Choosing an appropriate depression assessment tool for chinese older adults: a review of 11 instruments. The best tools take into account cultural differences.

The purpose of this article is to compare the advantages and limitations of developed depression assessment tools and provide recommendations for clinical staff to select an appropriate tool for use with Chinese older adults. A total of 7 Western tools translated into Chinese and 4 tools developed specifically for assessing Chinese older adults were found in 12 articles. Variability in instrument psychometric properties and cutoff scores is discussed. A reasonable strategy to efficiently assess depression in Chinese older adults is to first administer the Single Question or Geriatric Depression Scale-4 (GDS-4). If depression is likely, the Chinese GDS-15 could be used to increase the probability of identifying depression in Chinese older adults.

[Helping a family primary caregiver adjust to caregiving stress].

The authors present a case study of a nursing experience with a primary caregiver who cared for his wife for more than 10 years (1/18/92 to 1/29/02). Data were collected by observation, interviews, physical examination, and an assessment instrument consisting of the Barthrel Index, Karnofsky Scale, Caregiver Burden, Risk of Impaired Nutritional Status, Quality of Caregiving Index, Norton Skin Index, and Major nursing problems for both the care receiver and caregiver were: a) everyday quality of life was severely impacted by an overload of caregiving stress, b) insufficient social support, and c) deficiencies in family functioning. The authors describe the details of the primary intervention effort, primarily helping the patient and caregiver locate and contact formal and informal social support resources.

The relationships among turnover intentions, professional commitment, and job satisfaction of hospital nurses.

This study investigated the relationships among turnover intentions, professional commitment, and job satisfaction of registered nurses. A structured, self-administered questionnaire, including the Professional Commitment Scale, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and demographic data, was distributed to 2,550 registered nurses. A total of 2,197 subjects completed the questionnaires with an 86.2 per cent response rate. All of the subjects were women. The mean age was 28.56 years. Seventy-two per cent of respondents had graduated with an associate's degree and 59 per cent were unmarried. There was a positive correlation between job satisfaction and professional commitment, intention to leave the organization, and between intention to leave the profession. The negative correlation was significant between professional commitment and turnover intentions, and between job satisfaction and turnover intentions. The discriminant analysis showed that 38.4 per cent of job satisfaction was correctly classified in predicting intention to leave the organization, and 30.5 per cent in predicting the intention to leave the profession. Thirty per cent of professional commitment was correctly classified in predicting intention to leave the organization, and 39.7 per cent in predicting the intention to leave the profession. The study suggests that there were different moderators that affect different turnover intentions of staff nurses.