Iran Journal of Nursing
Year:2008 | Volume:20 | Issue:52|Papers Count:8

Background & Aim: Pain relief is an integral part of nursing care and an appreciated outcome of nursing actions. Pain is one of the most common problems in postoperative period. This article is part of a larger study which aimed to explore patients’ perspective of pain and pain management. Annually, more than hundreds of million people undergo surgical operations experiencing postoperative pain. Although a number of researches and discussion papers have explored the issue, the current study has explored patients' perspective about postoperative pain management, a subject that have rarely been studied.Material & Method: A qualitative approach was adopted. Data was collected via semi- structured interviews and participations’ observations. A purposive sample of ten surgical patients and four companions (relatives) were selected from two educational health centers. Data analysis uncovered a number of themes. The themes related to patients’ perspective about pain management is subject of this paper.Results: The other five themes of pain management were: watching over by personnel and availability, humanistic approach, presenting information and patient education, communication and patient’s participation, considering patient integrity, and ambivalence between expression of pain and reluctance.Conclusion: The findings of this study help personnel to know the patients and their needs better and to find what pain management means to them. Consequently, nurses can plan, imply and evaluate nursing interventions most appropriately

Background & Aim: Perhaps it could be claimed that performing task in organization would not be successful, unless the necessary controls have been provided. Management system needs control to be informed about the methods of goal achievement and performing operations, thereby, gaining the ability for tracking, testing and reforming methods. In any specialty, in order to consider these activities equally and scientifically, the responsible establish professional standards in the form of direction and framework and declare them to enforcers. With due attention to the importance of control, especially in health systems management and with view to the fact that there is no standard in this field, the current study was designed with the aim of compiling standards for control accreditation in nursing management in Iran.Material & Method: This is a triangulation research conducted from 2004 to 2006. The sample size was 15 in Delphi stage and total of 50 nursing management experts (from Iranian medical sciences universities) in stage of survey. The sampling was target based. At first, a pilot study was conducted in Isfahan and Shiraz by an open questionnaire, and then the main research was conducted in three phases. In the first stage, international standards of control for nursing services management were collected. In the second stage, a semi-structured questionnaire was developed from perspectives of 15 professional nurse managers. The suggestions were collected and the researchers reached a consensus of 70% in the third stage. Then, the researchers held a national survey among 50 nursing management experts in Iran. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and distribution frequency and eventually control of nursing services management standards in Iran were extracted.Results: Thirty five standards in area of control was established. The results show that these standards had more than 90 percent of acceptability.Conclusion: These standards together with the standard of nursing units can develop quality, so, it is suggested that these standards can be utilized by ministry of health and medical education to control credit rating of nursing units, in order to identify the lacks and shortages.

Background & Aim: An effective and efficient educational system must be continuously revised to be responsive to the present and future community needs. The purpose of the study was to compare students and teachers opinions regarding theorypractice gap in nursing education in Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences in 1378-79.Material & Method: This research was a cross sectional study. The data was collected from nursing student (n=67) and clinical nurse teachers (n=41) using questionnaire provided by researcher in two section, the first section included the demographic characteristics and the second section consisted of questions about necessity and application of content education. The content validity of questionnaire was provided by experts and texts. For reliability, test retest method was used (r=089). Data were collected in one stage and were analyzed by t-student test Kendal’s correlation coefficient, and Chi square.Results: The result revealed that the mean score of students and teachers views about “the necessity of the theoretical courses” were 17.86 and 16.35, but they gave low scores to the “real application of the theory in practice” (11.8 and 12.08). There was a statistically significant relationship between the necessity and application of theory (P=0.00). The degree of coordination between clinical education and tasks were reported low (less than 3) by both teachers and students, but, there was a statistically significant difference between their perspectives (P< 0.05).Conclusion: This study showed that continuing revision and repair of the program based on students and teachers’ perspectives can help educationalists to reduce theorypractice gap.

Background & Aim: Dramatic increase in the overall number of older adults currently in the population, and further increases expected, heightens the awareness of the need for adequate support for older persons living in the community. The elderly are particularly vulnerable to stress. Transition to the care home and environment of a residential home has been identified in the literature as the most significant relocation affecting older people. Social support plays an important role in managing stress, but, there are a few researches that have investigated the quality and intensity of relationships as a part of social supports for elders, especially those living in nursing homes. Researchers have found that social supports protect elders against the harmful effects of stress and promote emotional and physical wellbeing. Older adults who are connected to active social networks and who receive informal social support have been shown to demonstrate better physical and mental health than those who are less connected and involved with others. For this reason, researchers intend to explore elders' attitude living in nursing home with regard to religious and cultural aspect in Iran. This study aimed understanding elders' perceptions of social support quality during their residency period in nursing home.Material & Method: In this study, the qualitative phenomenological approach was used by several in-depth interviews with elders residents in private and governmental nursing homes were selected by purposive sampling over a 9 months period. Purposive sampling continued until data saturation was occurred where the sample size reached to 10. The data was collected by in-depth interviews. Researchers used field notes for completing data collection process. Colaizzi's method was applied for data analysis. The rigor of present study was based on transferability and credibility.Results: The findings were including: 80 codes, 5 sub-themes and two themes extracted from the data (structural components of experience). The themes were informal social support in nursing home, and formal social support in this setting.Conclusion: According to older people's attitudes there were three important elements, staff, family and other residents, which have very much important influence in their life providing social support network. In present study, nursing home residents stated various degrees of communication with and sense of support from family, friends and others. All of them stated other people's visits as encouraging and supporting.

Background & Aim: Cancer as one of the most common chronic illnesses is a stressful factor affecting physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. Prayer is a source of resistance against these crises, especially in spiritual domain, promoting spiritual well-being. The aim of the current study is to examine the relationship between prayer activity and spiritual well-being in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Material & Method: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study. Three handred and sixty patients who were more than 20 years old, alert to their disease, and able to read and write participated in this study. Data collection was done by Meraviglia's prayer (2002) and Paloutzian & Ellison's spiritual well-being (1982) questionnaires. Data analysis was done by SPSS program.Results: Findings showed that the mean scores of prayer practice and spiritual well being were respectively (94.5±12.98) and (98.35±14.36). Direct and significant relationship was found between prayer practice and spiritual well-being. (p=0.001, r=0.61).Conclusion: Regarding the results that show the relationship between prayer practice and spiritual well being of the patients, nurses should consider prayer as a health promoting strategy in caring programs and choose a comprehensive and holistic approach toward their patients.

Background & Aim: Sleep disorders are among common complains of pregnant women with adverse physical and psychological outcomes.Material & Method: This study is a descriptive-analytical one to determine the sleep disorders in late pregnancy and its effect on the length of the labor and type of delivery in Firuzabadi hospital in Tehran in 2006. In this survey, the sample consisted of 151 women who were hospitalized for delivery in the hospital’s labor room. The researchers used questionnaires for data collection.Results: The results indicated that the sleep disorders during pregnancy were significantly more than that of the time before. About 95% of cases reported at least one type of sleep disorders during their pregnancy. Early waking up was the most common disorder. The second was waking up at night and the least common was snoring. The frequent urge to urine (in 70% of the cases) and backache (in 52% of the cases) were most common disturbances that caused the sleep disorders and the least common disturbances were inflation of nose holes, difficult respiration and general bad feeling in 13% of the cases.Conclusion: The results did not indicate any relationship between sleep disorders and the length of labor and type of delivery. Since the labor’s length of time differs in the multipara and primipara women, the relationship between the sleep disorders and the length of labor in either group was separately studied, but there were not any meaningful relationship statistically.

Background & Aim: Healthy community is strictly dependent on having healthy children, whose orodental hygiene is a necessity for maintaining health. Orodental care must begin from childhood, because performing special care of milk teeth of children would guarantee optimal growth of permanent teeth. Family, as an agent fostering physical and psychosocial aspects of the child can help to population health in parallel sith health care systems through educational and health activities. This paper aim at investigating mothers´ attitude of orodental health of their 1-6 years children referred to health treatment centers. This study was designed to determine the mothers´ attitude of mothers´ of orodental health of their 1-6 years old children.Material & Method: This was a cross-sectional study in which data was gathered using questionnaire and interview. Five hundreds mothers of 1-6 years old children, selected by random sampling method, took part in the study.Results: According to findings, the percentage of mothers with positive, inert, and negative attitude were respectively 79.6%, 20.4%, and 0%. There was direct positive relationship between attitude and mothers’ age and education, age of children and economic status.00).Conclusion: It is of great importance that authorities plan systematic and strict educational programs using mass media, and any other facility suitable for the purpose to make mothers knowledgeable about the subject. It is suggested to study the causes of inappropriate practice among mother in future studies.

Background & Aim: The use of antibiotics for life threatening infections depends on periodic study of resistance patterns among isolated organisms in various settings and age groups especially in the era of increasing resistance. This study was performed to determine the microbiological characteristics of blood stream isolates in the neonates and children as a high risk population at a community hospital located in the southern Tehran.Material and Method: All neonates and children up to 12 years of age admitted with presumptive diagnosis of sepsis or bacteremia were enrolled to this cross sectional, descriptive study. Blood cultures were monitored on a daily basis and suspicious samples were further subcultured in appropriate media; using the usual differential techniques and antimicrobial sensitivity tests. Results were recorded and expressed as percentages using excel software.Results: One hundred and seven positive blood cultures were identified among 500 enrolled patients. Positive blood cultures were more common in the neonates than children (56 vs 51). Gram positive organisms were more common than gram negative ones (61% vs 39%) with coagulase negative staphylocoscci (CONS) as the most common isolate in gram positive and Ecoli as the most prevalent gram negative organism. Apart from vancomycin, first generation of cephalosporins showed the best activity against CONS, however aminoglycosides showed promising for gram negative organisms.Conclusion: It was concluded that type of organisms and their sensitivity patterns are quite different in our community hospitals versus referral centers, still similar to other general children hospitals albeit with higher resistance rates.