Cultivating Self-Compassion to Protect Nurses From Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress.

Nursing burnout, a result of prolonged occupational stress, has always been a challenge in health care, but recently the COVID-19 pandemic made this issue into a national priority. In fact, burnout among health care workers is one of the four priorities of the U.S. Surgeon General. Health care leaders and organizations are eager to implement strategies to improve nurses' well-being and, thus, enhance their mental health. Much of the literature has focused on the antecedents and consequences of nursing burnout, but there is limited information on strategies that protect perinatal nurses from burnout. Self-compassion is emerging as one strategy that has a positive correlation with nurse well-being and a negative association with burnout, depression, and anxiety. In this article, we identify and translate strategies to promote self-compassion in perinatal nurses.

Using Continuous Vital Sign Monitoring to Detect Early Deterioration in Adult Postoperative Inpatients.

BACKGROUND: Episodic vital sign collection (eVSC), as single data points, gives an incomplete picture of adult patients' postoperative physiologic status. LOCAL PROBLEM: Late detection of patient deterioration resulted in poor patient outcomes on a postsurgical unit. METHODS: Baseline demographic and outcome data were collected through retrospective chart review of all patients admitted to the surgical unit for 12 weeks prior to this quality improvement project. Data on the same outcomes were collected during the 12-week project. INTERVENTION: This project compared outcomes between the current standard of eVSC and the proposed standard of continuous vital sign monitoring (cVSM). RESULTS: Using cVSM demonstrated a statistically significant 27% decrease in the complication rate, and a clinically significant decrease in transfers to an intensive care unit and failure-to-rescue (FTR) events rate. CONCLUSIONS: cVSM demonstrated detection of early signs of patient deterioration to prevent FTR.

Student preferences and perceptions of learning from vSIM for Nursing™.

This study explored BSN students' perceptions of learning with vSim for Nursing™. Using a mixed methods design with 99 students, key points of learning were medication administration and respiratory interventions. Qualitative data demonstrated learning of assessment, prioritization, and emergency management. The top student preferences of how to use virtual simulation were as a clinical makeup or to enhance lecture. The findings support the use of virtual simulation and provide data to guide nurse educators to more strategically integrate virtual simulation exercises.