Monday, August 27, 2007

E-Journal Club #11

Williams, Myrtle,Kathryn Jordan, “The Nursing Professional Portfolio: A Pathway to Career Development”, Journal for Nurses In Staff Development, Vol.23(3), 125-131.

ABSTRACT:

Nursing professional portfolios have moved beyond the traditional listing of past experiences and accomplishments. They now provide a format for self-reflection on practice and for goal planning, capturing both the art and the science of nursing. This article describes the experiences of designing and implementing the use of a comprehensive professional portfolio and the benefits realized by individual staff nurses and their managers.

JUDY’S COMMENTS:

I have posted an article like this in the past because I thought it seemed like a great idea. Now this article takes it one step further. I’ve felt that annual reviews are sometimes viewed as a process of futility for the staff. They see it as an opportunity for your boss to complain or assign you a job for the year. And where’s the follow up they always promise?
Last year, I decided to make a summary on PowerPoint. That way I could include some of the great pictures I’d taken of the off or on campus continuing education, the “teams” I was a member of, etc. It was not only a fun project for me, but gave me a different insight in what I wanted to say and how I viewed my own past year in better perspective.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

CONSORT statement website redesigned

The CONSORT Group are delighted to announce a redesign of the CONSORT
Statement website.
http://www.consort-statement.org
The CONSORT Statement is an evidence-based, minimum set of
recommendations for reporting randomized controlled trials. It offers a
standard way for authors to prepare reports of trial findings,
facilitating their complete and transparent reporting, and aiding their
critical appraisal and interpretation.
Thanks to the financial support of the UK National Coordinating Centre
for Research and Methodology, the new CONSORT website enhances its
capability to keep up with the growing complexity and increasing impact
of the CONSORT Statement.
Some highlights of the site:
* The definitive version of the CONSORT Statement
* The CONSORT checklist: examples and explanation of each item
* Translations of the CONSORT Statement into ten languages
* Extensions to the main CONSORT Statement for different trial designs,
interventions and data types
* Browsable bibliographies of the evidence underpinning CONSORT
* History and impact of CONSORT
* News articles on the developments of CONSORT
* A full glossary of terms
* A simple yet powerful search facility
Please circulate widely. We will be delighted to hear what you think of
the site.
cheers
Douglas
--
Mr Douglas Badenoch
Director, Minervation Ltd
-------------------------
23 Bonaly Grove
Edinburgh
EH13 0QB
-------------------------
Tel: +44 131 441 4699
Web: www.minervation.com

Monday, August 13, 2007

E-Journal Club #10

Cummings, Greta; Hayduk, Leslie; Estabrooks, Carole, “Mitigating the Impact of Hospital Restructuring on Nurses: The Responsibility of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership”, Nursing Research, January/February 2005, Vol 54(1), p 2-12.

Abstract:
Background: A decade of North American hospital restructuring in the 1990s resulted in the layoff of thousands of nurses, leading to documented negative consequences for both nurses and patients. Nurses who remained employed experienced significant negative physical and emotional health, decreased job satisfaction, and decreased opportunity to provide quality care.
Objective: To develop a theoretical model of the impact of hospital restructuring on nurses and determine the extent to which emotionally intelligent nursing leadership mitigated any of these impacts.
Methods: The sample was drawn from all registered nurses in acute care hospitals in Alberta, Canada, accessed through their professional licensing body (N = 6,526 nurses; 53% response rate). Thirteen leadership competencies (founded on emotional intelligence) were used to create 7 data sets reflecting different leadership styles: 4 resonant, 2 dissonant, and 1 mixed. The theoretical model was then estimated 7 times using structural equation modeling and the seven data sets.
Results: Nurses working for resonant leaders reported significantly less emotional exhaustion and psychosomatic symptoms, better emotional health, greater workgroup collaboration and teamwork with physicians, more satisfaction with supervision and their jobs, and fewer unmet patient care needs than did nurses working for dissonant leaders.
Discussion: Resonant leadership styles mitigated the impact of hospital restructuring on nurses, while dissonant leadership intensified this impact. These findings have implications for future hospital restructuring, accountabilities of hospital leaders, the achievement of positive patient outcomes, the development of practice environments, the emotional health and well-being of nurses, and ultimately patient care outcomes.

Judy's comments:
The objectives of this original research seem huge. First to develop a theoretical model seemed confusing and impossible to me. Then to take the subject of “emotional intelligence” and adapt it to this model seemed pretty daunting. But the author’s seem to pull it off with little effort and present some thoughtful introspection into some concepts that the bedside nurse doesn’t always dwell on. Specifically, how does her manager affect her working environment.

The subject of ‘emotional intelligence” caught my eye recently. I am still exploring the topic. I also haven’t found many articles that explore the history of the hospital restructuring of the 1990’s, of which I was a part of. Sometimes we don’t value our history enough.