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LGBT patients and their caregivers need competent nurses to support them, especially during transitions. Implementing LGBT-inclusive education, training, and practice will improve outcomes for LGBT cancer patients and their caregivers - and potentially all patients.

Serious mental illness (SMI) represents a major risk for repeated incarceration, yet recidivism studies often do not specifically focus on persons with SMI as compared to non-SMI offenders. The study reported here systematically identified Utah State prisoners released from 1998 to 2002 (N = 9,245) who meet criteria for SMI and compared SMI and non-SMI offenders on length of time to prison return. Findings indicate that 23% of the sample met criteria for SMI (n = 2,112). Moreover, survival analyses demonstrated a significant difference in return rates and community tenure for offenders with SMI compared to non-SMI offenders when controlling for demographics, condition of release, offense type, and condition of return (parole violation vs. new commitment). The median time for all SMI offenders to return to prison was 385 days versus 743 days for all non-SMI offenders, 358 days sooner (p < .001). Implications of these findings are discussed.

This article concerns a study of Washington State supermaximum security unit (SMU) residents conducted to generate systematic, empirical data for this population and to investigate behavioral, institutional, and policy issues that affect their treatment. The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) is used to standardize interview-based assessments of participants’ psychosocial functioning, in conjunction with other operational, situation-specific measures. Results indicate that the BPRS is a reliable and effective measure of psychosocial impairment in SMU residents. Comparison of factor-based BPRS scores in this sample with scores and factor analysis solutions achieved in other populations points to considerations specific to this population that require further study. Finally, assessment of SMU residents using the BPRS and convergent measures of impairment indicates that a significant number demonstrate psychosocial impairment and/or meet criteria for serious mental illness.

As the number of prison inmates facing end-stage chronic illness grows, more prisons across the U.S. must address the need for end-of-life care. Many will likely need to develop a plan with potentially limited resources and external support. This case study presents one long-running model of care, the Louisiana State Penitentiary Prison Hospice Program. Based on field observations and in-depth interviews with hospice staff, inmate volunteers and corrections officers, we identify five essential elements that have contributed to the long-term operation of this program: patient-centered care, an inmate volunteer model, safety and security, shared values, and teamwork. We describe key characteristics of each of these elements, discuss how they align with earlier recommendations and research, and show how their integration supports a sustained model of prison end-of-life care.

The documentation of pain in the labor and delivery setting is one of the essential tasks of all health care providers who care for women in labor. The Joint Commission standards mandate regular pain assessments, but compliance with this mandate in the highly unique patient population of laboring woman is problematic when using the standard 0 to 10 Numeric Rating Scale. Labor pain is always unique given the various contributing physiologic, emotional, social, and cultural components. This article describes the work of a process improvement group to create an alternative pain assessment tool named the Coping With Labor Algorithm. The group, consisting of nurses and nurse‐midwives, used the FOCUS format and Deming's “Plan, Do, Check, and Act” cycle to create a formalized assessment tool for use with laboring women. The Coping With Labor Algorithm is currently in use in the labor unit of a large tertiary care facility, which successfully passed a Joint Commission inspection while using the coping algorithm. The value of the coping algorithm is two‐fold: it provides a mechanism for pain documentation, and it provides nursing care suggestions for the laboring woman. This article reports nurses' perceptions of the tool.

Although informatics is an important area of nursing inquiry and practice, few scholars have articulated the philosophical foundations of the field or how these translate into practice including the often-cited data, information, knowledge, and wisdom (DIKW) framework. Data, information, and knowledge, often approached through postpositivism, can be exhibited in computer systems. Wisdom aligns with constructivist epistemological perspectives such as Gadamerian hermeneutics. Computer systems can support wisdom development. Wisdom is an important element of the DIKW framework and adds value to the role of nursing informaticists and nursing science.

This paper is an analysis of how the signifier 'experience' is used in nursing research. We identify a set of issues we believe accompany the use of experience but are rarely addressed. These issues are embedded in a spectrum that includes ontological commitments, visions of the person/self and its relation to 'society', understandings of research methodology and the politics of nursing. We argue that a poststructuralist understanding of the language of experience in research opens up additional ways to analyze the relationship between the conduct of nursing research and cultural/political commitments.