Biomedical subjects
Karen S Feldt
Publications and source records attributed to Karen S Feldt.
The complexity of managing pain for frail elders.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Frail older patient care by interdisciplinary teams: a primer for generalists.
Frail older patients-unlike younger persons in the health care system or even well elders-require complex care. Most frail older patients have multiple chronic illnesses. Optimum care cannot be achieved by following the paradigm of ongoing traditional health care, which emphasizes disease and cure. Because no one health care professional can possibly have all of the specialized skills required to implement such a model of health care delivery, interdisciplinary team care has evolved. This paper describes the roles of the participating team members in the context of interdisciplinary care for frail older adults. In addition, the challenges that occur when Geriatric Interdisciplinary (ID) Teams involved in providing care to frail older patients are identified and discussed.
Older adults with hip fractures. Treatment of pain following hospitalization.
This study examined pain experiences and treatment for older adults in long-term care or rehabilitation settings 3 week after surgical repair of a hip fracture. Pain report and pain treatment for cognitively intact residents were compared with cognitively impaired residents. Two thirds of all participants reported pain. Most rated pain as slight or mild in severity. Pain report was similar for cognitively impaired and intact participants. Pain was reported as severe or worse by 17% of the residents. Nursing care plans documented comfort as a goal for fewer than half the participants. Almost 40% (n = 23) of the participants were receiving no pain medication 3 weeks postoperatively, five of these rated their pain as moderate or severe. Pain documentation, including effective non-pharmacological treatments, needs to be improved for cognitively impaired and intact older adults who are recovering from hip fracture surgery.
Gerontologic nurse practitioner preceptor guide.
Geriatric nurse practitioners (GNPs) often serve as clinical preceptors for nurse practitioner students. The Nursing Interest Group of the John A. Hartford Foundation's Geriatric Interdisciplinary Team Training Program recognized a need for a condensed guide that clarifies the role of a GNP preceptor. This guide uses information from the literature to clarify the role of the preceptor, offer suggestions for clinical teaching, provide guidance to determine expectations for student performance, and delineate the progression of a nurse practitioner student. This article reviews the contents of the guide and offers suggestions for its use in clinical practice.
Treatment of pain for older hip fracture patients across settings.
PURPOSE: To examine the treatment of pain following hip fracture across settings (hospital to nursing home or rehabilitation facility). DESIGN: This was a secondary data analysis of two survey design studies that collected data on hip fracture patients in the hospital and for posthospital days at an institutional setting. SAMPLE: 115 subjects, 65 years or older, who had undergone surgical treatment of a hip fracture. METHODS: Medical records were reviewed to compare the amount of pain medication administered to postoperative hip fracture elders during the last 24 hours in the hospital with that of the first 24 hours in the nursing home (NH). FINDINGS: The mean length of stay following surgery was 4.8 days. Subjects received significantly less medication during the first 24 hours in the NH as compared with the last 24 hours of hospitalization. Over one third (37.4%) of the subjects received no opioid analgesic and 18.3% (n = 21) received no analgesic of any kind during the first 24 hours of NH stay. IMPLICATIONS: Rather than simply listing medications orders, hospital nursing staff should communicate type, amount, frequency and efficacy of pain medication in transfer notes to nursing home staff. Nursing home staff would benefit from postoperative pain management education.