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Biomedical subjects

P L Walsh

Publications and source records attributed to P L Walsh.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1986

Compliance of neonatal nurse practitioners with gentamicin pharmacokinetic recommendations.

The compliance of nurse practitioners in a neonatal intensive-care center with gentamicin dosage recommendations from a pharmacokinetic consultation service was determined. Medical and pharmacokinetic dosage data were collected retrospectively from the medical records and pharmacokinetic consultation records of eligible neonates as soon as they had completed gentamicin therapy. Neonates for whom pharmacokinetic dosage recommendations had been followed by each of four neonatal nurse practitioners (NNPs) were compared with neonates for whom recommendations had not been followed to identify patient characteristics that might have influenced NNP compliance with the recommendations. Each NNP also completed a questionnaire designed to elicit information about professional and behavioral characteristics that might be associated with compliance. Data were collected for a total of 98 neonates. Discriminant analysis revealed no significant differences between the two groups of neonates. Although the NNPs perceived themselves to be in high compliance with the pharmacokinetic recommendations, the actual group compliance rate was 43%. Neonatal nurse practitioners may require special education in the proper use of pharmacokinetic dosage recommendations even if they perceive themselves to be compliant with those recommendations.

Gentamicins↗
PubMed1983

Cost avoidance in a regional continuing education center.

Continuing education is a professional fact of life. There are numerous reasons why health professionals continue their education: the knowledge explosion makes existing theory and practice obsolete; society is ever changing and becoming increasingly complex; professionals are required to improve the quality of services rendered because of increased demands for accountability; some individuals change roles (e.g., direct care provider to administrator) within a profession, or even change professions; and some professions (e.g., medicine, nursing) require documentation of participation for relicensure and/or recertification to practice. While there are compelling reasons for health professionals to continue their education, the state of economic affairs is such that both continuing education (CE) providers and participants must seek ways to avoid and/or reduce costs related to CE. This paper consists of a case study description of what one regional continuing education center has done to reduce costs without reducing services.

Area Health Education Centers↗
PubMed1982

Design considerations for adult patient education.

A variety of factors require attention in the design of patient education programs for adults. Andragogy, the art and science of helping adults learn, describes certain conditions of learning that are more conducive to growth and development for adults and prescribes practices in the learning-teaching transaction to meet them. Stigma, a special discrepancy between virtual and actual social identity, reduces a patient's self-esteem and fosters a feeling of dependence on others for care. Anxiety related to diagnosis and illness creates a situation in which patients cannot productively learn. The stages in acceptance of diagnosis provide a roadmap for understanding a patient's feelings/psychological processes and insight into opportunities to intervene with patient education. The specific disease a patient has effects his ability to learn. Each of these factors is considered with implications described for designing and implementing patient education activities for adults.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Pathways to impact evaluation in continuing education in the health professions.

This article examines evaluation in continuing education (CE) in the health professions as defined as impact on health care provider competence, health care provider performance, or patient health status. A rationale for engaging in impact evaluation is presented. Areas for impact evaluation, sources of impact data, data collection methods, evaluation study design, and data analysis strategies are discussed. A brief literature review of past CE impact studies, three case studies of CE impact evaluations, and three examples of evaluation instruments are presented to help practitioners design effective evaluations in their own health care settings.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed1981

A model for planning continuing education for impact.

This article reviews the current status of planning and evaluating continuing education (CE) activities for health care professionals. It also acknowledges the increasing demands for accountability of CE. After identifying attributes of most current CE planning strategies and the assumptions underlying them, the article proposes a new system for planning CE that calls for reorientation from the traditional method of planning. This reorientation suggests a problem orientation in programming that requires assessing needs in terms of patient care data, organizing activities around the problem as a focus rather than a health care discipline, committing resources to eliminating the needs regardless of the number of interventions required, and evaluating in terms of impact on indicators used to identify needs. This planning strategy purports to increase the probability of having a measurable impact on health care.

Education, Continuing↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Patient education meets economic austerity, accountability demands, and staff burnout.

Three non-mutually exclusive forces (economic austerity, accountability, and staff burnout) come together to demand a close look at the methods used to plan and evaluate patient education programs. A program development approach that focuses on the impact of patient education activities could respond to the demand of each of these forces. If patient educators can submit data on the impact their activities have on patients, they will be in a better position to compete for limited resources. If accountability is the obligation to disclose those acts for which an individual, group, or institution is responsible, then an approach that documents processes and outcomes will satisfy this demand. If such an approach enables patient educators to set goals and measure the success of programs, the staff burnout phenomenon can be diminished. Such a planning approach, together with an example, is described.

Evaluation Studies as Topic↗