Biomedical subjects

N Allcock

Publications and source records attributed to N Allcock.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Student nurses' experiences of caring for patients in pain.

Poor pain assessment contributes to inadequate pain relief. Studies in the United States have shown that while student nurses become more sensitive to psychological distress during training, they become less sensitive to pain. However, a recent study by the authors in the United Kingdom found that while inferences of psychological distress increased there was no change in inferences of pain over the common foundation programme. This study set out to explore their experiences of caring for patients in pain during the first 18 months of their training in order to understand how these experiences might affect their sensitivity to patient's pain. Interviews with 15 students following their common foundation programme showed that they experienced a wide range of strong emotions when caring for patients in pain. Their relatively junior status in the wards seemed to place them in difficult positions and provided them with little support. Theories of desensitisation, cognitive dissonance and acculturation have been proposed to explain decreasing sensitivity to pain. The lack of a significant change in students' inferences of pain and the analysis of their interviews suggest that their experiences are more varied than these theories suggest. The students experiences echo those found in previous studies relating to the socialisation of student nurses and emotional labour (Melia, 1987. Learning and Working. The Occupational Socialization Nurses. Tavistock Publishers, London; Smith, 1992. The Emotional Labour of Nursing. Macmillan, London). These findings have important implications for both nurse education and the mechanisms to support student nurses in clinical practice.

Acculturation↗

PubMed2001

A comparison of CAL with a conventional method of delivery of cell biology to undergraduate nursing students using an experimental design.

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a series of computer assisted learning (CAL) packages on cell biology produced for an undergraduate nursing course. The CAL packages were based on the material originally delivered in Kindermann's slide practical classes. The decision to convert this teaching material into CAL packages was taken for a number of reasons, but mainly in response to student evaluations and lack of equipment and staff resources needed to adequately deliver the sessions. Student feedback showed that CAL was preferred to the slide classes. Two studies were carried out to compare the CAL method of delivery with the conventional method using an experimental design. Students taught using CAL felt more confident that they would be able to use the material they had learnt if required as a basis for future work. The distributions rating 'how necessary was the contribution of a teacher in the session' were skewed towards the 'essential' end of the scale for the slide group but towards the 'unnecessary' end for the CAL group. Learning effectiveness was not compromised by the introduction of CAL, even though this meant that no lecturer was on hand to deal with questions.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

PubMed2000

Physiological rationale for early pain management.

An understanding of spinal cord functioning will increase awareness of the effect of painful sensations on the workings of the central nervous system. Dorsal horn hypersensitivity can result in central sensitisation. Early and effective pain management is required to avoid the development of both acute and chronic pain.

Analgesics↗

PubMed1999

The effect of student nurses' experiences over the Common Foundation Programme on their inferences of suffering.

Poor pain assessment contributes to inadequate postoperative pain relief. Studies in the U.S.A. suggest that nurse education might make students less sensitive to patients' experience of pain. This research examined this process and the factors that influence it in the U.K. Two-hundred and seventeen students completed the Standard Measure of Inferences of Suffering Questionnaire (SMIS) before and after their Common Foundation Programme (CFP). Their inferences of psychological distress increased as studies in the U.S.A. had found but, unlike these studies, no change was found in their inferences of pain. These findings have important implications for both nurse education and the mechanisms to support student nurses in clinical practice.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1996

The theory/practice "gap': taking issue with the issue.

Theory/practice issues have a long-standing history in nurse education, and are a chronic source of controversy to which there is no easy or perfect solution. We have argued that it is the tension between theory and practice and research which can be usefully exploited in teaching and research. Students need to be introduced to the debates surrounding the genesis and generation of nursing knowledge. They need to gain an appreciation of what counts as nursing knowledge at different points in time and the politics which drive the legitimation of nursing theory and practice. Such an approach has much to offer in helping students deal with reality shock and make sense of their experience as they confront the ambiguities, uncertainties and contradictions that characterize the stock-in-trade of professional life.

Education, Nursing↗

PubMed1996

Factors affecting the assessment of postoperative pain: a literature review.

The report of the Royal College of Surgeons and College of Anaesthetists has stimulated much interest in the relief of pain following surgery. Despite the development of new techniques such as patient controlled analgesia, pre-emptive analgesia and complementary techniques that have helped to improve the situation, the role of pain assessment remains central. This literature review discusses the standard of nurses' assessment and looks at the factors suggested to influence nurses' assessment of pain.

Aging↗

PubMed1996

The use of different research methodologies to evaluate the effectiveness of programmes to improve the care of patients in postoperative pain.

Much research has supported the conclusion of the report from The Royal College of Surgeons and College of Anaesthetists (1990), London, England, that the relief of postoperative pain is in many cases unsatisfactory and calls for more research on the effectiveness of educational programmes. A prime aim of nursing research is to influence and to improve practice. In relation to postoperative pain Sofaer's (1985) study was an example of the use of a quasi-experimental approach to improve postoperative pain relief through nurse education. Sofaer suggests that although positive effects were demonstrated they may not have been sustained in the long term. Further, Sofaer suggests that action research may have produced a more sustainable change. This paper critically discusses the use of these two research methods in relation to this problem.

Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice↗

PubMed1995

The use of posters in the teaching of biological sciences on an undergraduate nursing course.

Posters are commonly used at research conferences for communicating information and in education as an alternative way of teaching and assessing students. We report the use of posters as a means of teaching and assessing part of the biological sciences component of an undergraduate nursing course. Tutors felt it was a valuable exercise enabling students to develop a number of skills, alongside the learning and revision of knowledge, including working as a team, condensing information and word and graphic processing. Students evaluated the exercise as being challenging but rewarding and preferred to be assessed by this method than by oral presentations or examinations. Lecturers and guided study/tutorials were preferred to posters as teaching methods.

Audiovisual Aids↗

PubMed1994

A survey of the teaching and learning of biological sciences on undergraduate nursing courses.

Curriculum planners developing degree courses in nursing have to decide how much time to allocate to each of the academic disciplines including biological sciences. There is no research-based evidence to suggest what depth and detail of knowledge of biological sciences is required to support nursing practice. There is also some debate about the teaching methods used and who should teach the biological sciences. This paper reports the results of a small survey investigating the teaching of biological sciences on 16 nursing degree courses in the UK. The survey uncovered great variation in the number of hours spent on biological sciences in the different universities and in the science entry requirements of the different universities. Most teachers of biological sciences had a first degree in the subject but few were nurses. The possible implications of these findings are discussed. Problems associated with shared learning and didactic teaching methods are also highlighted. Although the biological sciences input will largely be a matter of institutional preferences, nursing needs to develop a research-based framework to aid curriculum planning.

Biological Science Disciplines↗

PubMed1994

Interpretation of pressure-sore prevalence.

Pressure sores result in patient morbidity and mortality as well as commanding considerable resources within the British National Health Service. To assess the impact of preventive measures, accurate and reliable rates of prevalence and incidence are required. This information is likely to be used as a measure of quality of care as well being included in future purchaser/provider contracting. A number of prevalence studies have been carried out in the United Kingdom using a variety of populations and different methods. The methods employed in these studies need to be considered before any meaningful comparisons can be drawn. In particular, there are variations in the reported rates possibly related to the under-reporting of pressure sore prevalence. This paper describes a recent point prevalence study which suggested that this may be the case. The need for caution when comparing crude rates is highlighted and the importance of standardizing the methods used for determining prevalence rates is discussed.

Cross-Sectional Studies↗

PubMed1993

Bachelor of nursing students' experiences of learning biological sciences alongside medical students.

One of the features of the Bachelor of Nursing (BN) course at Nottingham University is that the students study some biological sciences alongside their medical counterparts. Formative evaluation of the processes of teaching and learning, with a view to monitoring and improving the process of education taking place, is an integral part of the BN curriculum. The findings obtained to date suggest that, whilst the students value some aspects of learning biological sciences with medical students, they are anxious about the effectiveness of the teaching methods being employed; the difficulty of what they are learning and the depth and level of knowledge required in order to deliver safe competent nursing care. They are also concerned about the medical bias of the content that they are being taught and its relevance for them as nurses. This paper will set the biological sciences component of the course in context within both the BN and the medical curriculum. The methods being used to evaluate the teaching and learning processes and the results of these evaluations will be discussed and the implications of the students' experiences will be explored.

Attitude↗

PubMed1992

Teaching the skills of assessment through the use of an experiential workshop.

Assessment is a key element of the nursing process, yet the skills required to perform a nursing assessment are poorly defined in the literature. Related to this, nurse education does not adequately address how it might be possible to develop in students the skills required to plan individualised care. As a contribution to this important area of nurse education, this paper describes the first term of an assessment course, an important component of which is an experiential workshop. This workshop introduces students to the skills of observation, measurement and testing as used when assessing physiological indicators of health status. The workshop was designed to facilitate an understanding of the connection between the students' knowledge of biological sciences and nursing practice.

Clinical Competence↗