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Biomedical subjects

M T Lush

Publications and source records attributed to M T Lush.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Developing an outcomes infrastructure for nursing. The Outcomes Taskforce.

An infrastructure to support the evaluation of patient care sensitive to the intervention of nursing personnel is being developed within a major health maintenance organization. In addition to traditional administrative measures of care, the database infrastructure will include measures of the patient's functional status, knowledge and engagement in care and psychosocial well-being. These measures are believed to be particularly sensitive to the independent intervention of the nurse. Reported here are the structures in place to monitor and support the reliability and validity of the administrative data elements; algorithm elements created to account for missing data; the model for the first generation of successful practice reports and the results of a study establishing the content validity of the clinical data elements.

Costs and Cost Analysis

Dyspnea in the ventilator-assisted patient.

Our purpose in this study was to investigate the factors coincident with the occurrence of dyspnea in ventilator-assisted patients. Five alert and oriented patients with pulmonary disease that was restrictive, obstructive, or both, who were receiving mechanical ventilation, participated in this descriptive study. At 4-hour intervals and at complaint of dyspnea, patients quantified the severity of their dyspnea using the visual analogue and modified Borg scales. At each measurement of dyspnea, nurses observed concomitant physiologic and environmental variables. A moderate correlation (r = 0.51, p less than 0.001) was found between the number of events and activities occurring in the intensive care unit environment and the occurrence and severity of dyspnea. The visual analogue scale and modified Borg scale measures of dyspnea were highly correlated (r = 0.92, p less than 0.001) and may be useful tools for assessing dyspnea in patients undergoing mechanical ventilation.

Adult