Nursing401

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Delirium has been recognized as a serious acute medical condition that’s been called a medical emergency. Every day, 30,000 to 40,000 ICU patient in the United States are suffering from acute brain dysfunction called delirium (Maniou, 2012). Delirium is a manifestation of CNS dysfunction, it is important to recognize and treat life-threatening conditions that may result in delirium such as; sepsis, pneumonia, myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism and medications. It’s recommended that after nurses’ exclude life-threatening complications that they turn their attention to the patients environment and make attempts to minimize any factors that may exacerbate delirium such as; avoiding prolonged sleep deprivation, minimizing artificial lighting, and being mindful of clustering patient care to avoid additional disruptions.

Patients on mechanical ventilation increase the risk of delirium three-fold. It has been found that the mortality rate with patients experiencing delirium may exceed twice the six-month mortality rate of nondelirious patients, and it is associated with longer hospital stays and with a higher rate of cognitive impairment at discharge (Maniou, 2012). CAM-ICU is a useful tool in diagnosing and monitoring delirium and is recommended to be used frequently in the ICU, it is constructed with yes/no questions for use with nonspeaking, mechanically ventilated ICU patients. To reduce the length of time patients spend heavily sedated and immobilized on a ventilator healthcare providers are awakening patients from sedation earlier, assessing pain, and getting them to breathe on their own as soon as possible to avoid prolonged delirium which can have long lasting effects on cognitive function. Focus is also aimed at getting patients up and moving while still on a ventilator can also help reduce muscle weakness and assist in a speedier recovery.

References:

Landro, L. (2011). Informed patient: changing sedation status quo in the ICU.  Health Blog, Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2011/02/15/changing-the-sedation-status-quo-in-the-icu/

Maniou, M. (2012). Delirium: a distressing and disturbing clinical event in a intensive care unit. Health Science Journal, Vol 6, Issue 4.

 

Reducing the Risk of Heart Disease- Exercise, a Heart Healthy Diet, and the Right Amount of SLEEP

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Article: Too Much, Too Little Sleep May Harm the Heart

We’ve all heard that proper diet and exercise is crucial to lowering our risk for heart disease. This study focused on another major factor that often doesn’t receive as much attention, sleep. With the American mentality of work hard, play hard it often seems that there isn’t much time left for sleep. In fact, it almost seems that individuals pride themselves on their ability to keep up despite minimal amounts of sleep. While these individuals may feel like they’re living life to its fullest, they are missing out on the major benefits of getting a good nights sleep.

With attempting to balance work, school, and some form of a social and healthy lifestyle I often find that sleep gets thrown by the wayside. Recently it’s become a personal goal of mine to try to get better quality sleep and more of it.

I found this article interesting because it discusses not only the importance of sleep as it relates to cardiovascular health, but the importance of the right amount of sleep.

 

According to the article, a study of 47,000 participants showed individuals who:

  • got five or fewer hours of sleep a day had 50 percent more calcium in their arteries than those who slept seven hours a day.
  • slept nine or more hours a day had at least 70 percent more calcium compared to those who slept seven hours.
  • reported poor sleep quality had more than 20 percent more calcium than those who reported good sleep quality.

So, as with most things in life, sleep is good in moderation. It looks as though oversleeping may actually be more harmful to your heart than not getting enough sleep!

 

 

Search Engine Search: Rising Tuition

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A previous post of mine entitled “Social Issues for College Students” detailed a list of issues that I felt were relevant to college students today. In my Digital Citizenship class, we have been assigned to address and explore one issue in depth and the one that I will be examining is the phenomenon of rising tuition costs. For purposes of context, I found this issue to be the most pressing for college students on both daily and long-term bases. If costs continue to rise, we will have students that are avoiding school because they are unable to afford it. The students that do take on the costs and attend school anyway are being saddled with crippling debt that will take several years to pay off. One of the big questions behind this issue are when do the benefits stop outweighing the cost? In other words, how much money is too much?

This week I have done a search engine search on the costs of higher education on the following engines: Google, Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. The results varied for each engine, but I was able to find some of the same information on each. I have found that the top results are not necessarily the best sources of information, which I would personally define as being scholarly in nature. The top results are those like The Huffington Post and The New York Times. While those two particular examples are more reliable than most because of more editing and checking of sources, they are still platforms that mostly express opinion. I understand more so than ever why professors are constantly telling students to use scholarly articles and databases for research. The simple fact of the matter is that scholarly resources are evaluated by experts in the field for accuracy, proper information gathering, and facts to back up opinions. I also noticed that DuckDuckGo (an incognito browser that does not track your online presence), presented me with more professional sites such as NPR and US News because it has no idea about the articles that I have previously read on the popular sites listed above.

I look forward to delving more into this topic because I find it to be of the utmost relevancy for college students today and those who love them.

 

Until next time,

MGH. Professor in Training

The post Search Engine Search: Rising Tuition appeared first on Professor In Training.

Social Issues Part Two

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Hello and good afternoon

 

This week we are still on the social issues of college students. The issue that I will be talking on for the next few weeks is the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) community and some of the pressures and issue that might arise. It seems to me that even though there will always be cultures and religions that will frown on same sex couples, I believe that the LGBT community has made huge leaps and bounds towards equality and full social acceptance. It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that it was taboo to even speak of the subject and now we have legalized same sex marriage in all 50 states.

Many of my friends, coworkers, fellow student, and a couple relatives are gay. It has never been anything that has bothered me, nor that I felt was out of the ordinary. I have never understood the hatred that is shown to anyone because of race, religion or sexual preference.

I will say that after a short search I found that the LGBT is thriving in Ventura County. There are more events for the community then one can ever attend. BBQ’s, parties, bowling, dance club events, you name it. I found that there is a LBGT clubs on both CSUCI and Ventura College campuses both that are full of events to attend.

There is no shortage of blogs that have to do with LBGT and for all ages. There is support for those that might be having a hard time with certain issue, all the way to finding housing. As I dig deeper into this community I will be sure to share with everyone else. Below are a few links of some of the ones I liked.

Remember to have a FANTASTIC day, smile, make someone else laugh out loud, and the glass is always half full.

CDR

 

 

Think Progress

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/issue/

Top 10 Blogs on Transgender, Bisexual, Lesbian, and Gay Rights

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/gendersexuality/tp/blogs_lgbt.htm

Gay Teens

http://gayteenss.tumblr.com/lgbtblogs

Refugee Crisis

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The way I’ve been trying to conduct my research is around credible websites that can provide myself and the ones around me good viewpoints and stats. Over the past month or so, each day on my way to work I learn about the newest information that is going on in Europe. I believe staying informed rather than learning about it from someone else is a great way of knowing what to do to help the situation.
The search engines I like to use are NPR. This website is one that I recommend to all since it has great articles of this particular topic along with many current events throughout the world. Seems unbiased when it comes to the information and really seeks to get the perspectives of these refugees for example.

Another great resource was Duck Duck Go. This is an awesome search engine that provides a lot of insightful and controversial articles. Learning about the refugee camps through here made my understanding of the crisis much easier. I had never used this search engine until this particular search and quite frankly I wish I would have knew about it sooner. My experience with Duck Duck go was a positive one that will be remembered the next time I need to research a certain topic or event.

This world event is something I wish we were all equally informed of since it will eventually reach your home if the number of migrants and refugees continue to rise like it has.

Refugee Crisis

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I chose to research the global issue of the refugee crisis.  The thing that got me initially intrigued about this topic was the sadness I felt when I saw the picture of the three year old Syrian boy whose body washed up on shore in Turkey after her had drowned trying to flee the country of Syria with his family.  The only person who survived in that family was the father who no longer wanted to live after reaching shore because he stated he had nothing to live for anymore.  This broke my heart.  I could not fathom the fact that people were denying to help other out in the world.  Everyone on the face of the earth is a human being, how can we be so cruel to our own kind?  Researching this topic and fining articles with so many different views opened my mind to the political side of it, but I still don’t completely agree with letting people suffer and die.  I tried the different search engines to read articles and some seemed more reliable than others.  Reading about the crap detection helped me weed out those articles that would not have been as helpful. Now that I can use these tools to help me get the right articles I can help inform others about this issue of the world the right way, with the right information.

LGBTQ Equality

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One of my top, if not my top, social issues is equality for the LGBTQ community. I have chosen to research this topic because its an unnecessary issue. I have witnessed the unfair inequality not only out in society and personally, being a bisexual male. My big issue is the discrimination toward the community, for being who they are. Inequality for the community is not only an issue here in the United States but worldwide in other countries.

Upon my research on this topic. A came upon thousands of results. Many of the sites were non-profits. All sites are different in their content but have LGBTQ at the center of their topic. Most were information on inequality of the community. Others were news and articles on the latest issues or changes on this topic. There are definitely plenty of places I could dig into to find information. But are they reliable? I still don’t know. I have to dig a little deeper to find more information on these sites. There were a few that I think I could rely on but I am not a hundred percent sure. One of the sites I want to go through a little more is the Human Rights Campaign. It seem reliable and links to other topics relatable or thing that affect the LGBT community.

So far I am satisfied with what I have found but will do more searching to find reliable sources. The internet is a big place and I know I will find the information I need.

Facts and ADveRTISeMENTS

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Remember when we thought everything we found on the internet was true. The challenge is to determine fact from fake while getting information on a topic. So that’s what I hope I did. I did as directed and searched engines Google, yahoo, and duck duck go.  I found my search results quite interesting….

I first searched Google for college affordability and found it came up with facts and facts mixed with analysis.  Some sites however only contained facts for certain universities while other sites compared costs based on what type of university for instance it compared public, private, and public nonprofit. But everything isn’t always as it should be.

I then searched Yahoo and found a load of crap. My first full page of results were advertisements. Advertisement after advertisement. It showed online schools, information/ ads for lowering your college costs, and how costs are extraordinarily high that you might as well go to a convenient cost effective online college. On yahoo an over exaggeration of higher education costs and opinions can be found. It makes you feel as if you’re on facebook with all the eye catching ad/posts to click on only to find out its fake and you wasted your time even going to the site. Yahoo was useless in my opinion while searching on the topic.

I finally searched duck duck go which is filled with facts and articles based on actual information. No ADS or Empty facts. When it states something it explains the fact and goes in-depth. It would put a smile on your face to see all the information.

 

 

 

 

Beginning Health Care Reasearch

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I started searching my topic the day after we met for class. There is so much information on this broad topic that made it difficult to narrow it down. Nevertheless I was able to search many sub topics within our topic Healthcare. First, I was interested in some more common issues being abortion; immigrant’s receiving healthcare, and the different healthcare options one would receive depending if they worked full time or part time. When searching for these topics I used multiple different search engines. I definitely found that some worked better than others. For example safari was fairly poor due to the specific words you need to type in order to get what you were actually searching for. Google is my ultimate favorite especially after learning how to parenthesize a word to get a more specific search. I used Google chrome to find most of my blog sources on health care.

Next, I tried using our school online library source to find more specific articles that still relate to healthcare and how it is offered. I was intrigued to find out how different the benefits were when being a part time or a full time worker. I also learned that it is much more difficult to acquire a full time position than it is to obtain a part time one. And workers all over America are turning to having multiple part time jobs as opposed to getting a full time job due to the competitive side of getting a full time job. Full time jobs are hard to come by and you want that good healthcare program and it is important to you one should plan on going to college to put themselves one step ahead of everyone else.

Social Issues

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