PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

F Bourbonnais

Publications and source records attributed to F Bourbonnais.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1982

Nursing decision making in critical care areas.

This exploratory study sought to identify factors that critical care nurses consider relevant in making rapid patient care decisions; to explore the decision making of these nurses in crisis situations; and to identify critical patient care situations where rapid nursing decisions are made. The convenience sample consisted of 50 nurses in critical care settings. A semi-structured interview with a critical care case study was utilized to examine the nurses' decision making. Open ended responses were transformed into fixed categories for tabulation. The findings suggested that: 1 knowledge and experience were the most important factors influencing rapid decision making; 2 although the nurses identified the appropriate decisions in a given crisis situation they had difficulty providing a theoretical rationale for their decisions; 3 the given case study and the 50 crisis situations identified by the subjects indicated that many nursing decisions for critically ill patients were carried out prior to physician assistance. A demographic data questionnaire that examined age, nursing experience, formal education and continuing education of the subjects determined that the majority of the nurses were under 30 years old, had either less than 1 year experience or 7-9 years in critical care, were graduates of a 2-year diploma programme, and took continuing education courses at the community college level.

Adult↗
PubMed1981

Pain assessment: development of a tool for the nurse and the patient.

The assessment of pain is a difficult and yet vital component of nursing care. Discrepancies in the nursing management of pain can result from inadequate data collection and personal biases about the pain experienced by the patient. For example, how often is the patient with chronic pain consulted about personal remedies used at home to facilitate pain relief? Do nurses have preconceived ideas of how much pain should exist with each disease entity? A tool was developed which incorporated many of the variables affecting the pain response in order to sensitize nurses to the need for careful pain assessment. The information in this tool was conveyed to both graduate and student nurses resulting in improved charting of the patient's pain and improvement in the ability to assess the patient in pain. Description of pain by the patient is often a frustrating experience and yet necessary in helping to determine the cause of the pain and the appropriate interventions. Patients often have difficulty describing their pain to health professionals. A ruler which includes the most frequently utilized terms to describe pain was developed, revised and tested on various patients. The patients interviewed found the tool easy to use and all felt they could communicate their sensation of pain to the nurse.

Adaptation, Physiological↗