BMC Nursing最新文献

Background: Globally, Public Health Nurses (PHNs) play a central role in disease prevention and health promotion. In Sri Lanka, the PHN service, discontinued in the 1980s, was reintroduced in 2018. However, a standardised framework for defining, implementing, and documenting their roles and services is still lacking, despite record-keeping being vital for evaluating service delivery. This study aimed to describe the duties performed by Sri Lankan PHNs.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among the PHNs working in 08 provinces in Sri Lanka during October 2024. Data collection was performed using a pre-tested, validated, self-administered questionnaire, and the results were analysed descriptively.

Results: Of 171 eligible PHNs, 127 responded (74.3%). Within the month, almost all (99.2%) delivered NCD prevention, running 1,183 screening clinics (median 8 per nurse) and registering 10,822 people (median 71 per nurse). In palliative care, 94% conducted 1,518 home visits (median 8), commonly providing catheter care (76.4%), wound care (59.8%), and NG feeding (48.8%). For geriatric services, 74.8% of patients received home-based care (744 visits), and their blood pressure was monitored (1,371 instances) and blood sugar levels checked (1,275 instances). Health promotion was universal, with 85% of the population contributing to mental healthcare. Although 83.5% of PHNs had attended in pain management, only 41.7% assessed pain, and 37.8% administered prescribed analgesics. Disaster management (4.7%) and research engagement (13.4%) were limited. Service volumes varied by district, with higher pain-management activity in Nuwara Eliya and Ratnapura. Female PHNs more often attended bereavement sessions and mental healthcare (p = 0.036; p = 0.025), while older age correlated with longer travel for mobile clinics (r_s=0.201) and more elderly home visits (r_s=0.220).

Conclusions: PHNs in Sri Lanka make strong contributions to NCD prevention, health promotion, and palliative care, with additional roles in elderly and mental healthcare. Yet, their involvement in pain management, disaster response, and research remains limited. Clearer role definitions, more PHN recruitments, targeted capacity building, and a workforce need assessment are essential to maximise their impact on community health.

Background: Patient-perspective simulations are frequently implemented in nursing education to help students reflect on the lived realities of those they will care for. However, little is known about how educators who design and facilitate these exercises perceive and implement them.

Methods: We conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with nursing educators from eight nursing schools in Germany, covering both vocational and academic programmes. Data were analysed using grounded theory methodology to explore educators' perspectives on the purpose, implementation, and perceived impact of patient-perspective simulations.

Results: Through the process of coding, three themes with subthemes were identified. Theme 1 Educational purposes of patient-perspective simulations highlights educators' views on the value of these exercises, what their aims are, making learning enjoyable, and creating relevant experiences. Theme 2 Creating an environment of trust demonstrates that psychological safety and group dynamics are important. Theme 3 "It's approximation - not imitation" reflects educators' awareness that such exercises cannot replicate patients' lived experiences completely, but can serve as valuable entry points for reflection if appropriately guided and debriefed.

Conclusion: Overall, educators regarded patient-perspective simulations as an effective means of encouraging reflection, and greater sensitivity to the patients' experiences, while also acknowledging their limitations. Educators play an important role in framing and guiding these exercises to prevent oversimplification, manage group dynamics, and create meaningful learning.

Background: Clinical training exposes nursing internship students to intense ethical challenges that may threaten their sense of meaning and contribute to psychological emptiness. Protective psychological and moral resources, such as purposefulness and moral resilience, may play a crucial role in mitigating this existential vulnerability.

Objective: This study aimed to test a structural model examining the direct and indirect associations between purposefulness and psychological emptiness, with moral resilience as a mediating variable, among nursing internship students.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 215 nursing internship students in Tabriz, Urmia, and Ardabil, Iran. Data were collected using the Sense of Purpose Scale-Revised Persian Version (SOPS-2-PERS), the Rashed Moral Resilience Scale (RMRS), and the Psychological Emptiness Scale (PES). Descriptive and inferential analyses were performed using SPSS v14. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with bias-corrected bootstrap procedures (5000 resamples) was conducted in AMOS 24.0 to examine the hypothesized relationships.

Results: The proposed structural model demonstrated a good fit to the data. Purposefulness was positively associated with moral resilience, and moral resilience was negatively related to psychological emptiness. Although the direct association between purposefulness and psychological emptiness was negative, it did not reach statistical significance. Bootstrap analysis confirmed a significant indirect effect of purposefulness on psychological emptiness through moral resilience, indicating that the association was transmitted mainly via moral resilience.

Conclusion: The findings suggest that moral resilience plays a key mediating role in the relationship between purposefulness and psychological emptiness. Enhancing students' sense of purpose may reduce psychological emptiness, primarily by strengthening moral resilience during clinical training.

Clinical trial number: Not applicable.