Breaking the silence: addressing skin issues in obese and overweight children.

Skin irritation and breakdown can cause considerable physical and psychological pain, yet skin alterations and hygiene issues are often not addressed during routine healthcare visits for children who are overweight and obese. The number of children with obesity has increased significantly, yet there is limited literature to assist children with the private physical symptoms and inconveniences that accompany obesity. Healthcare professionals focus on nutritional intake and activity and treat comorbidities related to obesity, since comorbidities affect quality of life, but so can the pain and embarrassment of skin issues. This article addresses skin issues related to being overweight and obese.

Role Clarity and Interprofessional Colleagues in Psychological Safety: A Faculty Reflection.

SUMMARY STATEMENT: Psychological safety in high-fidelity simulation-based experiences ensures that learners feel safe with new experiences in the service of learning. This article is a faculty reflection on breaches in the psychological safety among nursing students in 2 independent, high-fidelity simulation-based experience studies that were conducted in 2019. Demonstrated breaches in psychological safety included fear and anxiety in the sole provider role in multiple-patient simulations and incivility directed toward nursing students in a primary nurse role in interprofessional simulations. This article adds to the growing literature on psychological safety by sharing important lessons learned regarding role clarity and interprofessional colleagues, proposing recommendations, and providing suggestions for future research on psychological safety.

Assessment of interprofessional collaboration before and after a simulated disaster drill experience.

INTRODUCTION: With increasing acuity, patient care requires a collaborative approach by a team of providers. Recent literature indicates healthcare professionals lack the ability to work in collaboration with other healthcare professionals resulting from communication and collaborative practice gaps. BACKGROUND/LITERATURE: Disasters require a rich collaboration of teams in order to be effective. As a result, interprofessional collaboration is a foundational underpinning of disaster preparedness. The overall purpose of this study was to assess perceptions of interprofessional collaboration before and after participating in an interprofessional simulated disaster drill as part of a Community Health Nursing course. METHODS: This pre-test, post-test descriptive research design assessed communication, collaboration, roles/responsibilities, patient focus, team functioning and conflict management of nursing students who participated in a simulated disaster drill. DATA/RESULTS: Participants were nursing majors and primarily Caucasian females (n = 50, 89% and n = 56, 97% respectively), representative of the school of nursing population at the University. Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks test indicated that scores for the total ICAR post-test were significantly lower than the Total ICAR pre-test (Z = -2.006, p = .045, r = -0.19). While each of the individual sections of the ICAR had a lower mean score on the ICAR post-test as compared to the pre-test, collaborative patient/client-family centered approach was statistically significant (p = 0,0.002). DISCUSSION: Following the simulated disaster drill experience, nursing students identified gaps in communication, collaboration, roles and responsibilities, collaborative patient/client-family centered approach, team functioning, conflict management/resolution. CONCLUSIONS: The study assessed the perceptions of interprofessional collaboration among undergraduate nursing students before and after a simulated disaster drill. The assessment identified the need to integrate interprofessional competencies in disaster preparedness education.