Biomedical subjects
P Woodrow
Publications and source records attributed to P Woodrow.
Nitric oxide: some nursing implications.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Nursing perspectives for intensive care.
Within health care, market forces increasingly determine what services have economic value. For nursing to survive this economic onslaught, nurses must clarify their values and roles. While nurses working in intensive care develop useful technical skills and normally work within a constructive multi-disciplinary team framework, they have a potentially unique contribution to care, focusing on the patient as a whole person rather than intervening to solve a problem. The need for both physiological and psychological care creates a need for holistic values, best achieved through humanistic perspectives. Humanistic nursing places patients as people at the centre of nursing care, as illustrated by the limitations of reality orientation compared with the potentials of validation therapy. Intensive care nurses asserting and developing such patient-centred roles offer a valuable way forward for nursing to develop into the 21st century.
Professional practice: the impact of UKCC practice principles.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Exploring confidentiality in nursing practice.
This article discusses the complex issues and dilemmas that nurses need to consider when dealing with confidential information. As well as reviewing situations where patients' rights to confidentiality conflict with public interest, the author discusses nurses' legal, ethical, moral and professional duties when handling confidentiality issues.
Approaches to the care of people with dementia.
Respect for an older person's autonomy may challenge assumptions about safety. Custodial care is rarely in the interests of the patient. Health problems in older people are often complex and stereotypes and labels are unhelpful Offering choices to people with dementia is worth while but not easy.
Mentorship: perceptions and pitfalls for nursing practice.
Mentorship is currently a much used, and abused, term within nursing. This study explores some implications, burdens and benefits created through mentorship. Discussion is focused on developments within health care in the United Kingdom. Emphasis is placed on its use within Project 2000 and other recent developments of nurse education. Literature review and personal experience offer insights on current practice of mentorship, enabling discussion around various aspects, and some necessarily tentative conclusions.
Resource package: haemofiltration.
Use of haemofiltration is increasing in general intensive therapy units in the United Kingdom, yet few nursing staff working with this technology are trained in renal nursing. They thus need special support while caring for patients being treated with haemofiltration. This package offers a practical working knowledge-base for clinical use. Normal renal physiology is revised, the principles of haemofiltration are discussed, and some areas of concern are examined. Recommendations for practice are given where appropriate. Specific reference is made to the Hospal BSM 22 blood pump, and the Hemospal AN69s filter.
An opportunist to keep at bay. Pseudomonas in ITU.
Pseudomonas is a common cause of infection in ITU. To minimise incidence of this opportunistic infection, it is essential that nursing care is based on research, rather than ritual.
Continuous subcutaneous neostigmine in the management of severe myasthenia gravis.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Amniography. Useful radiographic procedure.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Role of the lecturer practitioner: 1.
The lecturer practitioner role is a practice-led educational development which has been sparsely studied. This two-part article aims to show that the role is central to dynamic development within the nursing profession and that, despite many potential problems, it can be both rewarding and valuable. Part 1 describes the development of the lecturer practitioner role and examines various aspects of the role, including clinical learning and assessment.
Nurse advocacy: is it in the patient's best interests?
Advocacy within health care and nursing is a frequently discussed concept, but the many practical problems it can create for nurses are not always considered. This article explores some of the problems identified in the literature and through practice. It suggests that instead of being used as a confrontational means of gaining power, advocacy should become a positive patient-focused action. While interpreting advocacy in practice remains problematic, some ways to achieve a positive patient-focused approach are offered.
Interventions for confusion and dementia. 1: Quality of life.
This series of articles examines some of the more commonly used interventions for confusional states/dementia. This article explores issues around quality of life. Quality of life is a subjective and potentially undefinable concept. Yet in recent years it has been used widely in the nursing literature. However it is defined, it is fundamental to humanity and underpins all the interventions discussed in the later articles. When continuing health care fails to offer hope of a medical cure, the focus necessarily shifts to care. Good care and quality of life are inextricably linked. This article raises awareness of some key issues to guide readers when deciding whether or not to adopt a particular intervention; a prescriptive approach to quality of life is deliberately avoided. Later articles in this series will discuss reality orientation, reminiscence, validation, and multisensory environments.
Interventions for confusion and dementia. 2: Reality orientation.
This article, the second of a five-part series exploring interventions for confusional states, discusses reality orientation (RO). For many decades, this form of intervention has been widely used and accepted as a way of reducing symptoms of confusion. However, an argument against RO is that it makes the person a passive recipient and reinforces feelings of disempowerment. This article describes the development of RO, exploring its strengths and weaknesses. Literature on the subject is largely anecdotal and dated as RO has been largely superseded by the interventions discussed in later articles, e.g. reminiscence and validation therapy.
Interventions for confusion and dementia. 3: Reminiscence.
The aims of reality orientation, which was discussed in the previous article of this series (Vol 7(17): 1018-20), are to achieve behavioural improvements. The aims of reminiscence, however, are empowerment and the provision of pleasure and it is therefore more associated with quality of life and quality of care. Reminiscence can be an enjoyable activity. Used in a structured way, it can achieve a sense of wellbeing, and increase empathy between healthcare workers and clients. This article discusses the benefits and problems of reminiscence, and suggests means to develop reminiscence skills and materials.