Registered nurses' experience of care for adult patients with a temporary tracheostomy at general hospital wards. A phenomenological-hermeneutic explorative study.

BACKGROUND: Caring for adult patients with a temporary tracheostomy in general wards can be challenging and complex. Little research has explored registered nurses' experiences with caring for these groups of patients. OBJECTIVES: This study sought to interpret and describe registered nurses' lived experiences of caring for adult patients with a tracheostomy in general wards. RESEARCH DESIGN/METHODOLOGY: Six registered nurses were interviewed in this study. The interviews were analysed to gain comprehensive knowledge about caring for adult patients with a temporary tracheostomy. The interviews were transcribed, analysed, and interpreted by using Gadamers philosophical hermeneutics and Kvale and Brinkmann's three steps of understanding. SETTING: Three different wards medical, surgical, and neurological of a teaching hospital in Norway. FINDINGS: Three themes emerged from data analysis. These included experiencing clinically challenging patients, a lack of clinical support from the intensive care nurses, and a lack of professional confidence. CONCLUSION: This study highlighted the challenges surrounding the care of an adult patient with a tracheostomy in the general wards. Identifying these challenges would lead to further improvement in registered nurses' experiences and, in turn, in the quality of competent care for adult patients with a tracheostomy in the general ward. IMPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE: Understanding the registered nurses' experiences will assist the head nurses in planning and providing relevant information and education to provide safe and holistic patient care. Adequate support from intensive care unit nurses and professional development are required to ensure high-quality care. This study recommends that healthcare managers focus on establishing step-down units to improve patient outcomes, especially for high-risk patients and to increase the competencies of registered nurses in caring for adult patients with a tracheostomy as a whole person.

ICU nurses´ lived experience of caring for adult patients with a tracheostomy in ICU: a phenomenological-hermeneutic study.

BACKGROUND: The care of adult patients with a tracheostomy in intensive care unit is complex, challenging and requires skilled intensive care unit nurses. ICU nurses' live experience is scarcely known. This study aimed to describe the lived experience of intensive care unit nurses of caring for adult patients with a tracheostomy in intensive care unit. METHODS: This study employs a qualitative design. In-depth interviews were conducted with a purposive sampling of 6 intensive care unit nurses from a medical-surgical ICU of a university hospital in Norway who were interviewed. Data was analyzed and interpreted using a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach. This study was reported according to the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ). RESULTS: The interpretation yielded the following themes and subthemes: 1) theme: 'challenges of caring for patients with a tracheostomy' consisted of the sub-themes: 'difficult to communicate/interpret and understand the patient's different forms of expression', 'complicated professional assessments', 'caring with patience', and 'collaborating with patient regarding challenges. 2) theme: 'the satisfaction from providing care to patients with a tracheostomy' consisted of the sub-themes: 'working with intensive care patients is instructive' and 'importance to motivate'. CONCLUSIONS: ICU nurses experienced ambivalent feelings while caring for adult patients with a tracheostomy in ICU. They perceived caring as demanding owing to communication and collaboration at the same time, they experienced satisfaction while they strived to provide proper care and motivation. The identified challenges would lead to further improvement in nurses' experiences and, in turn, the quality-of-care for patients with a tracheostomy. Awareness of these challenges is crucial to understand the need for an effective communication strategy to improve the quality and safety of adult patients with tracheostomy in ICU.

Ethical challenges in neonatal intensive care nursing.

BACKGROUND: Neonatal nurses report a great deal of ethical challenges in their everyday work. Seemingly trivial everyday choices nurses make are no more value-neutral than life-and-death choices. Everyday ethical challenges should also be recognized as ethical dilemmas in clinical practice. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to investigate which types of ethical challenges neonatal nurses experience in their day-to-day care for critically ill newborns. RESEARCH DESIGN: Data were collected through semi-structured qualitative in-depth interviews. Phenomenological-hermeneutic analysis was applied to interpret the data. PARTICIPANTS AND RESEARCH CONTEXT: Six nurses from neonatal intensive care units at two Norwegian hospitals were interviewed on-site. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: The study is designed to comply with Ethical Guidelines for Nursing Research in the Nordic Countries and the Helsinki declaration. FINDINGS: Findings suggest that nurses experience a diverse range of everyday ethical challenges related to challenging interactions with parents and colleagues, emotional strain, protecting the vulnerable infant, finding the balance between sensitivity and authority, ensuring continuity of treatment, and miscommunication and professional disagreement. DISCUSSION: A major finding in this study is how different agents involved in caring for the newborn experience their realities differently. When these realities collide, ethical challenges arise. Findings suggest that acting in the best interests of the child becomes more difficult in situations involving many agents with different perceptions of reality. CONCLUSION: The study presents new aspects which increases knowledge and understanding of the reality of nursing in a neonatal intensive care unit, while also demanding increased research in this field of care.

The bodily presence of significant others: Intensive care patients' experiences in a situation of critical illness.

This study is about intensive care patients and the bodily presence of significant others. The aim of the study is to inquire and understand the patients experience of the body in relation to their significant others during critical illness. Open, unstructured, in-depth interviews with six former intensive care patients provide the data for the study. The phenomenological-hermeneutical analysis points to a theme among ICU patients' experience of conflict between proximity and distance during the bodily presence of their relations. Patients experience different and conflicting forms of responses to the presence of their significant others. Patients experience significant positive confirmation but also negation through this presence. In the ICU situation, the reactions of significant others appear difficult to deal with, yet the physical presence is significant for establishing a sense of affinity. Patients seek to take some responsibility for themselves as well as for their relatives, and are met with a whole spectrum of reactions. Intensive care patients experience the need to be actively, physically present, which often creates sharp opposition between their personal needs and the needs of their significant others for active participation.

Living the situation stress-experiences among intensive care patients.

The study is about the types of stress that patients in intensive care units experience. Ten reviewed articles selected from Cinahl and Pubmed between 1994 and 2003 constitute the data. The paper is a literature review, and the data is analysed from the phenomenological-hermeneutical point of view. Stress related to the body, room and relationships is discussed. Experiences of stress that are related to the body include bodily stress reactions, deprivation of control, emotions related to technical equipment, procedures and loss of meaning. Stress related to the room highlights the environment and the situation in which the patient finds him/herself. The ethical relations of professionals and separation of patients from their significant others constitute stress related to relationships.

Hypersensitivity to noradrenaline in human omental vein but not artery isolated from a patient with idiopathic orthostatic hypotension.

We investigated the smooth muscle contraction in response to noradrenaline (NA), endothelin-1 (ET) and 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) in the omental artery and vein segments from a 67-year-old woman with idiopathic orthostatic hypotension. The blood vessels were obtained during the abdominal surgery and investigated in vitro. Noradrenaline, endothelin-1 and 5-hydroxytryptamine all induced a contraction in the artery and vein segments. Compared to the literature, the sensitivity to noradrenaline was 10 times higher than expected in the vein. In the artery, the sensitivity to noradrenaline and in both the artery and vein, the sensitivity to endothelin-1 and 5-hydroxytryptamine was similar to that reported in the literature. These results suggest that the patient had developed an isolated hypersensitivity to noradrenaline in the veins, probably due to an impairment of the sympathetic activity.