Description:
Writing in 2016, it's sometimes hard to believe the influence that poststructuralist and postmodernist 'theory' had on university and intellectual culture in the 1980s and 1990s. Virtually every humanities and social-science department (and even some science departments) either adopted or at the very least was forced to confront the body of work of half a dozen (mainly) French thinkers and the English-speaking colleagues who took up the implications of their work. In the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, 'theory' was deeply polarizing - either the high point of intellectual virtuosity, the voice of a new politics or a nihilistic assault on Western culture. English and Philosophy departments fractured or split entirely, newly formed cultural-studies journals enthusiastically applied theory's insights to the quotidian world, academic publication expanded massively. Outside the academy, theory was often denounced in the mainstream media as being meaningless jargon or politically dangerous, or both at the same time, while the theorists themselves retained a cult status both inside and outside the academy.
Description:
Aim: The aim of this review was to identify and synthesise published accounts of recognising and responding to patient deterioration in the presence of deterioration antecedents. Design: The systematic review canvassed four electronic databases/ search engines for studies of adult ward patients who had altered physiological parameters before developing major adverse events. Synthesis Methods: The findings were synthesised using a narrative approach. Results: Clinical deterioration can be missed by nurses, even with adequate charting. Delays in recognising and responding to patient deterioration remains an international patient safety concern, and strategies to enhance recognition of patient deterioration have not achieved consistent improvements. The lack of significant and sustained improvement through targeted training suggests the problem may be rooted in human behaviour and local ward culture. Nurses play a pivotal role in recognising and responding to patient deterioration; however, patient records do not facilitate tracking of all nurse decisions and actions, and any undocumented care cannot be easily captured by auditing processes. Conclusion: Failure to recognise clinical deterioration was evident even with adequate charting. It is not clear if nurses do not recognise clinical deterioration because they failed to interpret the signs of deterioration or they made a conscious decision not to escalate based on their clinical judgement or they lacked attention at the time of the event. Whatever the reason, focus is warranted for nurses' decisionmaking after the recording of clinical deterioration signs and the role of human factors in delayed recognition, before maximum benefit of any strategy can be achieved.
Description:
Clinical practice is fundamental to the learning of undergraduate and entry-level nursing students. It provides the milieu whereby students apply classroom theory and simulated practice to the real world of nursing and become socialised into the profession. In contemporary nursing education, there is often competition among tertiary education providers to locate quality, appropriate placements; substantial costs may be incurred to access suitable placements.
Description:
This issue of Arena Journal emerges from a day-long symposium held at the University of Melbourne in 2013 marking fifty years of publications by the Arena group. The event was composed of diverse presentations, some by the original editors of the first series of Arena, some by contributors to that first series, and others by editors and contributors from more recent times. The day was marked by unusual vitality as well as recognition of a unique contribution made by the publications, not only to Australian political and cultural history but also to the development of a theory of social transformation not found in publications elsewhere. There was a strong sense that something of this contribution needed to be reflected upon in a further publication looking back on those past fifty years.
Description:
This article examines the results of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request into the journal ranking process that took place as part of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) project between 2008-2010. We discuss the background to the request and the information that was received. We analyse the data, as well as the gaps in the data, relating this to the rankings process with respect to 13 journals in the Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA) cluster. We note some anomalies in the rankings of specific journals and relate this to the information about the ranking process. We conclude by commenting on the degree to which the FOI request sheds light on what was essentially a secretive process, and whether academics ought to have confidence in exercises that attempt to fix quality on such a large scale. We suggest that the FOI data demonstrates that attempts to produce and fix a quantitative measure of quality in the Humanities publishing cannot adequately account for the diversity of opinion or approaches that constitute the fiel
Description:
AimTo test the resuscitation non-technical Team Emergency Assessment Measure (TEAM) for feasibility, validity and reliability, in two Australian Emergency Departments (ED). BackgroundNon-technical (teamwork) skills have been identified as inadequate and as such have a significant impact on patient safety. Valid and reliable teamwork assessment tools are an important element of performance assessment and debriefing processes. MethodsA quasi experimental design based on observational ratings of resuscitation non-technical skills in two metropolitan ED. Senior nursing staff rated 106 adult resuscitation team events over a ten month period where three or more resuscitation team members attended. Resuscitation events, team performance and validity and reliability data was collected for the TEAM. ResultsMost rated events were for full cardiac resuscitation (43%) with 3–15 team members present for an average of 45min. The TEAM was found to be feasible and quickly completed with minimal or no training. Discriminant validity was good as was internal consistency with a Cronbach alpha of 0.94. Uni-dimensional and concurrent validity also reached acceptable standards, 0.94 and >0.63 (p=<0.001), respectively, and a single ‘teamwork’ construct was identified. Non-technical skills overall were good but leadership was rated notably lower than task and teamwork performance indicating a need for leadership training. ConclusionThe TEAM is a feasible, valid and reliable non-technical assessment measure in simulated and real clinical settings. Emergency teams need to develop leadership skills through training and reflective debriefing.
Description:
This work was funded by the Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery (Australia and New Zealand) – 2019. The funding body had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, or in writing the manuscript.
Description:
This work was funded by the Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery (Australia and New Zealand) – 2019. The funding body had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, or in writing the manuscript.
Description:
Objective: This paper explores the nursing literature to identify the educative process and essential features of debriefing. Setting: Nursing education settings: undergraduate, postgraduate and professional development in nursing and midwifery. Data sources: Studies of debriefing in nurse education were located in peer reviewed journals between 1990 and May 2010. Searches were made using keywords in six healthcare and one education database. Eleven nursing studies reporting education of individuals and six studies of teams were selected for inclusion; only one study provided learning outcome data. Hence, the literature was synthesised in a narrative form to include related studies. Primary argument: Formative feedback is important in experiential learning and is often applied in nursing in the form of facilitated structured debriefing. Debriefing is most commonly reported in relation to clinical skills development and as part of individual and team-based simulation training. Educational outcomes are dependant upon the skills of the facilitator in offering feedback in accordance with best practice. Although a key component of higher level education, there is a lack of published evidence with regard to the effectiveness of debriefing techniques in nurse education. A framework for debriefing practice is presented. Conclusion: Structured facilitated debriefing is an important strategy to engage students in learning and is essential in simulation training. Further research is warranted to fully understand the impact of the method in nurse education.
Description:
The purpose of this article is to describe the Nominal Group Technique and its application as a consensus-generating approach in nursing research. The approach incorporates face-to-face meetings to explore opinions, generate ideas, and determine priorities. The nominal group technique process, which is based on a study designed to develop a nursing student clinical placement (clinical practicum) evaluation tool, is described. Advantages of the approach include creative face-to-face discussions with minimal resource demands. The nominal group technique is beneficial and can be used to achieve consensus in nursing research, but a lack of anonymity may preclude the process in some investigations.
Description:
Waltz with Bashir (Israel 2008) concerns itself with time on a number of formal and thematic levels, from its investigation of history to the use of animation to allow the recreation of an otherwise visually inaccessible past. The animated documentary’s plot interweaves historical and personal time in the form of Israeli soldiers remembering, or attempting to remember, their involvement in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. A central preoccupation of the documentary is the untimeliness of trauma, where a repressed memory kept “out of time” will return to the present in unexpected and distorted forms. This personal experience of trauma is extended to the sphere of national identity in the degree to which the documentary re-examines events that have been largely silenced within the official versions of history within Israel. It is untimely insofar as it disrupts accepted understandings and exposes events that certain constructions of Israeli national identity would rather forget. Of course the dynamic between remembering and forgetting and how best to relate to history, a theme that informs the politics surrounding Waltz with Bashir, was addressed directly by Nietzsche in his Untimely Meditations. In “On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life,” he warned of the dangers of an excessive concern for the past, and of the necessity for a certain amount of forgetting as a condition for acting. While Waltz with Bashir investigates directly the repression of the past, of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, it is also haunted by the events of the Holocaust. The forgetting of one is enabled by the specific forms of remembering the other, a question central to the reading of the politics of the documentary.