Heli Virtanen

Patient education and health-related quality of life: surgical hospital patients as a case in point.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the connections between patient education and health-related quality of life as an outcome variable. Data were collected among surgical hospital patients (n = 237) in Finland. On the basis of the results, there seems to be a positive relationship between received knowledge and health-related quality of life, and as such, the study produced knowledge about one quality indicator in nursing care. More research is needed to explore this connection in greater details.

Organizational ethics: A literature review:

The aim of the study was to report the results of a systematically conducted literature review of empirical studies about healthcare organizations’ ethics and management or leadership issues. Electronic databases MEDLINE and CINAHL yielded 909 citations. After a two stage application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria 56 full-text articles were included in the review. No large research programs were identified. Most of the studies were in acute hospital settings from the 1990s onwards. The studies focused on ethical challenges, dilemmas in practice, employee moral distress and ethical climates or environments. Study samples typically consisted of healthcare practitioners, operational, executive and strategic managers. Data collection was mainly by questionnaires or interviews and most of the studies were descriptive, correlational and cross-sectional. There is need to develop conceptual clarity and a theoretical framework around the subject of organizational ethics and the breadth of the contexts and scope of the research needs to be increased.

Knowledge received by hospital patients—a factor connected with the patient-centred quality of nursing care

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate and analyse the connection between the level of quality of nursing care and knowledge received by patients (N = 266, n = 226), response rate was 85%. The data were collected using two structured instruments: one measuring the quality of nursing care experienced by patients (The Good Nursing Care Scale, GNCS) and one measuring the received knowledge of hospital patients (RKHP). The data were collected at one (out of five) Finnish university hospitals, in all medical wards during 5 weeks in 2009. A clear association between the level of the quality of nursing care and the level of received knowledge was found: on the total level of instruments, correlation was strong (r = 0.705). Support of empowerment (GNCS) had statistically significant strong correlation between biophysiological knowledge (RKHP), (r = 0.718), and experiential knowledge (r = 0.633), (P ≤ 0.01). Furthermore, there was a strong correlation between nursing activities and biophysiological knowledge (r = 0.637). Higher age, sufficient advance information and better self-perceived health status were associated both with the level of the quality of nursing care and level of received knowledge. In the future, a special attention should be paid to the sufficient information for patients before their hospital stays.

Perceptions of Geriatric Rehabilitation Nursing in Denmark

The article describes the perceptions of registered nurses about geriatric rehabilitation nursing and their views on their own role in this process. The data were collected with a structured questionnaire from four Danish hospitals. In addition to basic background information, the instrument included 88 items with five preset response options. The questionnaire was handed out to 200 registered nurses, with a (135) response rate of 67.5 %. Various statistical methods were applied in data analysis. The results show that nurses understand their profession as being implicitly rehabilitative, which is best manifested in their working with a multidisciplinary team in the rehabilitation process. They also recognized that geriatric rehabilitation nursing requires specific knowledge and skills. Rehabilitation is perceived as a goal-oriented process in which it is necessary to establish and evaluate patient goals. However, large numbers admitted that they were generally unaware of these goals and that when goals were identified, they were not consistently reviewed and updated. Nurses who had graduated after 1990 showed a more critical attitude towards the actions of the rehabilitation team, including its approach to goal-oriented work, patient motivation and evaluation of goal attainment. The results of the study provide useful clues for further investigations into the nurses role in geriatric rehabilitation.

Nursing student control over using a computer simulation program about empowering discourse.

Nurses find empowering discourse as a patient education intervention demanding, so using methods that support the constructive learning of empowering discourse during their education would be helpful. The aim of this descriptive, comparative study was to evaluate student control when using a computer simulation program that facilitates learning about empowering discourse. The study hypothesis was as follows: Students can control the use of an empowering discourse computer simulation program regardless of their sociodemographic background and study orientation. In the study, 69 students completed an educational session culminating in a computer simulation in which the students responded to a simulated patient’s statements in their choice of six content areas in three sections by using a multiple-choice method, an open-ended method, or both methods. The students used all the options in the program despite their background and study orientations. The findings provided evidence that nursing students had control over the use of the computer simulation program to manage their own learning and were able to construct personal knowledge about empowering discourse using the computer simulation regardless of their study orientations.