Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to K M Rafferty.
This article summarizes the successful development and implementation of an IABP program. Administrative, fiscal, and educational considerations are described. It is important for nursing leaders to maintain a patient focus in an environment that currently reacts to both internal and external pressures.
The ethical dilemmas critical care nurses face in daily practice are increasing as treatments are weighed against the benefit in individual patients. Managing critically ill patients holistically creates ethical challenges on a daily basis. Determining how to assist patients and significant others in making sound ethical decisions is critical to optimal outcomes. Case studies are presented to illustrate further how cost effectiveness will continue to have a major role in determining patient care in the 21st century.
In an acute-care general hospital, 114 telephones, intercoms, dictaphones, and bedpan flusher handles were sampled in patient-care areas for type of bacterial contamination. Nine of these (7%) demonstrated potentially pathogenic bacteria including Klebsiella, Enterobacter, Pseudomonas and Aeromonas. Inanimate, environmental, staff hand-contact objects were only lightly contaminated, did not represent a significant reservoir of gram-negative organisms, and therefore, would be unlikely to be a vehicle of transmission of gram-negative bacteria from the hands of one staff member to another under routine circumstances. Surveillance and disinfection of telephones and related hand-contact items in the hospital appear unnecessary.