It starts off as something simple. Your patient is complaining of leg pain. Their right calf is swollen to twice the size of the left, and it is bright red. Whether your patient has had surgery, suffered trauma, or even has just come off of a long trip in the car, they may be at risk of venous thromboembolism, also known as deep vein thrombosis. It is important to constantly monitor the patient for signs and symptoms of venous thromboembolism and to know about measures for prevention. The prophylaxis for VTE has come a long way in recent years. Hospitals now have dedicated assessments in place to help prevent this sometimes silent condition from taking lives.
Tags: Vascular, Preventative health, Nursing
Published: November 30, 2011
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 Antibiotic adherence is an important issue in all patients, but specifically so in children. There are usually a number of factors influencing a doctor’s choice of antibiotic, however taste is not usually one of them. Research has indicated the importance of palatability when selecting drugs for paediatrics, so we are going to take a closer look at its influence, and what we can do to help.
Tags: Medicines, Paediatric Nusring, Nursing
Published: November 30, 2011
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 A woman sits on the examination table in the middle of the emergency room. The curtain is drawn around her, but she seems to shrink from the sight. She has a large bruise forming over her eye, and you know that by morning, she'll have a shiner that everybody will see. She claims she fell down the stairs. You don't believe her. This is the third time this month she's been in here with a fall. When you confront her about her falls, she doesn't look at you, and she doesn't want to talk about it. You are certain she is a victim of domestic violence, but what can you do about it? As a nurse, you have the duty both ethically and legally to help her.
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 With the media so focused on diets and body size there can be little surprise that eating disorders are becoming more common and are affecting a wider variety of people. The Nurse Practitioner has recently published an article focusing on strategies the practising nurse can use to identify and manage individuals with eating disorders.
Eating disorders
Most people have heard of anorexia (nervosa) and bulimia (nervosa), both of which are complex psychiatric conditions believed to be on a disease continuum, where symptom overlap is common. Along with eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS), these conditions result in altered body image and abnormal eating habits (starving, binging/purging) with the affected individual preoccupied with weight and body shape. Anorexia nervosa (AN) has one of the highest death rates of all psychiatric disorders, however early diagnosis is often uncommon.
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 When a patient is facing a chronic illness, it is easy to focus treatment on the physical side of things.
For cancer patients, you can lose sight of the person in the flurry of activity of chemotherapy, radiation and multiple hospitalisations.
For the patient with multiple chronic diseases, sometimes you can do nothing more for them, and the state of their mind slips past you.
However, depression is quite common in chronic illness, and the good news about it is that it is treatable.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, 25 percent of cancer patients, 25 percent of diabetes patients and 40 to 65 percent of heart attack survivors are diagnosed with depression. With statistics like these, it is too common a problem to overlook.
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 In recent years the world has been panicked by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the Avian Influenza A (H5N1) and more recently, the H1N1 Influenza A virus. These cases have illustrated the importance of being prepared for a pandemic at a worldwide level, right down to an individual level. Pandemics evolve rapidly and are complex and unpredictable. Hospital staff, in particular, have to be ready to take on extra precautions and responsibilities when a pandemic is declared. By looking back at the effects of the recently declared pandemics we can learn some importance lessons in pandemic planning.
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 Diabetes is a common condition affecting up to 1.7 million Australians, although up to half of these are undiagnosed. An estimated 275 Australians develop diabetes everyday and the cost to the national healthcare system is estimated to be at least $3 billion. Complications of diabetes include heart disease, stroke, retinopathy leading to blindness, nephropathy leading to kidney failure and neuropathy.
Amputations and foot ulcers are the most common consequences of diabetic neuropathy and in Australia amputations are 15 times more common in diabetics than in other individuals. Prevention, early detection, improved delivery of care and better education for diabetes self-management all contribute to eliminating associated morbidity and mortality. The current nursing shortage is impacting the ability of nurses to educate patients face-to-face and so current research has looked into developing other methods to educate patients.
Tags: Obesity, Education, Keeping Healthy, Nursing Education, Internet, Minimising Risk, Cardiac, Chronic Illness, Diabetes
Published: August 18, 2011
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We’ve all had them- patients who simply will not follow their treatment regimens or the well-meaning advice we give them in regards to taking control of their medical problem. Examples are people with diabetes who refuse to follow their diet, patients who refuse to take their medications as prescribed or patients who refuse to follow up with their physicians as advised. We often view these patients in a negative light, believing that they don’t care, refuse to understand, or choose to ignore the recommendations of their healthcare providers. These patients can be a great source of frustration and angst.
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Tags: Sharing Stories, Professional Issues, Nursing
Published: September 28, 2010
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Patients requiring critical care are a vulnerable population in terms of medication errors. Critical care patients are the sickest patients in the hospital, requiring intensive nursing care and frequent medications and therapies. Furthermore, their therapy is subject to frequent changes, especially in terms of medications. What risk factors are cited as being frequent causes of medication errors in critical care?
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Tags: Medication errors, Sharing Stories, Nursing, Drug Calculations
Published: September 23, 2010
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For many years, nursing was based on the nursing process that included the principles of assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. This allowed for a more scientific approach to nursing and forced nurses to provide rationes for nursing interventions and to evaluate their effectiveness. However, in today’s nursing, there is a greater focus on the development of critical thinking skills.
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Tags: Nursing Process, Critical Thinking
Published: August 30, 2010
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