Practicing physiotherapy in Danish private practice: an ethical perspective.

Despite an increasingly growth of professional guidelines, textbooks and research about ethics in health care, awareness about ethics in Danish physiotherapy private practice seen vague. This article explores how physiotherapists in Danish private practice, from an ethical perspective, perceive to practice physiotherapy. The empirical data consists of interviews with twenty-one physiotherapists. The interviews are analysed from a hermeneutic approach, inspired by Ricoeur's textual interpretation of distanciation. The analysis follows three phases: naïve reading, structural analysis and comprehensive analysis. Four main themes are constructed: Beneficence as the driving force; Disciplining the patient through the course of physiotherapy; Balancing between being a trustworthy professional and a businessperson; The dream of a code of practice. Private practice physiotherapy is embedded in a structural frame directed by both political and economical conditions that shape the conditions for practicing physiotherapy. It means that beneficence in practice is a balance between the patient, the physiotherapists themselves and the business. Beneficence towards the patient is expressed as an implicit demand. Physiotherapeutic practice is expressed as being an integration of professionalism and personality which implies that the physiotherapists also have to benefit themselves. Private practice seems to be driven by a paternalistic approach towards the patient, where disciplining the patient is a crucial element of practice, in order to optimise profit. Physiotherapists wish for a more beneficent practice in the future by aiming at bridging 'to be' and 'ought to be'

A study of a couple with type 2 diabetes: dyadic adjustment and psychological morbidity

Objective: this study assessed dyadic adjustment and psychological morbidity in type 2 diabetic patients and their partners, focusing on the role of gender. Methods: 214 diabetic patients and their partners participated in the cross-sectional study and were assessed on psychological morbidity (HADS) and marital adjustment (RDAS). Data was analyzed using dyadic analysis, a statistical process that studies the patient/partner dyads simultaneously. Results: results revealed that the negative relationship between dyadic adjustment and psychological morbidity in female patients was stronger than in male diabetic patients or in partners of male diabetic patients. On the other hand, the relationship between dyadic adjustment and psychological morbidity in partners of diabetic men was stronger than the same relationship in partners of diabetic women. Conclusion: since gender is a moderator, it is important to attend to the different needs of female and male patients and the education of diabetic patients should be centered on the patient/partner dyad.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Becoming a good nurse – Socialisation of newly employed nurses into the oncological clinic

Aim and objectives: To explore newly employed nurses’ socialisation in the process of introduction into an oncological clinic from the perspectives of unit managers and newly employed nurses. Background: There are managerial challenges in retaining nurses at workplaces. The way in which nurses are socialised into their work is important for their job satisfaction and retainment. Method: Qualitative, semi‐structured interviews with seven nurses and two unit managers, and written introductory material. Thematic analyses were made, inspired by Goffman's concepts of social interaction, back stage, front stage and roles. SRQR checklist was used. Results: Unit managers created the framework for socialising newly employed nurses through written introductory guidelines and assignments of supervisors as mainstream role models. Newly employed nurses were socialised gradually through mirroring their supervisors in their role as nurse. Front stage, patients often functioned as objects for newly employed nurses’ training. Back stage, patients often functioned as communication objects for all professionals. Newly employed nurses, who also demand roles such as transformer, boss, coordinator, prompter and friend, were socialised into the role of assistant to the doctor. Medical rounds functioned as a socialisator in this process. Conclusion: The allocated supervisors were role models in socialising newly employed nurses into an oncological clinic and its culture. Nurses were socialised into an understanding of care as a biomedical orientation, in which medicine had a higher value than care in the existing knowledge hierarchy at the oncological clinic. This might have implications for who applies for and stays in the job. Relevance to clinical practice: Increased awareness of the importance of socialisation of nurses into the clinic during the introduction process. Re‐thinking nurses’ independent functions and patient perspectives in introduction of newly employed nurses to maintain and develop nursing as an independent profession

Essential of nursing care in randomized controlled trials of nurse-led interventions in somatic care : A systematic review

Background: Nursing practice has to contribute to evidence pointing out why there is a need for more nurse-designed randomized control trials (RCTs) focusing on evidence-based practice (EBP). How far this EBP has progressed in different health aspects is usually established by systematic reviews of RCTs. Nurse-led RCTs exist but no study has addressed the essentials of nursing care. Aim: The aim was therefore to determine the essentials of nurses’ interventions by means of nurse-led RCTs in somatic care focusing on the stated context, goals, content, strategies as well as the nurse’s role related to effectiveness. Methods: A systematic review was realized according to Cochrane review assumptions to identify, appraise and synthesize all empirical evidence meeting pre-specified eligibility criteria. The PRISMA statement guided the data extraction process (n = 55) from PubMed and CINAHL. Results: Of the RCTs in somatic care, 71% showed a positive effectiveness of nurse-led interventions, of which the nurse had a significant role with regard to being the main responsible in 67% of the studies. Also, 47% of the RCTs presented a theoretical standpoint related to the nurse-led interventions and most prominent were international evidence-based guidelines. Goals were found to have either a patient-centered or a professional-centered ambition. Strategies were based on patient-directed initiatives, nurse-patient-directed initiatives or nurse-directed initiatives, while contents were built upon either a patient-nurse interaction or a nursing management plan. Conclusions: This review underlines the necessity of a holistic view of a person, as nurse-led RCTs comprising a patient-centered ambition, patient-directed initiative and patient-nurse interaction plan showed beneficial nursing care effectiveness, particularly if theory-based. In a nurse-led RCT, a basic theoretical perspective is advantageous as well as to elucidate the role of the nurse in relation to the estimated effects

Nurses’ attitudes towards support for and communication about sexual health –a qualitative study from the perspectives of oncological nurses

Aim and objectives: To explore nurses' articulations of support and communication regarding sexual health with patients. Background: Sexual health is adversely effected by cancer and various oncological treatments. Patients' often have the experience that healthcare professionals do not talk about sexual health. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven nurses in Southern Sweden. Content analyses were made, inspired by Foucault's concepts of power, discipline and normalisation. SRQR checklist was used. Results: Patients' sexual health had low priority in the oncological clinic from the perspective of nurses. The medical logic directed nurses' articulations about sexual health towards a physical view, understood as sex, and sexual problems, which could be treated pharmacologically. Further, nurses articulated a sexual norm that sex belongs to young people and younger persons in permanent, monogamous and heterosexual relationships. This norm-governed nurses' inclusion and exclusion of patients in communication about sexual health. According to nurses, most patients did not mention sex, but some patients challenged the clinic's norms. Assessing sexual health problems, nurses often engaged other professions and thereby became gatekeepers for patients' options for getting help. Conclusions: From the perspective of nurses, nurses' support and communication regarding sexual health with patients with cancer diagnosis were relatively absent and had a low priority in an oncological clinic. Overall, the nurses had the power to set the agenda about patients' sexual health in the oncological clinic. The clinical gaze became a disciplinary technique that tacitly defined by whom, in what way and how sexual health could be articulated in an oncological clinic. Relevance to clinical practice: By illuminating nurses' preconceptions, thoughts and actions in relation to cancer patients' sexual health, the results invite practitioners to reflect upon and discuss the challenges, opportunities and limitations in providing inclusive and supportive sexual health care to cancer patient