Swedish nurses' attitudes towards research and development within nursing.

BackgroundCountries all over the world are experiencing a shortage of registered nurses (RNs). Therefore, some countries, including Sweden, have tried to solve this by recruiting internationally educated nurses (IENs). Countries offer bridging programs as educational support to qualify IENs for nursing work in the destination country. However, there is little research on IENs’ experiences of bridging programs in European countries and how these programs facilitate their integration into the world of work and their new society. The aim of this study is to explore the experiences of nurses, originally educated outside the EU (European Union)/EES, of the Swedish bridging program and of the program’s role in facilitating their integration into the nursing profession in Sweden.MethodsA qualitative descriptive design was used to explore the topic based on 11 informants’ perspectives and experiences. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants at one university in Sweden. Data were collected by individual interviews using a semi- structured interview guide during the year 2019 and were analysed using an interpretative thematic approach.ResultsTwo main themes emerged from the analysis: 1) Return to nursing, and 2) The bridging program as a tool for transition to nursing in Sweden. The first theme includes conditions and experiences such as personal motivation and determination, and support from others that the participants described as important in order to achieve the goal of re-establishing themselves as registered nurses in Sweden. Furthermore, the second theme describes the participants’ experiences of the bridging program as mostly positive because it led to new learning and achievements that were valuable for the transition to nursing in Sweden; however, the participants also emphasised the challenges of their transition into the nursing profession, which were related to instances of misrecognition of their professional competence and the uncertain outcome of the program.ConclusionsThis study found that the bridging program facilitated integration into the nursing profession for nurses educated outside the EU/EES, especially knowledge gained in clinical-based training. Thus, it is important to recognise and value the IENs’ experience and previous knowledge and training when developing the bridging program’s curriculum.

The Driving Forces Behind Nurses Leaving the Profession

Purpose: This study aimed to identify the attitudes of registered nurses (RNs) towards delegation, their preparedness to delegate effectively, and to determine whether attitude and preparedness are related to age, experience, and education in the delegation.
 Methodology: It is a quantitative research outlook in a cross- sectional descriptive design. As it is a survey of the attitudes and preparedness of effective delegation, a quantitative approach is a suitable and explicit strategy to be utilized. Data was collected with a questionnaire in Wapda hospital Lahore (N=154). Participants were 130 RNs. A self-structured questionnaire adopted from the article “Nurse Manager's Attitudes and Preparedness towards Effective Delegation in a Tertiary Care Public Hospital Lahore” with permission of the author developed by Karnested, and Haghighi. It is based on the Likert scale. It was distributed among the sample population. The questionnaire is divided into three sections. Section I; includes the demographics of the managers i.e.: age, marital status, gender, education, nursing experience. Section II; is directed towards assessment of nurse manager’s attitudes consisting of 11 questions. Section III; pertains to the preparedness of nurse managers towards effective delegation and have 20 questions. The data was then analyzed on the software SPSS version 21.
 Results: Most participants have a positive attitude towards delegation and identify themselves as prepared to delegate effectively. However, some of the answers indicate potential for improvement. The majority find they spend a large amount of time on jobs others could do and agree to some extent that skills of practical nurses could be better utilized through more effective delegation.
 Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: Age, experience, and former education on delegation are significantly related to a number of attitude and preparedness issues regarding confidence in delegating, mutual trust, collaboration, and communication between RNs and assistance personnel. Effective delegation by RNs needs to be supported by teaching, practicing and nurturing mutual trust and effective communication in nursing teams.

The aim of this study was to explore attitudes towards research among a subgroup of Swedish nurses specializing in ophthalmic care and to compare the results with the findings of a similar study from 2001. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with a convenience sample of 250 Swedish nurses. A factor analysis was performed on the responses to a web-based questionnaire to discern the factors underlying the ophthalmic nurses’ attitudes. Responses to open-ended questions were analysed using content analysis. A five-factor solution accounted for 47% of the cumulative variance, with Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from 0.56 to 0.8. The responses to the open-ended questions indicated that among the nurses interested in conducting research, lack of time was the most prominent cause for not doing so, whereas older age and time constraints were the most important factors for those who were not interested in research, largely consistent with previous studies. Furthermore, the nurses mentioned frustration and bad experiences related to conducting research during their education programmes. Overall, however, the participating ophthalmic nurses were more reluctant to engage in research, perhaps because of their significantly older age compared to a previous study cohort. The results reveal new information implying that further qualitative studies would be beneficial to the planning of nursing education and to the integration of nurses in clinical scientific work.

The aim of this study was to describe program requirements and scholarly outcomes for registered nurse (RN)-led research in US hospitals. Magnet recognition emphasis on evidence-based practice and research has stimulated the growth of hospital-based nursing research programs. Hospital policies stipulating whether RNs can lead studies as principal investigators (PIs) varied among members of a regional nursing research consortium. Members of the consortium conducted a national survey of hospitals regarding their requirements for RN-led research and associated scholarly outcomes. Most (87.1%) of the hospitals (N = 160) reported no minimum educational requirements for nurses to be PIs. Mentoring, training, and peer review/approval requirements differed between Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals. On average, hospitals reported an annual total of 4 studies initiated, 4 disseminated via podium or poster presentation, 1 published, and 2 funded. Findings from this study provide a prototype and benchmark information for nursing administrators planning to establish, evaluate, and/or expand nursing research programs.

This study examined the measurement equivalency (ME) of the job embeddedness (JE) instrument for rural and urban registered nurses (RNs) using a secondary analysis of a cross-sectional mailed survey. JE represents the sum of reasons an employee remains at the present job. RNs from both rural and urban areas returned a 40-item JE instrument designed to assess their level of embeddedness. Analysis was performed using a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis for JE ratings of rural and urban RNs. The findings indicated that the original 40-item JE instrument needed to be respecified to achieve adequate fit for the sample of rural and urban RNs. This 32-item respecified instrument demonstrated that rural and urban RNs use the same metric when giving ratings for JE items. The findings of ME across rural and urban RNs facilitate comparisons between the two groups. The implications of these findings are that differences in ratings between rural and urban RNs may be attributed to real differences and not merely measurement artifact. Examination of these differences may lead to real strategies to retain nurses, thus mitigating the impact of the global nursing shortage.

The retention of registered nurses (RNs) in the nursing profession has become a key issue for governments. This article examines the impact of a change in the nature of nurse education, from hospital‐based to university‐based training, on the labour market behaviour of RNs. The analysis indicates that RNs trained in universities are approximately 6 per cent more likely to exit the nursing workforce than hospital‐trained RNs. The analysis highlights the need to develop policies to address the low retention rates for nurses in the health system such as developing clearer career paths and enhancing the non‐pecuniary aspects of nursing.

Answering the Question, “Why do We Need Nurses?”

Work situation of registered nurses in municipal elderly care in Sweden: A questionnaire survey

To explore the attitudes of Swedish intensive care nurses towards organ donor advocacy. The concept of organ donor advocacy is critical to nurses who care for potential donors in order to facilitate organ donation (OD). A retrospective cross-sectional study was employed. Inclusion criteria in this survey were to be a registered nurse and to work in a Swedish intensive care unit (ICU). Participants were identified by the Swedish association of health professionals. A number of 502 Swedish ICU nurses answered the 32-item questionnaire Attitudes Towards Organ Donor Advocacy Scale (ATODAS), covering the five dimensions of organ donor advocacy: attitudes towards championing organ donation at a structural hospital level, or at a political and research level, attitudes towards actively and personally safeguarding the will and wishes of the potential organ donor, or by using a more professional approach and finally to safeguard the will and wishes of the relatives. Data were analysed with the SPSS version 18·0 and the results were assessed by using Student's t-test and post hoc test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), χ(2) , Pearson's correlation and regression analysis. The most favoured advocacy action was safeguarding the POD's will and wishes by a professional approach, closely followed by actively and personally safeguarding the POD's will and wishes. Nurses at local hospitals reported a more positive attitude towards organ donor advocacy overall compared with nurses at larger regional or university hospitals. Important factors leading to positive attitudes were seniority, working experience, participating in conversations with relatives, caring for brain-dead persons and private experiences from OD or organ transplantation. Intensive and critical care nurses with short working experience in university hospitals showed the least positive attitude towards organ donor advocacy. This is problematic because many ODs and all transplantations are performed in university hospitals. This study emphasizes the importance of organizing the care of PODs and their relatives in a way that promotes advocacy.

Proactive Health Support is a telephone-based self-management intervention that is carried out in Denmark by Registered Nurses who provide self-management support to people at risk of hospital admission. We aimed to explore participants' experiences of Proactive Health Support and to identify what the participants find important and meaningful during the intervention process. Qualitative design involving semi-structured interview. Using a phenomenological-hermeneutical framework, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 62 participants in their own homes (32 women, 30 men; aged 20-81years) in spring and fall 2018. The participants felt confident that they could discuss every matter with the nurses. Participants benefitted from accessibility to the nurses' professional and medical competences and they felt relief that the nurses contacted them via the telephone due to their multiple health conditions. The participants felt that the nurses were available and helped them to navigate the healthcare system. The participants valued the intervention because they benefitted from the nurses' holistic approach. They described the nurses' knowledge and professionalism in relation to their symptoms, treatments, and medicine as important and meaningful. Accordingly, the intervention seemed to promote feelings of independence and self-management among the participants. From a nursing perspective, the study highlights that it is possible to establish a close relationship and behavioural change among participants through regular telephone contact.

BACKGROUND: Effective physician – patient communication is very important to positive health outcomes. Assessment of attitude of medical students towards learning communication skills may help medical educators to devise effective plans to orient the students towards learning communication skills. Owing to the scarcity of data in Indian context, the present study aimed to assess the attitude of medical students towards learning communication skills at a private medical college in Pondicherry, India. OBJECTIVES: 1. To assess the attitude of medical students towards learning communication skills. 2. To compare the results of attitude scores among the medical students. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study involving 300 undergraduate medical students involving both male and female, in the age groups of 18-23 years were selected and were divided into five groups depending on their year of study. Data was collected using communication skills attitude scale (CSAS), which consists of 26 items, 13 indicative of positive attitude and 13 indicative of negative attitude toward learning communication skills. The positive and negative attitude scale scores were calculated and compared among different groups using SPSS software version 22. P < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. RESULTS: The mean scores for Positive attitude scale (PAS) and Negative attitude scale (NAS) of the medical students were 51.7±6.92 and 29.8±5.98 respectively. There was no statistically significant gender difference in the PAS and NAS scores. However significant differences were observed between the groups. First year medical students had a significantly lower PAS and high NAS scores compared to the other groups (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: Medical students have strong positive attitudes towards learning communication skills; hence communication skill training programs may be incorporated in the undergraduate medical curriculum. However negative attitudes should not be ignored, as they may subdue the importance of such programs. Further difference in experiences of interaction with patients does interfere with the perception of the importance of learning communication skills.

In 1964 the World Health Organization (WHO) arranged a workshop in Uppsala, Sweden, to study new ways and methods of improving the teaching of anatomy. An important matter of discussion was a donation system of bodies for use in anatomical dissection. The report from the workshop was prepared by the Regional Office for Europe and distributed to the governments of member states in the region. It included information on donation systems from countries where these had been used and was placed at the disposal of other interested countries. In Sweden this meant the introduction of an accept- ed system for receiving bodies for anatomical dissection and the abolition in 1973 of an old order to different public insti- tutions to supply bodies for dissection. That was out of date in a modern society and did not function properly. Since the introduction of the donation system in Sweden, every single specimen for anatomical dissection derives exclusively from donations by free will of people who have decided in their lifetime to donate themselves, for the benefit of medical educa- tion. The Christian religion, which is still dominating in Sweden, although the country has become successively more secu- larized, creates no hindrance for donations. Special forms are used. One copy is kept by the donator, another by the depart- ment. The donated bodies are embalmed using an alcohol-glycerol-phenol solution, without formaldehyde. The supply of donated bodies allows specialists from our hospitals to carry out surgical interventions on the donated bodies, for the ben- efit of their training.

Objective: This study was conducted to demonstrate whether nurse trainees are adequately prepared in terms of professionalism to provide quality care to patients with epilepsy. Method: The descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted among first-year (n=104) and fourth-year (n=96) nursing students in a public university in eastern Turkey. Data were collected using the “Student Introduction Form”, “Attitude Scale for Nursing Profession (ASNP)”, “Epilepsy Knowledge Scale (EKS)”, and “Epilepsy Attitude Scale (EAS)”. Number, percentage, mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, Chi-square test, Whitney-U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, and Kruskal-Wallis Bonferroni test were used to evaluate the data. Results: There was no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of ASNP, EKS, and EAS total scores according to the years of the students (p&gt;0.05). In fourth year students, female gender, knowing someone with epilepsy, having a mother/father/sister/sibling with epilepsy or self, and being involved in the treatment and care of a patient with epilepsy were associated with better attitudes towards the nursing profession, their level of knowledge about epilepsy and their attitudes towards individuals with epilepsy. In addition, ASNP total scores of the first-year and fourth- year students had positive and significant effects on the total scores of the EKS (r=0.379, p=0.000; r=0.311, p=0.004, respectively). Conclusion: It was found that first and fourth-year nursing students in Southeastern Turkey had positive attitudes towards the nursing profession, moderate knowledge about epilepsy, and moderate attitudes towards people with epilepsy. In this context, students should be supported more in theoretical education and clinical practice.

Nurses' attitudes toward nursing research at a metropolitan medical center