Assessing attitudinal barriers toward end-of-life care.

Due to the rapid influx of Palliative care and Hospice services over the last decade, there has been an increase in the number of medical professionals interacting with terminal patients. One of the challenges with this growth becomes how to integrate these services into already busy practices along with providing physicians the education and tools they need to provide quality care. While there is no shortage of articles focusing on the educational needs of physicians related to end of life care, less is known about the level of anxiety physicians feel about interacting with dying patients and their families.

Adolescent suicide prevention: the Oklahoma community reaches out.

In the United States, Oklahoma currently ranks fifth in suicide attempts and ninth in suicide completion in the 10- to 24-year-old age group. Studies have shown that many teens are seen by their primary care physician within 6 weeks of their suicide attempt or completion. Building on this finding, a questionnaire focusing on what physicians and nurses knew about the warning signs and symptoms of adolescent suicide was created and distributed to area clinics. It was found that few of the health care providers were comfortable in recognizing the warning signs and symptoms of suicide. An educational program was developed focusing on the warning signs of suicide to help health care workers deal with this troubling problem.

Do shoes matter? A story of shoes in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Faced with an increase in foot-related absences and complaints of foot pain by staff, a nurse manager sought help from the nursing research department staff to help find answers to this problem. The authors discuss how replacing the shoes that the nurses wore to a walker-style shoe was able to improve not only the foot pain but also the unit's health as well.

Increasing the use of child restraints in motor vehicles in a Hispanic neighborhood.

The use of restraints in motor vehicles is less common in minority and low-income populations than in the general population. A preliminary survey of Hispanic preschool-aged children in west Dallas, Tex, conducted in 1997 showed much lower child restraint use (19% of those surveyed) than among preschool children of all races in the rest of the city (62%). Because there are few reports of successful programs to increase child restraint use among Hispanics, we undertook to implement and evaluate such a program. The program was conducted by bilingual staff and was tailored for this community. It was successful in increasing both child restraint use and driver seat belt use.