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The current randomized controlled trial investigated the effect of a robotic pet on social and physical frailty in community-dwelling older adults. The intervention group (n = 107) received a robotic pet and the control group (n = 113) received usual care following hospital discharge. Social and physical frailty were measured using the Questionnaire to Define Social Frailty Status and the FRAIL questionnaire. Cognitive function and depression were assessed using the Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire and Geriatric Depression Scale, respectively. Continuous outcomes were compared between groups using t tests or Wilcoxon rank sum tests, as appropriate. Categorical outcomes were compared between groups using chi-square tests or Fisher's exact tests, as appropriate. Main findings showed the robotic pet positively impacted cognitive status in participants who reported they enjoyed engaging with their pet. This finding supported the theoretical premise of the current study that greater engagement with the robotic pet would yield greater improvement in study outcomes. [Research in Gerontological Nursing, 15(5), 229–237.]

Background: In the evolving landscape of health care, the need for highly skilled nursing professionals has never been greater. Central to meeting this demand is the collaboration between academic institutions and health care settings, particularly through faculty practice partnerships. Method: An academic-practice partnership in a safety-net hospital partnered with doctorally prepared faculty from a private university and a public community college to create an academic-practice partnership triad. This triad addresses every level of need, including the clinical placements of licensed practical nurses; associate, baccalaureate, and master's students; and doctoral candidates completing their research in the facility. Results: These collaborations between academic institutions and health care organizations aimed to enhance new graduate nurse readiness, improve health care quality, and strengthen workforce development. Conclusion: Through shared resources, interdisciplinary learning, and real-world application, this partnership not only benefits students and professionals but also strengthens the health care system as a whole.

Hospitalized older adults often experience isolation and disorientation while receiving care, placing them at risk for many inpatient complications, including loneliness, depression, delirium, and falls. Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) are technological entities that can interact with people through spoken conversation. Some ECAs are also relational agents, which build and maintain socioemotional relationships with people across multiple interactions. This study utilized a novel form of relational ECA, provided by Care Coach (care.coach, inc): an animated animal avatar on a tablet device, monitored and controlled by live health advocates. The ECA implemented algorithm-based clinical protocols for hospitalized older adults, such as reorienting patients to mitigate delirium risk, eliciting toileting needs to prevent falls, and engaging patients in social interaction to facilitate social engagement. Previous pilot studies of the Care Coach avatar have demonstrated the ECA's usability and efficacy in home-dwelling older adults. Further study among hospitalized older adults in a larger experimental trial is needed to demonstrate its effectiveness. The aim of the study was to examine the effect of a human-in-the-loop, protocol-driven relational ECA on loneliness, depression, delirium, and falls among diverse hospitalized older adults. This was a clinical trial of 95 adults over the age of 65 years, hospitalized at an inner-city community hospital. Intervention participants received an avatar for the duration of their hospital stay; participants on a control unit received a daily 15-min visit from a nursing student. Measures of loneliness (3-item University of California, Los Angeles Loneliness Scale), depression (15-item Geriatric Depression Scale), and delirium (confusion assessment method) were administered upon study enrollment and before discharge. Participants who received the avatar during hospitalization had lower frequency of delirium at discharge (P<.001), reported fewer symptoms of loneliness (P=.01), and experienced fewer falls than control participants. There were no significant differences in self-reported depressive symptoms. The study findings validate the use of human-in-the-loop, relational ECAs among diverse hospitalized older adults.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether wound care certification and education affect nursing knowledge. This study examined pressure ulcer knowledge among registered nurses who were (1) certified in wound care, (2) certified in specialty areas other than wound care, or (3) not certified in any specialty area. DESIGN: A convenience sample of 460 nurses, located in both urban and rural areas, provided demographic information and completed a standardized pressure ulcer knowledge test using (Pieper Pressure Ulcer Knowledge Tool). RESULTS: The mean standardized test score for the total sample was 78%, with nurses certified in wound care scoring 89%, nurses certified in specialties other than wound care scoring 78%, and nurses receiving no certification scoring 76.5%. CONCLUSION: Wound care certification and education significantly affect nursing knowledge.

Numerous web-based resources are available to improve the knowledge of undergraduate students in assessing and providing care to older adults. These resources can be helpful to nurse educators regardless of the learning environment and to students and nurses who are working with older adults. This article describes some of the widely available online resources for teaching geriatric content to students and how to use them. The purpose of this article is to promote use of websites as teaching tools for nurse educators and as a resource to students and nurse clinicians.

Objectives of the simulation include; * Communicate effectively with all participants in this child's care, including family members and other health care professionals. * Identify relevant cues based on the focused assessment of a child admitted with difficulty breathing. * Take appropriate actions for a child with a tracheostomy, increased secretions, and respiratory distress, including suctioning, chest physiotherapy, and oxygen delivery. * Demonstrate safe GT and intravenous medication administration. Students completed the SET-M (Simulation Evaluation Tool-Modified), which revealed that students particularly valued the opportunity to practice communication skills and gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by families of children with disabilities. Long-term survival of children born with congenital anomalies: A systematic review and meta-analysis of population-based studies. HRSA Maternal & Child Health, https://mchb.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/ mchb/programs-impact/nsch-data-brief-children-youthspecial-health-care-needs.pdf New York State Education Department (2023, October).

Falls are a common, yet serious complication for hospitalized patients. The Ruby Red Slipper Program is an interdisciplinary fall management program that includes development and education of unit-based fall management teams. Initial outcomes demonstrated significant reductions in falls.

ABSTRACTLack of patient information is a particular problem when a patient is transferred from one health care facility to another. The lack of information needed to develop a timely and effective plan of care for an older adult transferred to the nursing home facility may exacerbate disruptions in the older adult's care. Also, adjustment or readjustment to the nursing home or hospital environment may be prolonged. Persistence of problems or difficulty in adjustment may then lead to exacerbation of the disease processes and, ultimately, hospital readmissions. Evidence suggests that elderly patients discharged from the hospital have high readmission rates. Although the patient is most affected by a breakdown in communication, everyone in the nursing home involved in the resident's care is also affected. All staff who provide care to the resident, including nursing, medicine, nutrition, pharmacy, social work, and physical therapy staff members, must be cognizant of issues related to communication for patients being transferred. In this article, the authors discuss the development, implementation, and results of a model designed to increase the communication surrounding the transition of elderly patients from an inpatient unit to and from nursing homes.

Hospitalized older adults may experience a decline in functional status from their preadmission baseline, over the course of a hospital stay, and often improve little by the time of discharge, regardless of the admitting diagnosis. Elements of hospitalization including the physical environment and some patient care practices can contribute to poor outcomes; one area in which older hospitalized patients are at high risk is functional decline. Models of care have been designed to prevent functional decline and achieve better outcomes for hospitalized elders. The Acute Care for the Elderly (ACE) model integrates a physical environment designed to foster functional independence along with changes in nursing and medical care delivery, specially trained staff and an interprofessional team approach. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the Acute Care for the Elderly model on functional decline and associated nurse sensitive outcomes (falls, nosocomial pressure ulcers, and nosocomial urinary tract infections) compared to a regular medical unit. This study was a prospective observational trial that utilized a quasi-experimental, potentially non-equivalent, control group design to compare complications in two different hospital treatment groups (ACE unit and a regular medical unit). There was a significant difference in percentage change in functional status between the two groups, participants on the ACE unit improved in their ability to perform basic activities of daily living as compared to participants on the comparison unit, controlling for medical comorbidities and level of orientation (F=18, p<0.0001). On average, participants on the ACE unit improved their functional status by 49%, while those on the comparison unit demonstrated, on average, functional decline of 7%. There were not enough occurrences of falls, nosocomial pressure ulcers and nosocomial urinary tract infections in this sample for statistical modeling. The ACE unit is one model of care that has strong evidence that it is possible to prevent the hazards of hospitalization and promote positive outcomes by redesigning the hospital unit and care delivery. The findings of this study support the ACE model of care and its role in improving outcomes for hospitalized older adults.

This two-year qualitative clinical study investigates the intea-psychic (within a person) and inter-relational (between people) effect of maternal ambivalence in female psychotherapy relationships. The participants are five, low-income single mothers, and I am the therapist researcher. Ambivalence describes the co-existence of loving and hating feelings. In traditional psychoanalytic theory, ambivalence originates in the developing infant's relationship to the mother and forms the basis of all adult relationships. A mother's experience of ambivalence is viewed as a regressive return to an earlier emotional experience with her mother. Maternal ambivalence is a feminist psychoanalytic concept developed by Parker (1995, 1997). Parker expands the Freudian and post-Freudian object relations concept of ambivalence using the perspective of the adult mother. In Parker's conceptualization of maternal ambivalence, a mother experiences feelings of ambivalence towards her infant and child that are not simply regressive, but are part of her normal adult development as a mother. Each mother's experiences and expressions of maternal ambivalence are affected by her social and cultural context of mothering. Each woman is consciously and unconsciously affected by her psychosocial constructions of maternal ambivalence and brings her beliefs and experiences into the clinical relationship. Through highlighting the narratives and interpreting the transference and counter-transference material, this study shows the impact of maternal ambivalence on the therapeutic alliance of women working with women in clinical social work. The therapeutic alliance refers to the quality of the relational bond between the therapist and client. This population of mothers was selected because they represent a significant group of clients seen in various clinical social work Dangerous Connections settings, such as youth protection, non-profit counseling agencies, and community centers. In this manuscript-based thesis, I present two of my participants' cases as an indepth exploration of my research process, its analysis, and the applicable theories I used. This research process indicates that in seeking to develop a more culturally and gender sensitive clinical practice and therapeutic connections, social workers may benefit from reflectively challenging their internalized psychosocial idealizations and denigrations of motherhood.