Nurses and internet health-related information: review on access and utility.

PURPOSE: To review literature on the nurses' use and access to Internet Health Related Information (HRI). There is relatively little evidence in published literature on barriers, attitudes and how nurses utilize online health-related information. METHODS: Literature search was carried-out on Cumulative Indexes to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), MEDLINE, Google Scholar, Springer and Sage publications. The search timeframe has focused on the outburst of Internet usage between the years 2000 and 2014. RESULTS: Quality of available websites and databases containing health-related information vary widely in their accuracy, validity and reliability that require nurses to continuously evaluate their relevance. CONCLUSION: Emphasis on the necessity for training in the use of information technology is important to the nurses' continuous professional development. Literature showed a strong evidence of the increased access to the Internet by nurses to retrieve information related to clinical practice, which in turns enhance the quality of care and communication among nurses.

Maturity Level of the Stigma Concept Associated with Cancer Diagnosis in the Nursing Literature

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the maturity level of stigma as a concept in nursing and its relationship to care provided for patients with cancer. Methods: The four principles of Morse and his colleagues were used to evaluate the maturity level of the stigma concept: epistemological, logical, pragmaticl, and linguistic. Analysis was conducted with the literature published between 2006 and 2016. Results: The findings of this study suggest that the concept of stigma in nursing is immature, defined inconsistently, and measured with different instruments. How stigma is defined can influence nurses in their assessment of patients with cancer and identification of their needs. Conclusion: Although extensive studies have been conducted in the field of mental illness, it is only recently that the effect of stigma on treatment of cancer patients has attracted attention. Thus, substantial work yet needs to be done to understand the breadth and scope of stigma impacting on individuals with cancer.

Nurses' Experiences of Grief Following Patient Death: A Qualitative Approach.

PURPOSE: To explore the lived experiences of nurses' feelings, emotions, grief reactions, and coping mechanisms following their patients' death. BACKGROUND: On a daily basis, nurses are experiencing patients' death, which exposes them to grief. Nurses' grief has not been sufficiently addressed in practice settings, although it has been a well-known threat to health and work performance. DESIGN: A qualitative design guided by a phenomenological approach was adopted. METHOD: Data were collected from a purposive sample of 21 Jordanian nurses by conducting three focus groups and analyzed using Colaizzi's framework. FINDINGS: Four themes were generated in which participants reported feelings of grief following their patients' death. Their grief emotions were reported as sadness, crying, anger, shock, denial, faith, fear, guilt, fear of the family's reaction, and powerlessness. CONCLUSIONS: The study provided evidence that nurses respond emotionally to patients' death and experience grief. Nurses are burdened by recurrent patients' deaths and try to cope and overcome their grief. This study emphasizes the importance of developing strategies to help nurses positively cope with their grief from a holistic perspective. This will reflect positively on the nurses' performance.