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Biomedical subjects

J L Bigbee

Publications and source records attributed to J L Bigbee.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1993

The uniqueness of rural nursing.

Rural nursing is a unique and challenging field of nursing that requires a "special breed" of nurse that is committed to high quality, comprehensive care at the individual, family, and community levels. The unique characteristics of rural nursing include close interaction with the community, a truly generalist approach, and increased autonomy, cohesiveness, and community visibility. This area of specialty practice requires nurses to be highly competent and well-prepared in all aspects of professional practice. Certainly, the demands of rural nursing are great, as are the benefits. Rural nursing can indeed be the essence of what nursing should be.

Community Health Nursing↗
PubMed1992

Patient classification systems: a new approach to computing reliability.

Patient classification systems are an integral part of managing nursing care that requires accuracy and consistency. Assessing interrater reliability is essential in monitoring and evaluating patient classification systems. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to statistically assessing reliability. The most commonly used method, percentage of agreement, is limited and tends to be inflated due to chance variation. The ANOVA method, although more complex computationally, offers more accuracy and flexibility.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1992

Frontier areas: opportunities for NPs' primary care services.

Demographers have recently designated frontier areas as distinct from other rural areas. Frontier counties are defined as those with less than six persons per square mile; as such, they constitute 45 percent of the U.S. land mass and include 2.2 million people. The health status among frontier residents is estimated to be lower than that of other rural or urban populations, and frontier health services, particularly primary care services, are scant. In this article, opportunities for nurse practitioners in frontier practice are explored, including specific suggestions for the development of new frontier NP practices.

Career Mobility↗
PubMed1991

Strategies for promoting health protection.

There is a need for nurses to be involved in testing and refinement of conceptual models for health protection. Development and testing of strategies should occur in all age groups and in a variety of cultural and socioeconomic groups in public and private settings. These strategies need to be evaluated and published.

Health Behavior↗
PubMed1990

Reliability and validity testing of the whole-blood hemoglobinometer.

The whole-blood hemoglobinometer is an anemia-screening tool commonly used in public health nursing practice. This study evaluated the reliability and validity of the instrument. Test-retest, intertester, and intertest reliability were all shown to be strong. Sensitivity was 1.0, specificity ranged from 0.8571 to 0.9024, positive predictive value ranged from 0.6428 to 0.7453, and negative predictive value was 1.0. A small but statistically significant difference in hemoglobinometer versus Coulter readings was found, resulting in a 10% false positive rate.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Stressful life events and illness occurrence in rural versus urban women.

Stressful life events and illness occurrence were examined in a sample of rural and urban Wyoming women (N = 157). Modified versions of Norbeck's Life Experiences Survey (LES) for Women and Wyler's Seriousness of Illness Scale were used. The results indicated no significant rural-urban differences in the number or intensity of stressful life events. A strong positive correlation between stressful life events and illness occurrence, particularly in relation to the total number of events experienced, was found.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

The effects of consumer education on women's health: a pilot study.

This prospective quasi-experimental pilot study investigated the effects of a consumer education program on women's health and related attitudes. Variables addressed were health status, self-care practices, health value, health locus of control, community involvement and health-related consumer and political attitudes. A sample of 25 women were studied over a one-year period. Fifteen of the subjects received an experimental 16-week consumer education program. Analysis of variance of repeated measures suggested that the consumer education produced limited effects. There were no statistically significant changes over time in either the experimental or control groups in relation to any of the outcome variables, except health status. The mean number of reported health problems declined by 59.7% over the year of study in the experimental group, while the control group reported a 16.9% increase in health problems. These pilot data appear to lend some support to the therapeutic and social value of health education efforts in women's health care.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Stressful life events among women: a rural-urban comparison.

This retrospective comparative study assessed the levels and types of stressful life events among rural versus urban women in Wyoming (n = 157). No significant difference in total life events scores, negative life events scores, positive life events scores, or total number of life events reported was found between the rural and urban samples. Rural women tended to report environmentally related stressors more frequently than urban women, while urban women reported more financially related stressors. The findings suggest that the levels of stress among rural and urban women are comparable, but the types of stressors experienced may vary.

Female↗
PubMed1986

Beyond chi-square: log-linear analysis and related methods of qualitative analysis.

Advanced methods of qualitative analysis hold great potential for nursing and health-related research. In this article, recent advances in qualitative analysis techniques are discussed and illustrated using data from a study of professional attitudes regarding nurse practitioner prescribing. Implications for in-depth multivariate analysis and theory building are discussed.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1985

Hardiness: a new perspective in health promotion.

Hardiness is a developing concept of particular relevance to primary care nursing. Evolving out of existential psychology, hardiness is proposed as a personality characteristic that serves to mediate the stress-illness relationship, promoting health in the presence of high degrees of life change and stress. In this review, the concept of hardiness is analyzed and discussed. Its implications for nursing theory and primary care practice are demonstrated.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1984

Prescriptive authority for nurse practitioners: a comparative study of professional attitudes.

We assessed the attitudes of Wyoming physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and nurse practitioners about granting prescriptive authority to nurse practitioners. Support for the issue was mixed, with physicians expressing the strongest disagreement. All groups supported limitation of authority to a specific drug formulary, collaborative regulation, and mandatory certification and continuing education if prescriptive authority is granted to nurse practitioners.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗