Susan Hurst

Role Acquisition, Socialization, and Retention: Unique Aspects of a Mentoring Program

Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, a level-one tertiary care teaching facility in the southwest United States, developed an 18-month RN mentoring program in response to the national nursing shortage and a desire to promote nursing retention at the institution.

Medical futility: a paradigm as old as Hippocrates.

Medical futility is a concept commonly used to describe medical therapy that has no known or anticipated immediate or long-term benefit for a patient. The concept of futility has existed since the time of Hippocrates and has become the predominant dilemma for many end-of-life situations. Today, clinicians grapple with ethical conflicts and concepts in their daily practice. Many healthcare providers use the concept of medical futility when they are talking with patients and families who are in a quandary about their loved ones care. This article provides an overview of medical futility.

Innovative solutions: a plurality of vision--integrating the chaplain into the critical care unit.

Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center is a 650-bed quarternary care facility located in the Southwestern United States. It contains 12 intensive care units (ICUs) and experience a high patient acuity as a result of being a referral center for Arizona. The palliative care nurse practitioner and ICU clinical nurse specialist collaborated with the chaplain to entrance his visibility in the ICUs and to incorporate the philosophy of spiritual care assessments in the ICU.

Intergenerational views of hardiness in critical care nurses.

As all nurses are aware, healthcare is experiencing a time of great change. This change can lead to stress, nurse vacancy rates, and burnout. However, the effects of stress can be mitigated by personal hardiness. This article presents an overview of hardiness, as well as the results of a qualitative study to describe hardiness in the workplace.

Bedbugs: not back by popular demand.

Unfortunately, bedbugs are back and are found in many different places such as homes, hotels, hospitals, movie theaters, and clothing stores. Bedbugs are not related to lower socioeconomic status and are an equal-opportunity problem. This article describes bedbugs, inspection and treatment, and nursing interventions when bedbugs are found.

Innovative solutions: pharmacy and nursing collaboration on a high-risk medication project.

Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center is a 650-bed tertiary care facility in the Southwestern United States. The pharmacy and nursing departments collaborated on a multifocal project to address the educational and operational needs of the facility regarding the new JCAHO Medication Management Review Standards for high-risk and high-alert medications. The project encompassed policy creation, nursing education, identification and evaluation of HRHA medications, and facility-wide distribution of information related to high-risk and high-alert medications.

Innovative solutions: a collaborative effort of critical care oncology: the common ground of tubes and lines.

The intensive care units and the oncology units at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center are for complex patients who require multiple and diverse venous access devices. The critical care clinical nurse specialist and the oncology/bone marrow transplant clinical nurse specialist collaborated to create a reference sheet for nurses regarding the care and maintenance of venous/arterial access devices.

Innovative solution: Mentor program: evaluation, change, and challenges.

Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center is a level 1 tertiary teaching facility in the southwestern United States. The center developed an 18-month registered nurse mentoring program. The program, now in its third year, is revisited looking at the evaluation of retention, program challenges, and change.

A Case of Pulmonary Alveolar Proteinosis Treated With Whole Lung Lavage

Pulmonary alveolar proteinosis is rarely seen and, thus, many critical care nurses may not be familiar with the disease. This article provides information about the epidemiology, pathophysiology, and a case study of a patient with this disease.