Nursing education should prepare students for a lifelong professional career including managing clinical physical demands. Musculoskeletal symptoms, such as bodily pain, have been reported among nurses and nursing students but less is known about the impact of symptoms in daily activities. The aim was to explore the prevalence of self-reported musculoskeletal symptoms and their impact on general physical activity among nursing students. This cross-sectional study was based on a questionnaire to all undergraduate nursing students at one university. The prevalence of symptoms and physical impact during past 3 and 12 months was calculated for each study year. Odds ratio was analyzed with logistic regression. Of 348 students 224 responded, 84% women, mean age 24.6 years (range 20-46).Of those 143 (64%) reporting symptoms during the past 12 months, 91 (64%) reported impact on physical activities. Most commonly reported were everyday activities such as transportations and prolonged sitting. The odds ratio for reporting symptoms was 1.8 for year 2 (95% CI: 0.9-3.5), and 4.7 for year 3 (95% CI: 2.1-10.7). The prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms was high among nursing students and higher the final study year and not only resulted in discomfort but had an impact on the students' general physical activities.
ObjectiveSafety is essential to support independent living among the rising number of people with long-term healthcare and social care needs. Safety performance in home care leans heavily on the capacity of unlicensed staff to respond to problems and changes in the older patients’ functioning and health. The aim of this study is to explore assistant nurses’ adaptive responses to everyday work to ensure safe care in the home care context.DesignA qualitative approach using the drama-based learning and reflection technique forum play with subsequent group interviews. The audio-recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed with thematic analysis.SettingHome care services organisations providing care to older people in their private homes in two municipalities in southern Sweden.ParticipantsPurposeful sampling of 24 assistant nurses and three managers from municipal home care services and a local geriatric hospital clinic.ResultsHome care workers’ adaptive responses to provide safe home care were driven by an ambition to ‘make it work in the best interests of the person’ by adjusting to and accommodating care recipient needs and making autonomous decisions that expanded the room for manoeuvrability, while weighing risks of a trade-off between care standards and the benefits for the community-dwelling older people’s independent living. Adaptations to ensure information transfer and knowledge acquisition across disciplines and borders required reciprocity.ConclusionsSafety performance in home care service is dependent on the staff closest to the older people, who deal with safety risks and ethical dilemmas on a day-to-day basis and their access to information, competence, and resources that fit the demands. A proactive leadership characterised by mutual trust and adequate support for decision making is suggested. Managers and decision-makers across healthcare and social care need to consider how they can develop interprofessional collaborations and adaptive routines supporting safety from a broader perspective.
Background: Mobility and balance is essential for older adults' well-being and independence and the ability to maintain physically active. Early identification of functional impairment may enable early risk-of-fall assessments and preventive measures. There is a need to find new solutions to assess functional ability in easy, efficient, and accurate ways, which can be clinically used frequently and repetitively. Therefore, we need to understand how functional tests and expert assessments (EAs) correlate with new techniques.Objective: To explore whether the skeleton avatar technique (SAT) can predict the results of functional tests (FTs) of mobility and balance: Timed Up and Go (TUG), the 30-s chair stand test (30sCST), the 4-stage balance test (4SBT), and EA scoring of movement quality.Methods: Fifty-four older adults (+65 years) were recruited through pensioners' associations. The test procedure contained three standardized FTs: TUG, 30sCST, and 4SBT. The test performances were recorded using a three-dimensional SAT camera. EA scoring was performed based on the video recordings of the 30sCST. Functional ability scores were aggregated from balance and mobility scores. Probability theory-based statistical analyses were used on the data to aggregate sets of individual variables into scores, with correlation analysis used to assess the dependency between variables and between scores. Machine learning techniques were used to assess the appropriateness of easily observable variables/scores as predictors of the other variables included.Results: The results indicate that SAT data of the fourth 4SBT stage could be used to predict the aggregated results of all stages of 4SBT (with 7.82% mean absolute error), the results of the 30sCST (11.0%), the TUG test (8.03%), and the EA of the sit-to-stand movement (8.79%). There is a moderate (significant) correlation between the 30sCST and the 4SBT (0.31, p = 0.03), but not between the EA and the 30sCST.Conclusion: SAT can predict the results of the 4SBT, the 30sCST (moderate accuracy), and the TUG test and might add important qualitative information to the assessment of movement performance in active older adults. SAT might in the future provide the means for a simple, easy, and accessible assessment of functional ability among older adults.
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