Does empowerment matter? Perceptions of nursing leaders in Pakistan through qualitative approach.

Background: In a patriarchal society like Pakistan, where women are oppressed, women dominating professions like nursing is mostly seen as disempowered and requires considerable struggle to achieve its due recognition and respect. Aim: This study aims to explore the experiences of empowerment among the nursing leaders of Pakistan. Methods: This study uses a qualitative descriptive design. Total of twelve Pakistani Nursing leaders were interviewed using semi-structured interview guideline to explore their experiences of empowerment. Results: The study findings revealed five major categories which include: status of a nurse, nursing profession, power relationships, value-belief system, and leadership and management. Conclusions: Nurses’ empowerment is essential for enhancing the image and status of nursing profession in Pakistan. The study identified various personal and professional factors affecting nurses’ empowerment in the country and suggests various strategies, such as access to higher nursing education, development of enhanced nursing leadership competencies and understanding of power and politics of the organization, through which nurses can achieve empowerment

Guidance to 2018 good practice : ARIA digitally-enabled, integrated, person-centred care for rhinitis and asthma

AimsMobile Airways Sentinel NetworK (MASK) belongs to the Fondation Partenariale MACVIA-LR of Montpellier, France and aims to provide an active and healthy life to rhinitis sufferers and to those with asthma multimorbidity across the life cycle, whatever their gender or socio-economic status, in order to reduce health and social inequities incurred by the disease and to improve the digital transformation of health and care. The ultimate goal is to change the management strategy in chronic diseases.MethodsMASK implements ICT technologies for individualized and predictive medicine to develop novel care pathways by a multi-disciplinary group centred around the patients.StakeholdersInclude patients, health care professionals (pharmacists and physicians), authorities, patient's associations, private and public sectors.ResultsMASK is deployed in 23 countries and 17 languages. 26,000 users have registered.EU grants (2018)MASK is participating in EU projects (POLLAR: impact of air POLLution in Asthma and Rhinitis, EIT Health, DigitalHealthEurope, Euriphi and Vigour).Lessons learnt(i) Adherence to treatment is the major problem of allergic disease, (ii) Self-management strategies should be considerably expanded (behavioural), (iii) Change management is essential in allergic diseases, (iv) Education strategies should be reconsidered using a patient-centred approach and (v) Lessons learnt for allergic diseases can be expanded to chronic diseases.Peer reviewe

Assessment of nurses’ knowledge and practice regarding the use of transillumination device for establishing venous access

Background: Peripheral venous access is frequently performed in various health care settings. However, babies’ veins are smaller and poorly supported by surrounding soft tissue casing further difficulty of insertion compared to adult patients’vein. Transillumination device is recommended for difficult insertion of peripheral veins. Nursing practice should accommodate with evolving health care advancement, and therefore the nurses’ are required to develop their knowledge and attitude towards new skill and practice.Objectives: To assess the level of nurses’ knowledge and practice regarding the use of transillumination device for establishing venous access.Methods: A descriptive study design that was conducted among a sample of 20 Nurses working at Hail General Hospital, KSA. The study tool included a questionnaire sheet of 2 parts as demographic variables and then knowledge and practice regarding use of transillumination device for establishing venous access. Selected nurses were asked to fill up the questionnaire sheet.Results: The majority 50% of the nurses were under the age group of 31yrs and above. Most of the 95% nurses were bachelor’s degree and only 5% was master’s degree. The year of experience were majority of nurses 35% had 7-9 yrs. Designation of nurses indicates, almost 50% of the nurses were working as a Charge Nurse, among 45% as staff Nurse and only 5% as Head Nurse.Obviously, 100% of the nurses perform cannulation in first attempt. Before, 65% of the nurses had no awareness of using veinlite. 100% of the nurses used 26G size cannula.Furtherly, 85% assures that they could incorporate transillumination device into practice. The opinion of 65% nurses feel, this device was easy to use.Conclusion: The study says that, most of the 65% NICU nurses has only average and 35% has good knowledge and practice regarding use of transillumination device for establishing venous access. The nurses have interest in practicing transillumination device and seems to be time saving and effective. Suitable interventional packages need to be given periodically for the effectiveness of qualitative nursing service.  </jats:p

A Machine Learning Approach for Ecg Analysis for Emotions

Emotions are feelings which one can feel and are hard to be put in a form by a person .However they reflect the mental state of a person. Emotions like joy and sadness can be somehow detected from the facial expressions or through the body language. But these emotions do have an impact upon our system. An individual’s electrocardiogram is a way through which one can know the impact of different parameters such as stress, joy, sadness, anger on the mechanism of our body. The emotions such as anger, sadness have an adverse effect on the cardio system and is seen in the form of abnormal ECG which can be a good pointer to a counselor when finding out the reasons and diagnosis. The decomposition technique along with the Hilbert transform can be used for feature retrieval. The different emotions are detected through the binary classification technique</jats:p