Birch and Abelson [1] argue that non-income based barriers might explain differences in utilization of health services within and between income groups. Databases which contain utilization data rarely allow for the modelling of geographic variation. In the Ontario Health Survey (OHS), individual observations are georeferenced at the Public Health Unit (PHU) scale, but PHUs cannot easily be used because of the large coefficients of variation. To overcome this problem, a cluster analysis is performed to create a service environment variable, which reflects differences in service availability, population size and rurality. Utilization of health services is then modelled as a logistic regression equation where the independent variables are age, sex, service environment and income to test the Birch and Abelson argument. This argument is then extended by controlling for age, health and income status. Based on the modelling results, the importance of geography to access and utilization is assessed.
To investigate the relationship between dimensions of the psychosocial work environment and the intent to quit among a new generation of nurses.
As a new generation of nurses enters the workforce, we know little about their perception of their current work environment and its impact on their intent to stay.
A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 1002 nurses.
The nurses who intended to quit their positions perceived a significant effort/reward imbalance as well as a lack of social support. The nurses who intended to quit the profession perceived a significant effort/reward imbalance, high psychological demands and elevated job strain.
The balance between the level of effort expended and reward received plays an important role in young nurses' intent to leave.
Nurse Managers must offer Nexters, from the beginning of their career, a meaningful work and supportive environment. Without the efforts of the organization to improve the work environment and support nurses, this generation may not feel valued and move to another organization that will support them or another career that will offer fulfilment.
Advice concerning breastfeeding from mothers of infants admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit: the Roy adaptation model as a conceptual structure.
Data were collected by telephone interviews with 178 mothers of full-term patients in a NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) concerning advice on facilitation of the initiation of breastfeeding. The main advice to the first author as a nurse in the NICU concerned the environment, advice on breastfeeding, distance between units, work organization and nurse behaviour. The advice to other mothers of patients centred on persistence, physical contact with the infant, and not to let nurses take over maternal role functions. The data were structured into themes and categories, classified by one author and two research assistants according to Roy's adaptation theory, and analysed for degree of interrater agreement. The overall agreement of classification was high, reaching 92.5%. It was easily applied by nurses after a brief introduction and proved useful for structuring interview data. It also contributed to clarification of nurse behaviour and division of roles between nurses and mothers. As the four adaptation modes showed considerable overlap, this kind of classification seems inadvisable for application to the assessment of patient/parent situations in the nursing process. For use in a clinical setting, the theory needs the addition of the interactive aspect of nurse and patient/family role functions, and may then be used as a framework for the development of assessment tools.
The hospital is an environment which accomodates the elderly persons and in which these last have to make trainings at one time when they are not in full possession with all their physical, psychological and cognitive capacities. They can then live there humiliating situations which generate feelings of discomfort, embarrassment and shame. The presence of interveners not very warm, lacking compassion lack and impressed negative prejudices towards the elderly patients, is another factor which is added to lead them not to feel at ease, involving, inter alia, consequences a fall of their self-esteem. However the affective touch is a strategy which would have the potential to act on the personal value of the elderly patients and to thus improve their self-esteem. It is with a view to popularize the use of the affective touch in practice nurse that a study was carried out in order to check its effects on the self-esteem of the elderly patients. The results confirm that the emotional touch influences positively the self-esteem of the elderly patients. The authors of the study thus recommend the systematization of the affective touch in nursing practice.
The complex health profile of an older adult entering a hospital presents staff and administrators with a new challenge. This paper documents the Vancouver Island Health Authority's (VIHA) move towards an Elder-Friendly Hospital (EFH). A new approach to hospital care is described, one that takes account not only of an acute healthcare crisis, but also the developmental phenomena associated with aging, with the likelihood of chronic illnesses compounding both diagnosis and treatment. Customized strategies and suggestions for implementation that may be useful to other healthcare agencies are explained.
