Biomedical subjects
C A Consolvo
Publications and source records attributed to C A Consolvo.
Special touches in perinatal care.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Profile of the hardy NICU nurse.
Interviews with our long-term NICU nurses correlated with Kobasa's hardiness research. our nurses see themselves as in control of their patients, who are entrusted to the nurses by the parents. They are committed to their work, which they view as essential. They are constantly challenged by the technological improvements and demands of their work. And, adding a fourth personality characteristic to Kobasa's work, they see companions as an integral part of their ability to cope with stress. We are interested in further investigating the companionship component and its importance for hardy NICU nurses, as well as the effects of the other hardiness characteristics. Our initial findings in our interviews, as well as further research in this area, may help in evaluating current unit policies and procedures and how they support these coping mechanisms. Our next step is to formally study our nurses and their hardy-to-stress personalities to determine whether we can effectively use a hardiness scale to direct nurses to high- or low-stress units. Another interesting question is whether nurses can be taught to become hardy. Much previous research on stress, burnout, and the nursing profession has focused on external factors and their effects on nurse retention. Utilizing Kobasa's and others' work on hardiness, we hope to learn more about the introspective factors and their relationship to the success of long-term NICU nurses.
Administrative aspects of pediatric nursing: the child's family.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
ICU design: many hands make right work.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
The care by parent unit. A tool for decreasing anxiety in mothers of high risk infants.
The delivery of a premature infant, especially one of very low birth weight, represents a crisis for a family. Bidder et al. have determined through a series of interviews that mothers of preterm infants are anxious at two particular points in their infant's neonatal course: the time of birth and the time of discharge. The Care By Parent Unit (CBPU) was developed at Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas, to provide a transition from the specialized care of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to home and to aid the parents in viewing their infant as a normal, "safe" child to take home. To evaluate the impact of a CBPU on maternal anxiety, the mothers' responses before and after the CBPU experience were evaluated.
So you want to start a wellness program.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Clipboard supervision--not reasonable in 1977.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Nurse turnover in the newborn intensive care unit.
Nurse retention has become a significant issue in the newborn intensive care units for two main reasons: 1) the quality of care declines as it is delivered by inexperienced nurses, and 2) the cost of orienting new nurses is exorbitant. "Stress" has been implicated as one of the important factors in nurse retention; it appears that a paradox exists in that the stress/excitement that attracts a nurse to the newborn ICU in the first place may ultimately drive her away. We attempted to define stress factors in the Turner Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas, and to develop management methods to decrease stress. Over a three-year period, during the implementing of new programs, nurse termination rates decreased significantly, as did turnover.
Relieving parental anxiety in the care-by-parent unit.
To determine if maternal anxiety could be reduced by allowing mothers to live in the hospital with their infant before discharge, a study was conducted using 14 mothers who spent 36 to 48 hours in a care-by-parent unit (CBPU) just before the infants' discharge home. The mothers gradually assumed total responsibility for infant care with the support of health-care professionals. Anxiety of mothers was measured before and after their care-by-parent experience. In one situation, which involved potential illness of the infant, maternal anxiety was significantly reduced. If further studies support these results, care-by-parent units for infants who require intensive care should be part of discharge planning in neonatal intensive care units.
Financial management for nurse managers--the bottom line for renewal.
Cost-effective health care has become the hospital motto for the 1990s. A great majority of costs can be controlled on individual nursing units, but many clinically expert nurse managers lack skills in financial management. Our goal was to teach such skills in a framework in which cost was balanced with quality. The three-day course emphasized leadership skills and management styles, change and renewal, solutions to problems of nurse turnover, and specific financial strategies. Evaluations of the course were positive and demonstrated one way in which valuable nurse managers can learn new skills to keep up with current needs.
The Parent-Child Council.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Producing videos for home use by parents of high-risk infants.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.