial and spiritual care needs of patients and families. Strengthening training and resources can enhance holistic PC delivery and nurses’ preparedness, thereby supporting nurse retention and the quality and sustainability of home-based PC.
In India, the term euthanasia is frequently used to describe a wide range of end-of-life practices, including withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment and administration of lethal drugs. Such usage diverges from more narrow definitions that restrict euthanasia to the intentional administration of lethal drugs.
Objectives and Significance of the Results
This systematic review and meta-analysis examines how euthanasia has been defined and operationalized in quantitative studies of Indian physicians’ and nurses’ attitudes, and estimates the prevalence of approval when euthanasia is defined narrowly.
Methods
Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, searches were conducted in PubMed, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and CINAHL for studies published from 2010 onward. Two investigators independently screened studies, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). Studies were included in the meta-analysis only if they reported attitudes toward euthanasia as narrowly defined.
Results
Nine studies met inclusion criteria for the systematic review. Definitions of euthanasia varied considerably, and several studies combined attitudes toward treatment withdrawal with attitudes toward the administration of lethal drugs. Four studies reporting on 519 nurses and physicians provided data suitable for meta-analysis. Approval of euthanasia, defined as the intentional administration of lethal drugs, ranged from 12% to 20%, with a pooled prevalence of 16% (95% confidence interval: 0.13–0.19). This prevalence is notably lower than in earlier reports on Indian healthcare professionals’ attitudes.
Conclusion
Definitional inconsistency substantially affects reported attitudes toward euthanasia in Indian research. When euthanasia is defined narrowly, approval among healthcare professionals is low and consistent across studies. These findings highlight the need for conceptual clarity in future research to support accurate interpretation of empirical data and to strengthen the contribution of studies on ethical attitudes to ethical and palliative care scholarship.
Edited by
Liz McDonald, East London NHS Foundation Trust,Roch Cantwell, Perinatal Mental Health Service and West of Scotland Mother & Baby Unit,Ian Jones, Cardiff University
There is a strong evidence base for the management of perinatal mental illness and all healthcare professionals should be aware of that; women can be offered hope of recovery with treatment.
NHS England and Scotland have published pathways of care for perinatal mental health care, but these do not deal with illness below the threshold of specialist care. Each area needs to develop effective local pathways of care that cover the full spectrum of disease and include all services.
The purpose of this chapter is to describe the building blocks that contribute to the rest of the pathway for women with perinatal mental illness. Although the chapter mainly covers the situation in England, it also gives information about the devolved nations, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
What follows covers principles of teamwork and stepped care.
This chapter asks how newborns were cared for and charts the formulaic regimen of encouraging babies to cry, watching them change colour, cutting their navel cord, searching their bodies for impediment, bathing them, swaddling them, putting them down to sleep and, finally, suckling them. Medical guides imagined that it would be mothers that did this care, but middling and elite families often hired nurses to manage this laborious regimen. These individuals were often already servants or recommended by family or friends. In the period, servants and others residing within the household were called ‘family’. In this way, making babies was a family project, albeit one in which family members did not have equal stakes and one in which mothers’ and other women’s procreative work was often subsumed within everyday expectations of domestic labour. Although nurses and others who carried out infant care were sought carefully, details about their lives and perspectives are often hard to find in family paperwork, which was often more interested in what procreative experiences said about the family and its name, rather than valuing others’ work.
This qualitative study explored nurses’ experiences of facing death while caring for bedridden patients in palliative and long-term care settings. Nurses are the primary witnesses to the final phase of life, where technical competence and emotional endurance coexist. Understanding how nurses perceive death and how knowledge, time, and communication affect their caregiving can provide insights into improving end-of-life nursing practices.
Methods
The study was conducted with 70 primary nurse-caregivers of bedridden patients who were hospitalized in the palliative clinic of a university and an educational research hospital in Istanbul between April and August 2024. The research data were obtained through face-to-face interviews using a semi-structured interview form. The interviews were recorded on a voice recorder. The data obtained from the interviews were analysed thematically.
Results
Three main themes were identified: Deficits in Knowledge and Education, Time Management, and Communication and Coordination. Nurses expressed uncertainty and emotional tension when providing care for dying patients. Inadequate end-of-life education heightened their fear of making mistakes. Heavy workload and limited time constrained emotional presence at the bedside. Fragmented communication among healthcare professionals increased feelings of isolation and moral distress. Across these themes, nurses experienced a silent but persistent awareness of death that shaped their professional identity and coping strategies.
Significance of Results
Nurses caring for bedridden patients constantly face death, balancing medical duties with human vulnerability. Including death education, emotional support, and effective interdisciplinary communication in nursing practice can improve nurses’ resilience and the quality of end-of-life care.
Following natural disasters nurses assume a critical role in the provision of primary health care services in container cities. This study aims to reveal the experiences of nurses who voluntarily provided primary health care services in the container city constructed after the earthquake.
Methods
This study was conducted using a qualitative study design, and reported following the COREQ guidelines. Interviews were conducted with 9 volunteer nurses between January 11-29, 2024. Study data were collected using a “Personal Information Form” and “Semi-Structured Questionnaire” via in-depth interview technique. Collected data were analyzed with a 6-step thematic analysis method.
Results
Five main themes were featured in the study: “Factors affecting participation in volunteer activities,” “Scope of volunteer services,” “Challenges experienced in volunteer activities,” “Achievements of volunteer activities,” and “Suggestions for improving volunteer services.”
Conclusions
Volunteer nurses have experienced various gains, as well as difficulties, as a result of their container city experiences. Suggestions for improving disaster nursing are instructive in terms of strengthening disaster nursing.
Comprising the largest group of health care professionals, nurses play a great role and assume many responsibilities during disaster periods, when the public needs health care services the most. The aim of this study was to reveal the experiences of nurses assigned to the disaster area during relief efforts after the February 6, 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye.
Methods
This qualitative and descriptive study used the maximum variation sampling method, one of the purposive sampling methods, and was completed with 20 nurses. Data were analyzed using inductive content analysis.
Results
Four main themes emerged from the experiences of the nurses who provided health care services in the disaster area: experiences related to pre-mission processes, experiences during the mission, post-mission experiences, and recommendations for disaster preparedness.
Conclusions
Nurses’ experiences and suggestions revealed in this study may inform future disaster preparedness and disaster management plans, and this study’s results point to the need for the development of professional nursing skills in disaster management.
This chapter examines the formal relationship between medical professionalism and compassion, looking at codes of ethics and practice guidelines, chiefly for medical professionals but also with reference to other healthcare workers. The chapter starts by exploring the importance accorded to compassion in ethical guidance for doctors in the United Kingdom (UK), Ireland, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. It then examines guidance specifically aimed at psychiatrists, including documents published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK, the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland, and the American Psychiatric Association. Many of these guides emphasise the importance of compassion and related values, with the Royal College of Psychiatrists providing particularly detailed suggestions about building and sustaining compassion in mental healthcare. Compassion and related values also feature commonly in codes of practice and ethical guidance for other clinical professionals, such as nurses, midwives, social workers, occupational therapists, and others. This chapter concludes that, taken together, these statements of practice values and ethical principles reflect a welcome and growing emphasis on compassion in guidance for healthcare professionals across many clinical domains.
While the country’s public hospitals were still virtually all segregated, a unique experiment in medical integration took place at Fort Huachuca, involving both patients and doctors. The black hospital’s reputation for medical excellence attracted white patients – first officers, then their wives (despite the taboo of interracial intimacy), then civilians from the surrounding areas who knew they could not find such quality of care elsewhere. Prejudices about white patients’ reluctance to see black doctors were thus invalidated. Furthermore, given the inadequate qualifications of white doctors and the departure of many of them for the front, the white hospital had to call on black doctors. Care was therefore provided on an interracial basis. This experiment was tolerated by the Surgeon General’s Office, but turned out to be difficult to sustain.
This systematic review aims to identify the theoretical-based frameworks and content of disaster training programs for nurses worldwide.
Methods
This systematic review was conducted following the PRISMA guidelines across 5 databases: Web of Science, PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane, and Google Scholar. Studies were selected on disaster training programs for nurses and published within the past decade.
Results
This systematic review analyzed 14 studies that utilized a variety of theoretical-based disaster nursing training programs. Among the theoretical frameworks identified, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) framework emerged as the most frequently applied, likely due to its global applicability and comprehensive approach in disaster training programs. In contrast, other frameworks—such as the Bioterrorism Guidelines and Infectious Disease Response Guidelines from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the Malkina-Pykh Mixed Model, the World Health Organization (WHO) framework, and the National League for Nurses/Laerdal Simulation Model, and others—were each used only once.
Conclusions
These findings suggest the ICN framework’s potential to serve as a leading model for the development of future disaster training programs. Achieving an optimal balance of theory, practice, and evidence-based content is crucial for preparing nurses to respond effectively to disasters.
Nurses play a critical role in preventing health care-acquired infections (HAIs) by applying infection control practices during hospitalization, in health care settings, and after patient discharge. Our aim was to evaluate the effect of an HAIs educational workshop on the knowledge, attitude, and practice of pediatric nurses at Al-Mezan Hospitals in Palestine.
Methods
A quasi-experimental study was conducted in 2022 among 44 pediatric nurses working in the PICU, NICU, pediatric ward, and nursery departments. Data were collected using demographic, knowledge, attitude, and practice questionnaires before and after the intervention. The educational workshop consisted of 4 sessions, each lasting 45 minutes. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 23, including descriptive statistics and paired t tests, with a significance level set at P < 0.05.
Results
Post-intervention scores showed significant improvements: knowledge increased from 52.9 ± 3.3 to 61.9 ± 4.1, attitude from 44.1 ± 4.1 to 52.6 ± 3.4, and practice from 42.1 ± 5.7 to 53.3 ± 3.3. All changes were statistically significant (P ≤ 0.001), indicating the effectiveness of the workshop.
Conclusions
The HAIs educational workshop significantly enhanced the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of pediatric nurses regarding infection control. These findings highlight the importance of continuous education and training programs to improve health care quality and patient safety.
Women are eligible to serve in virtually all roles in the Australian Defence Force and the Canadian Armed Forces. The contributions of women at home and abroad reach back to the establishment of women’s services during the Second World War, and to nursing services during the First World War and other conflicts such as the Korean and Vietnam wars. More recently women have served in numerous conflict zones, including on the battlefields of Afghanistan. While there are notable differences in the historical journey, there are also important similarities that have shaped the experiences of women in the militaries of Australia and Canada.
Writing in the US in the early twentieth century, Leonor Villegas de Magnón was a Mexican American activist, educator, nurse, and founder of La Cruz Blanca Constitucionalista, a group of nurses established during the Mexican Revolution. Her most comprehensive text is her autobiography, which chronicles the contributions of La Cruz Blanca and which she essentially writes twice, once in Spanish for the Mexican and Mexican American reader, and then in English for the English-speaking readers of the US. What becomes apparent as she shifts audiences, in her writing and in her archive, is a preoccupation not only with the preservation of history and culture, but with its translation. This chapter proposes that this question of translation (across languages, generations, nations, and cultures) is one equally applicable to the task of digitizing archival material. In making the physical archive digitally accessible, digital humanists are enacting translation and must wrestle with questions regarding the responsibilities of the translator. Guided by the question of the ethics of translation, this chapter outlines the process of creating an online exhibit of Villegas de Magnon’s archive, finally claiming that the project of Latinx Digital Humanities is itself an urgent but complex task of translation.
This study was conducted to examine the relationship between disaster literacy and disaster preparedness of the community.
Methods
This cross-sectional study was conducted on adult participants after a major earthquake that occurred in Türkiye on February 6, 2023 (n = 414). Convenience sample was used in sample selection. Data collection instruments are the Disaster Literacy Scale-DLS and Disaster Preparedness Scale-DPS. Descriptive statistics, independent samples t test, correlation, and multiple linear regression analysis were used to analyze the data.
Results
Participants’ DLS score was 33.08 ± 6.72 (limited disaster literacy) and DPS score was 31.89 ± 5.15 (moderate level). A positive correlation was found between DLS and DPS scores (r = 0.242; P = 0.000). Disaster literacy scores are higher for those with higher education levels, those who have taken disaster-related training/courses, those who have a disaster plan at home, and those who have a disaster kit (P < 0.05). In community, increasing disaster literacy, having a disaster kit, insuring the house, and making family plans against disasters positively affect disaster preparedness.
Conclusions
The disaster literacy level of the participants is limited, and the disaster preparedness level is moderate. To increase the disaster literacy levels of individuals, it is recommended that public health nurses strengthen public education and disseminate disaster training in community.
From the 1950s through 1975, American women served in the Vietnam War through the US armed services, the American Red Cross, and US government agencies. Deficiencies in record-keeping have made it difficult to know exactly how many American women deployed to Vietnam, but estimates suggest that about 8,000 to 10,000 women served military tours, while 25,000 or more went to Vietnam in civilian capacities. Although a few women went to Vietnam before the United States committed combat troops and remained in country until 1975, the majority of American women who served in either military or civilian capacities arrived between 1965, the year of the first deployment of ground troops, and 1973, when the last US combat troops departed. Women were not assigned to infantry or other forward units, but they experienced the trauma of war through their work with US servicemen. In particular, nurses and Red Cross workers saw what combat did to soldiers, yet the nature of their jobs and the expectation that they nurture wounded and traumatized servicemen required them to put aside their own mental and emotional injuries that the war inflicted.
To reveal the chain mediating roles of insomnia and anxiety between social support and PTSD in nursing staff under the stage of COVID-19 regular pandemic prevention and control in China.
Methods
A total of 784 nurses were recruited using the convenience sampling method in Jiangsu Province, China. Demographic questionnaire, Perceived Social Support Scale, Impact of Event Scale-Revised, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 and Insomnia Severity Index were applied to collect data.
Results
Social support, PTSD, insomnia and anxiety were significantly correlated with each other. Insomnia and anxiety acted as chain mediators between social support and PTSD.
Conclusion
Insufficient social support may trigger PTSD through the chain mediating effects of insomnia and anxiety in nursing staff under the stage of COVID-19 regular pandemic prevention and control. Measures focusing on social support, insomnia and anxiety should be taken to reduce or even prevent PTSD in nursing staff in Chinese hospitals in similar crises in the future.
The 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and strict quarantine increased the likelihood of mental symptoms and abnormal eating behaviours. This study aimed to assess the magnitude of emotional eating (EE) among nurses working in Lebanese hospitals and its association with mental health. A cross-sectional study was conducted among nurses aged between 18 and 50 years working in Lebanese hospitals during the COVID-19 outbreak and the economic crisis. A total of 303 nurses consented to participate. The mean EE score was 28.56 (±8.11). The results of this study revealed that 53.8% of the nurses reported depression, 58.1% suffered from anxiety and 95.1% experienced either moderate or severe stress. The study concluded that females (β = 8.112, P = 0.004), non-smokers (β = –4.732, P = 0.01) and depressed nurses (β = 0.596, P = 0.046) had a higher tendency towards EE. Additionally, it was found that EE was associated with weight gain (β = 6.048, P = 0.03) and increased consumption of fried foods (β = 5.223, P = 0.001). Females experienced more stress (β = 2.244, P = 0.003) and anxiety (β = 1.526, P = 0.021) than their male counterparts. With regard to mental health, depression was associated with weight gain (β = 2.402, P = 0.003) and with lower consumption of healthy foods such as nuts (β = –1.706, P = 0.009) and dishes prepared with sofrito sauce (β = –1.378, P = 0.012). These results can help the health authorities to design preparedness plans to ensure proper mental and physical well-being of nurses during any unforeseen emergencies.
It is of critical importance to determine the factors that contribute to nurses’ disaster preparedness. This study aimed to examine nurses’ perceptions of disaster preparedness and the factors affecting it.
Methods:
This descriptive study was conducted with 464 nurses working in the East Marmara region of Türkiye. The data were collected online using the “Personal Information Form,” “The Scale of Perception of Disaster Preparedness on Nurses,” and the “Adult Motivation Scale.” Linear regression analysis was used to analyze the influencing factors.
Results:
It was found that nurses possessed a high level of perceived disaster preparedness, influenced by individual disaster preparedness, status of receiving disaster-related training, willingness to respond in the case of a disaster, disaster plan awareness, experience with caring for disaster victims, extrinsic motivation, and general motivation.
Conclusions:
The results of the study offer evidence that can be implemented by managers and educators to better prepare nurses for disasters. Hospital administrators and policy makers should consider the factors affecting nurses’ perception of disaster preparedness to develop solutions for such disasters.
Edited by
Richard Williams, University of South Wales,Verity Kemp, Independent Health Emergency Planning Consultant,Keith Porter, University of Birmingham,Tim Healing, Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London,John Drury, University of Sussex
Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, there has been much research examining the effects of working during COVID-19 on different sectors of the healthcare workforce. This chapter explores the detailed narratives of nurses’ experiences of COVID-19 in the ICON qualitative research. The participants were from a wide range of working environments and were asked about the possible impacts of working during the pandemic on their psychosocial and emotional wellbeing. It concludes that nurses provided the most care 24 hours a day/7 days a week for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study showed that nurses continued to put patients’ needs first, often to the detriment of their own health. It outlines valuable lessons in the form of structural, organizational, and team learning to support psychosocial wellness in emergencies and disease outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
To test and validate a measure of primary health care (PHC) engagement in the Australian remote health context.
Background:
PHC principles include quality improvement, community participation and orientation of health care, patient-centred continuity of care, accessibility, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Measuring the alignment of services with the principles of PHC provides a method of evaluating the quality of care in community settings.
Methods:
A two-stage design of initial content and face validity evaluation by a panel of experts and then pilot-testing the instrument via survey methods was conducted. Twelve experts from clinical, education, management and research roles within the remote health setting evaluated each item in the original instrument. Panel members evaluated the representativeness and clarity of each item for face and content validity. Qualitative responses were also collected and included suggestions for changes to item wording. The modified tool was pilot-tested with 47 remote area nurses. Internal consistency reliability of the Australian Primary Health Care Engagement scale was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha. Construct validity of the Australian scale was evaluated using exploratory factor analysis and principal component analysis.
Findings:
Modifications to suit the Australian context were made to 8 of the 28 original items. This modified instrument was pilot-tested with 47 complete responses. Overall, the scale showed high internal consistency reliability. The subscale constructs ‘Quality improvement’, ‘Accessibility-availability’ and ‘population orientation’ showed low levels of internal consistency reliability. However, the mean inter-item correlation was 0.31, 0.26 and 0.31, respectively, which are in the recommended range of 0.15 to 0.50 and indicate that the items are correlated and are measuring the same construct. The Australian PHCE scale is recommended as a tool for the evaluation of health services. Further testing on a larger sample may provide clarity over some items which may be open to interpretation.