Family members' informal roles in end-of-life decision making in adult intensive care units
BACKGROUND: To support the process of effective family decision making, it is important to recognize and understand informal roles that various family members may play in the end-of-life decision-making process.
OBJECTIVE: To describe some informal roles consistently enacted by family members involved in the process of end-of-life decision making in intensive care units.
Commentary on ‘Interprofessional Ethics: A Developing Field?’ — A Response to Banks et al. (2010)
In this commentary on a previous Ethics and Social Welfare publication, the authors argue that inclusive and expansive dialogue about interprofessional ethics is more a matter of ‘‘revitalizing’’ traditional professional ethics than developing a new field. The dialogue will be most productive of care improvements if it incorporates the service user, includes both health and social care professions, and occurs across countries.
Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Reforming health care by transforming health professionals' education
Through purposeful learning guided by the interprofessional collaborative practice competencies, health professionals will acquire needed knowledge and skills to work together in environments built on mutual respect and shared values, knowledge of each other's roles and responsibilities, and effective communication and teamwork processes. The establishment of these competencies for health professionals provides a transformative direction for improving the health care system.
American Interprofessional Health Collaborative: Historical roots and organizational beginnings
This article describes the emergence of the American Interprofessional Health Collaborative to rebuild capacity for interprofessional education and care in the U.S. through an inclusive, evidence-based and open exchange of information and resources. Also described are the historical context and the national and international climate for its emergence.
Keeping patients safe: Transforming the work environment of nurses
Keeping Patients Safe: Transforming the Work Environment of Nurses identifies solutions to problems in hospital, nursing home, and other health care organization work environments that threaten patient safety through their effect on nursing care.
A companion to the Institute of Medicine's earlier patient safety report, To Err is Human, the report puts forth a blueprint of actions that all health care organizations which rely on nurses should take.
Informal roles and the stages of interdisciplinary team development
After presenting a theory of team development, we propose that the informal role structure of a team is dependent upon the degree of anomie in the team culture, and we provide measures of anomie and informal roles that can be used in field settings. Then we test hypotheses on a national sample of 111 interdisciplinary health care teams in geriatrics in US Veterans Affairs medical centers. We find evidence that as teams develop from early to later stages, the interpersonal behavior of members becomes less differentiated on three dimensions: prominence, sociability, and task-orientation.
Collaboration improves the quality of care: Methodological challenges and evidence from US health care research
At the present time when interprofessional collaboration in practice is reaching new levels of interest related to health care system changes in both the UK and the US, a key question being raised is: What are the outcomes and costs of interprofessional collaborative models of care?
End-of-life decisions in adult intensive care: Current research base and directions for the future
The current research knowledge base for end-of-life decision making in adult intensive care units is reviewed. Proposals for future research needs and for practice are described.
Please note: The full text of this article is only available to those with subscription access to the journal Nursing Outlook. Contact your institutional library or the publisher for details.
Development of an Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale
The authors describe the development and psychometric testing across three study phases of an Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale. The measure contains two subscales: Quality of Care/Process (14 items) and Physician Centrality (6 items). The Quality of Care/Process subscale measures team members' perceptions of the quality of care delivered by health care teams and the quality of teamwork to accomplish this. The Physician Centrality subscale measures team members' attitudes toward physicians' authority in teams and their control over information about patients.
USA: Focus on interprofessional practice, education, and research
This article provides an overview of major interprofessional health care, education and research initiatives in the USA in the past fifty years, beginning with a short introduction that places the discussion into a conceptual and historical perspective and ending with some considerations for the future of interprofessional care in the USA.