The Perceived Threat in Adults with Leukemia Undergoing Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

Background: Leukemia and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) create physical, psychological, social, and spiritual distresses in patients. Understanding this threatening situation in adults with leukemia undergoing HSCT will assist health care professionals in providing holistic care to the patients. Objectives: The aim of the present study was exploring the perceived threat in adults with leukemia undergoing HSCT. Patients and Methods: This article is part of a longitudinal qualitative study which used the grounded theory approach and was conducted in 2009-2011. Ten adults with acute leukemia scheduled for HSCT were recruited from the Hematology–Oncology Research Center and Stem Cell Transplantation, Shariati Hospital in Tehran, Iran. A series of pre-transplant and post-transplant in-depth interviews were held in the hospital’s HSCT wards. Totally, 18 interviews were conducted. Three written narratives were also obtained from the participants. The Corbin and Strauss approach was used to analyze the data. Results: Perceived threat was one of the main categories that emerged from the data. This category included four subcategories, "inattention to the signs and symptoms", "doubt and anxiety", "perception of danger and time limitation" and "change of life conditions", which occurred in linear progression over time. Conclusion: Suffering from leukemia and experiencing HSCT are events that are uniquely perceived by patients. This threatening situation can significantly effect perception of patients and cause temporary or permanent alterations in patients' lives. Health care professionals can help these patients by deeper understanding of their experiences and effective interventions

Iranian Women's Strategies for Coping with Domestic Violence

Background: Behavioral coping strategies may lead to either increased or reduced violence or associated stress, while also affecting psychological outcomes. To help abused Iranian women cope better with domestic violence and to provide better care for them, it is crucial to investigate their strategies for coping with domestic violence. Objectives: This qualitative study explores the strategies used by Iranian women to cope with domestic violence. Materials and Methods: This study uses a qualitative design, based on a content analysis approach. The participants comprised 24 married women, selected from parks, health centers and two colleges located in Tehran, Iran. The purposive sampling method was used to recruit the participants and continued until data saturation was reached. Semi-structured interviews were carried out to gather data. Results: During the data analysis, a theme “situation management” emerged together with two categories, comprising “the strategies of violence control” and “the strategies of distress control”. The results show that the participants try to manage the abusive situation by controlling violence and or the distress it causes. Conclusions: Unlike common stereotypes that reveal women to be submissive and passive in the face of violence, the results show that the participants in this study coped with violence using consciousness and creativity, and by relying on the available resources. An understanding of the coping strategies used by abused women could help health staff to provide better care for such women and encourage them to use more effective strategies

Patient advocacy: Barriers and facilitators

Background: During the two recent decades, advocacy has been a topic of much debate in the nursing profession. Although advocacy has embraced a crucial role for nurses, its extent is often limited in practice. While a variety of studies have been generated all over the world, barriers and facilitators in the patient advocacy have not been completely identified. This article presents the findings of a study exploring the barriers and facilitators influencing the role of advocacy among Iranian nurses. Method: This study was conducted by grounded theory method. Participants were 24 Iranian registered nurses working in a large university hospital in Tehran, Iran. Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and simultaneously Constant comparative analysis was used according to the Strauss and Corbin method. Results: Through data analysis, several main themes emerged to describe the factors that hindered or facilitated patient advocacy. Nurses in this study identified powerlessness, lack of support, law, code of ethics and motivation, limited communication, physicians leading, risk of advocacy, royalty to peers, and insufficient time to interact with patients and families as barriers to advocacy. As for factors that facilitated nurses to act as a patient advocate, it was found that the nature of nurse-patient relationship, recognizing patients' needs, nurses' responsibility, physician as a colleague, and nurses' knowledge and skills could be influential in adopting the advocacy role. Conclusion: Participants believed that in this context taking an advocacy role is difficult for nurses due to the barriers mentioned. Therefore, they make decisions and act as a patient's advocate in any situation concerning patient needs and status of barriers and facilitators. In most cases, they can not act at an optimal level; instead they accept only what they can do, which we called 'limited advocacy' in this study. It is concluded that advocacy is contextually complex, and is a controversial and risky component of the nursing practice. Further research is needed to determine the possibility of a correlation between identified barriers/ facilitators and the use of advocacy. © 2006Negarandeh et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Content Analysis of Articles Published in Iranian Scientific Nursing Journals From 2009 Through 2011

Background: Little is known about the features of Iranian nursing journals, specifically the subject areas used in articles, study designs, sampling methods, international collaboration of Iranian nursing scholars, specialty and academic rank of authors, and the most frequently contributing academic institutions in articles. Objectives: The aim of this study was to analyze the content of the articles published in Iranian scientific nursing journals. Materials and Methods: Quantitative content analysis was implemented to study Iranian nursing journals, which were approved by the commission for accreditation and improvement of Iranian medical journals in 2011. Thus, 763 articles from six journals, published from 2009 through 2011, were investigated. Data were extracted from the abstracts and when necessary, from the full-text of articles by visiting the websites of these journals. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Results: The main subjects of published articles in Iranian scientific nursing journals were consecutively renal dialysis (n = 21), intensive care unit (n = 16), nursing education (n = 15), patient satisfaction (n = 13), quality of life (n = 12), health education (n = 11), patient education (n = 11), pain (n = 10), and education (n = 9). The majority of authors had nursing and midwifery specialty (52.59%) followed by epidemiology/biostatistics specialty (7.72%). Isfahan, Tehran, Shahid Beheshti, Iran, Baqiyatallah, and Urmia universities of medical sciences had consecutively the largest number of publications in the studied journals. Only three papers (0.39%) were published by the international collaboration. Conclusions: Iranian nursing journals should publish special issues in the neglected subject areas. These journals should encourage authors to publish research evidence with higher quality

The image of nursing, as perceived by Iranian male nurses

The stereotypical public image of nursing is a major concern for male nurses around the world. In this study, we explored how Iranian male nurses perceived the public view of nurses, and their perceptions of themselves. A qualitative descriptive design and content analysis were used to obtain data from 18 purposely-selected male hospital nurses with a baccalaureate nursing degree in Tabriz, Iran. Semistructured interviews were conducted and analyzed. Two main themes emerged: (i) the outsider's view of nursing, which referred to the participants' perceptions of their public image; and (ii) the insider's view, which related to the male nurses' perceptions of themselves. Results included personal transition into a positive professional self-image through the educational process, and continued public perception of nursing as a female profession ill-suited for a man. Strategies to improve the insider's and outsider's views of nursing are listed to help recruit and retain more Iranian male nurses

Concept analysis of palliative care in nursing: Introducing a hybrid model

Background and purpose: Palliative care is an important concept in nursing practice and in literature several definitions are suggested for this concept. This study aimed at analyzing the concept of palliative care and identifying its features, antecedents and consequences within Iran�s cultural context. Materials and methods: Hybrid model of concept analysis was used to clarify the meaning of palliative care. The three phases of a hybrid concept analysis included theoretical, fieldwork, and final analysis. In theoretical phase different databases including PubMed, CINAHL, Science direct, Google scholar, SID and Magiran were searched for related articles (published in 2003-2013). The search keywords were palliative care and nursing care in the titles and abstracts. In the fieldwork phase semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted through purposive sampling in eight nurses. In next step, by combining the two previous stages the final analysis was performed. Results: In final analytical phase, main themes were extracted including pain management, holistic care, spirituality based care and religious based care. Conclusion: The findings showed that palliative care is an important aspect of clinical practice. It is a holistic, humanistic and corporative care for promoting the quality of life of patients and their families that support them while considering physical, psychological, spiritual, religious, cultural and social aspects. This type of care is beneficial throughout life and also in difficult situations such as famine and it should not be used just for end-stage patients. © 2015 Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

Psychometric evaluation of the perceived access to health care questionnaire

Background and objective: Access to health care is a universal concern. Therefore, this study was conducted to develop a questionnaire to assess the Perceived Access to Health care based on Penchansky and Thomas�s definition of access and the assessment of its psychometric properties. Method: The initial questionnaire contains 31 items developed based on a deductive approach with an extensive review of the related literature. Content validity, face validity, construct validity, internal consistency, and instrument reliability were further examined. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS software version 24, R software version 4, and lavaan package. Results: The initial questionnaire was examined using qualitative content validity, and the necessary modifications were applied to each item. The content validity ratio (CVR) was approved in 30 items with a value greater than 0.78, and one item with a CVR value lower than 0.78 was removed. In the case of the content validity index (CVI), 29 items were approved with a CVI value of greater than 0.79, and one item with a CVI value between 0.70 and 0.79 was revised. In qualitative face validity, all items were approved by a panel of experts and the participants. All 30 items with an impact score index higher than 1.5 were approved for the next steps. The confirmatory factor analysis results showed that the six-factor model of access to health care has an appropriate fit. Cronbach�s alpha coefficient for the questionnaire was calculated 0.86. The value of Cronbach�s alpha for the dimensions of availability, accessibility, affordability, accommodation, acceptability, and awareness were 0.61, 0.76, 0.66, 0.60, 0.80, and 0.76, respectively. The Intraclass Correlation Index (ICC) value for reliability (test-retest) of the whole instrument was calculated 0.94 using the two-way mixed absolute agreement method. Conclusion: The success of health programs depends on eliminating barriers to access to provided health care services. One of the most critical barriers to understanding access is a perception of limited access. This questionnaire might be used further to understand perceived health care access in different global contexts. © 2021, The Author(s)

Reporting of ethical considerations in clinical trials in Chinese nursing journals

Background: It is acknowledged that publishers now require all primary research papers to demonstrate that they have obtained ethical approval for their research. Objectives: To assess the rate of reporting of ethical approval in clinical trials in core nursing journals in mainland China. Research design: A retrospective observational study. Participants: All clinical trials published in all of the 12 core nursing periodicals from 2016 edition China Science and Technology Journal Citation Report (core version) between 2013 and 2016 were retrieved by hand to explicate rate of reporting ethical approval and informed consent. Ethical considerations: The study did not require approval from the research ethics committee as it did not involve human subjects or records. Results: In total, 40,278 papers were published in 12 nursing periodicals between 2013 and 2016. Out of these, 9488 (23.6%) focused on clinical trials. Informed consent obtained from patients or the legally authorized representative was reported in 51.8% of clinical trials. Notably, only 27.4% of clinical trials reported that they had obtained written consent. Furthermore, 25.9% of clinical trials described ethical approval; however, the rate of reporting informed consent and ethical approval in these 12 nursing journals in China during 4 years from 2013 to 2016 improved markedly, with 38.1%, 44.0%, 59.0% and 66.6%, respectively (p<0.001), and 17.6%, 21.9%, 28.6% and 35.8%, respectively (p<0.001). In addition, both reporting informed consent and reporting written informed consent had a positive significant correlation with the reporting ethical approval (p<0.05 or p<0.01). Conclusion: Chinese scientific nursing journals have improved the rate of reporting informed consent and ethical approval in clinical trials during the last 4 years. However, it should be noted that nearly half of clinical trials still did not report either ethical approval or whether informed consent was obtained. Efforts from editors, researchers, sponsors and authors are needed to ensure the transparency of ethical scrutiny and adherence to ethical guidelines in publishing clinical trials in Chinese nursing journals

Pharmacological treatments of COVID-19

The viral infection due to the new coronavirus or coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was reported for the first time in December 2019, was named by the World Health Organization (WHO) as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV2), because of the very similar genome and also its related symptoms to SARS-CoV1. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with significant mortality, morbidity, and socioeconomic impact is considered by the WHO as a global public health emergency. Since there is no specific treatment available for SARS-CoV2 infection, and or COVID-19, several clinical and sub-clinical studies are currently undertaken to find a gold-standard therapeutic regimen with high efficacy and low side effect. Based on the published scientific evidence published to date, we summarized herein the effects of different potential therapies and up-to-date clinical trials. The review is intended to help readers aware of potentially effective COVID-19 treatment and provide useful references for future studies. © 2020, Maj Institute of Pharmacology Polish Academy of Sciences