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Issue 23 - 8 December 2021

Read Kai Tiaki online

Articles: International Journal of Mental Health Nursing

  1. Understanding the factors that affect retention within the mental health nursing workforce: a systematic review and thematic synthesis
  2. Improving the physical health of young people with early psychosis with lifestyle interventions: Scoping review
  3. An integrated review of the barriers and facilitators for accessing and engaging with mental health in a rural setting

Articles: Syndemics and COVID-19

  1. How to capture the individual and societal impacts of syndemics: the lived experience of COVID-19 BMJ Global Health
  2. How COVID, inequality and politics make a vicious syndemic
  3. The Covid Syndemic: The mental health crisis of mental health workers
  4. Addressing health disparities from a syndemic perspective

Articles: Nursing Times [Journal]

  1. Engaging staff in clinical research to tackle the coronavirus pandemic
  2. Bullied and disciplined: How Black nurses are being failed
  3. MHRA approves Covid-19 treatment for patients at-risk of severe disease
  4. Asthma control in children linked to risk of bullying, suggests study
  5. Special investigation: The voice of nursing on mute

Articles: Canadian Nurse [Journal]

  1. Considerations for nurse-to-patient assignment ratios during the COVID-19 pandemic
  2. What is ‘normal’? Rethinking constructions of normalcy to enact patient-centred care
  3. 8 lessons from COVID-19 to help us build a ‘field of dreams’ for the nursing profession
  4. Distress and safety: personal reflections on rural and remote nursing research

Articles: Compassion Fatigue

  1. Resilience as a mediator between compassion fatigue, nurses’ work outcomes, and quality of care during the COVID-19 pandemic
  2. Compassion Fatigue in Advanced Practice Registered Nurses
  3. Impostor syndrome and compassion fatigue among graduate allied health students: A pilot study
  4. Making self-care a priority: Caring for the carer

Events

  1. Health and Care Services for Older People
  2. New Zealand Nursing Leaders’ Summit

National news

  1. Pfizer boss: Annual Covid jabs for years to come
  2. Everyone is hooked on the idea but 10,000 steps a day is not the ideal

International news

  1. Omicron: Why viruses mutate, and why we’re seeing this COVID-19 variant emerge now
  2. Night-shift workers who eat only in the day may cut diabetes risk
  3. How to build a habit in 5 steps, according to scienc

Articles: International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, December 2021

1. Understanding the factors that affect retention within the mental health nursing workforce: a systematic review and thematic synthesis

Adams, R.,  Ryan, T., & Wood, E. 
International Journal of Mental Health Nursing. (2021, Dec.) 30(6), 1476-1497.

Urgent action is needed to retain the mental health nurses (MHNs) currently in post to ensure the profession is fit for purpose and aid future recruitment efforts. This review set out to identify the individual factors that affect the retention of MHNs.

2. Improving the physical health of young people with early psychosis with lifestyle interventions: Scoping review

Ting Ting Hui., Loretta Garvey., & Michael Olasoji.
International Journal of Mental Health Nursing. (2021, Dec.) 30(6), 1498-1524.

People with mental illness experience a shorter life expectancy compared to the general population. Young people are particularly at risk as the onset of mental illness mostly occurs between the age of 12 and 25 years. The aim of this study was to conduct a scoping review following the JBI methodological guidance on scoping reviews to explore the current literature on lifestyle intervention trialled for early psychosis, including first-episode psychosis and those who are at ultra-high risk for psychosis. 

3. An integrated review of the barriers and facilitators for accessing and engaging with mental health in a rural setting

Philip Ferris-Day., Karen Hoare., Rhonda L. Wilson., Claire Minton., & Andrea Donaldson
International Journal of Mental Health Nursing. (2021, Dec.) 30(6), 1525-1538.

The review investigated the barriers and facilitators associated with assessing and engaging with mental health in a rural setting. The aim is to describe and synthesize the literature that examines the experiences of adults who access or attempt to access mental health services in rural setting.

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Articles: Syndemics and COVID-19

4. How to capture the individual and societal impacts of syndemics: the lived experience of COVID-19 BMJ Global Health

Stefan Boes., Carla Sabariego., Jerome Bickenbach., & Gerold Stucki

To capture the complex interactions between health and social crises that he noticed in the HIV-AIDS pandemic, medical anthropologist Merrill Singer in the early 1990s invented the term syndemic to describe the ‘closely intertwined and mutual enhancing health problems that significantly affect the overall health status of a population’.1 Singer and Clair later expanded the notion to reconceptualise disease in a biosocial context,2 making the link to a systems approach to public health.

5. How COVID, inequality and politics make a vicious syndemic

Overlapping diseases and social conditions in the U.S. continue to dictate who is hurt most badly by the novel coronavirus
Emily Mendenhall., & Clarence C. Gravlee
Scientific American, August 2021

The term syndemic refers to the synergies among epidemics. The idea involves three claims. First, political-economic forces with historical depth lead to entrenched social, economic and power inequities. Second, those inequities shape the distribution of risks and resources for health, leading to the concentration of disease in specific parts of a population. And third, some overlapping diseases make one another worse because of biological interactions.

6. The Covid Syndemic: The mental health crisis of mental health workers

William A. Haseltine
Forbes, Mar 2021

A syndemic refers to multiple interrelated epidemics happening at the same time. Covid-19 has unleashed and amplified a number of simultaneous personal, social, medical, political, and economic crises. This is the first in a series of articles exploring the impact of the Covid-19 syndemic. 

7. Addressing health disparities from a syndemic perspective

ONF 2021, 48(3), 261-262. Doi: 10.1188/21.ONF.261-262

Syndemic (synergy of epidemic) theory, developed by medical anthropologists in the early 2000s, provides a framework to examine mutually enhancing diseases/health issues under conditions of social inequality and inequity. This pandemic has raised to a higher level of awareness the ongoing and multiple forms of disparity associated with health and illness. For oncology nurses and scientists, how do we look to the issues so starkly presented by the pandemic and raise our awareness that the issues are not specific to COVID-19?

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Articles: Nursing Times [Journal], 2021 Issues

8. Engaging staff in clinical research to tackle the coronavirus pandemic

Nursing Times – 6 September 2021

A clinical research team describe how they provided support for pressured clinicians recruiting patients into clinical trials during the coronavirus pandemic. This initiative won the clinical research nursing category in the 2020 Nursing Times Awards.

9. Bullied and disciplined: How Black nurses are being failed

Nursing Times – 2 December 2021

If they were experiencing racism before Covid, now it will have increased,” said Neomi Bennett, the Black British agency nurse who created the Equality 4 Black Nurses (E4BN) group in July 2020. She described racism in the health and care sector as being at “boiling point” and a “pandemic in itself.

10. MHRA approves Covid-19 treatment for patients at-risk of severe disease

Nursing Times – 2 December 2021

The UK’s medicines regulator has approved a Covid-19 treatment that has been found to cut the risk of hospitalisation and death by 79% in high-risk adults with the infection. Scientists have also said that preclinical data suggests it should work well against the latest variant of concern, Omicron, but the regulator has cautioned that it is “too early” to tell.

11. Asthma control in children linked to risk of bullying, suggests study

Nursing Times – 2 December 2021

Children with asthma that is relatively well controlled are less likely to be bullied or teased by their peers because of their condition, suggests a UK study. In contrast, it found that children who reported bullying or teasing because of their asthma were more likely to report worse control as well as restrictions on daily activities.

12. Special investigation: The voice of nursing on mute

Nursing Times – 1 December 2021

Nurses are still facing major barriers to speaking up, with some being actively silenced by their employers, a Nursing Times investigation has revealed. We have found examples of nurses being obstructed from raising concerns within the workplace, via social media and other external routes.

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Articles: Canadian Nurse [Journal], November 2021

13. Considerations for nurse-to-patient assignment ratios during the COVID-19 pandemic 

Changing how we assign staff may help preserve the health workforce
Canadian Nurse - Nov 15, 2021

At the most basic level, a balanced pandemic assignment should ensure rotating distribution of isolation rooms. Designating confirmed and suspected COVID-19 patients to one group of nurses is ideal for infection control, but the increased workload associated with these patients can make such a model unsustainable.

14. What is ‘normal’? Rethinking constructions of normalcy to enact patient-centred care

Why standards may hinder nurses’ ability to deliver individualized care
Canadian Nurse - Nov 29, 2021

Standards of normal are set by studying the normal patient, and we must consider the population that comprises the normal patient to inform nurses’ judgments of the standard comparison. The problematic realities constructed by such standards have been magnified in the last year in response to large-scale social justice movements raising awareness of social inequity and systemic racism, highlighting how “normal” is often constructed using the standards of whiteness and the middle class.

15. 8 lessons from COVID-19 to help us build a ‘field of dreams’ for the nursing profession

Build it, and they will come; nurture it, and they will stay — and thrive
Canadian Nurse - Nov 08, 2021

Passion, perseverance, and purpose are key. To rebuild or recalibrate on the same foundation of inequity and a fragile nursing workforce is a flawed approach. We need to reconstruct our health system to build a healthy workforce.

16. Distress and safety: personal reflections on rural and remote nursing research

Canadian Nurse - Oct 25, 2021

Jahner, Penz, Stewart, and MacLeod (2020) shed light on the diverse risks, trauma, and loss of safety experienced by nurses in rural and remote settings while also offering interventions for individuals and institutions to reduce distress. 

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Articles: Compassion Fatigue

17. Resilience as a mediator between compassion fatigue, nurses' work outcomes, and quality of care during the COVID-19 pandemic

Leodoro J. Labrague., & Janet Alexis A. de los Santos
Applied Nursing Research. (2021). 61, Article 151476.

Nurses in the frontline of the battle against COVID-19 are highly vulnerable to compassion fatigue (CF), which may affect their mental health, work effectiveness, and patient safety outcomes. This study aims to examine the mediating role of resilience in the relationship between CF and frontline nurses' job outcomes (job satisfaction and turnover intention) and care quality.

18. Compassion Fatigue in Advanced Practice Registered Nurses

Lindsay Bouchard
Nursing Clinics of North America. (2019). 54(4), 625-637.

Compassion fatigue (CF) can be detrimental to health care providers’ mental and physical health, efficiency, and quality of patient care. Although many studies explore CF in physicians and nurses, there is currently limited published research regarding how advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) develop and address CF.

19. Impostor syndrome and compassion fatigue among graduate allied health students: A pilot study

D L Schmulian., W Redgen., & J Fleming
Focus on Health Professional Education, 01 August 2020

This study explored the prevalence of compassion fatigue and impostor syndrome risk in Australian university students in two allied health disciplines.

20. Making self-care a priority: Caring for the carer

Charmaine Smit
Whitireia Nursing and Health Journal, 01 January 2017

The multilayered demand of caring for palliative clients and their families requires that professionals make self-care a priority. A good starting point involves having a self-care plan that addresses individual strengths and challenges, including physical, emotional, cognitive, relational and spiritual.

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Events

21. Health and Care Services for Older People

Towards a dynamic health and care sector for New Zealand’s ageing population

Date: 28 Feb - 1 Mar 2022
Venue: Ellerslie Events Centre, Auckland

22. New Zealand Nursing Leaders' Summit

Nurses leading change

Date: 28 Feb - 1 Mar 2022
Venue: Ellerslie Events Centre, Auckland

Key Topics include:

  • The role of nursing leaders in championing improvements to health equity
  • How nursing leadership can raise the level of nursing practice
  • Nursing’s role in leading health system reform and transformation
  • Visit the website

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National news

23. Pfizer boss: Annual Covid jabs for years to come

Radio New Zealand, 2 December 2021 

People will be likely to need to have annual Covid vaccinations for many years to come, the head of Pfizer has told the BBC.

24. Everyone is hooked on the idea but 10,000 steps a day is not the ideal

Stuff - 6 December 2021

How many steps a day should we be striving for? If your automatic response to that question is 10,000, think again. A new study, led by researchers at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre, found the magic number is closer to 7500 steps.

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International news

25. Omicron: Why viruses mutate, and why we're seeing this COVID-19 variant emerge now

ABC Health & Wellbeing - 4 December ​2021

So far, thousands of small changes have been seen in the evolution of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19. And while the emergence of new COVID variants is to be expected, the new, highly mutated Omicron variant has taken many experts by surprise.

26. Night-shift workers who eat only in the day may cut diabetes risk

New Scientist - 3 December 2021

People who work overnight are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, but the risk may be reduced by eating only between 7am and 7pm. People who work night shifts may be able to avoid the resulting harm to their blood sugar control by eating only in the daytime.

27. How to build a habit in 5 steps, according to science

CNN - 29 November 2021

People with good habits rarely need to resist the temptation to laze on the couch, order greasy takeout, procrastinate on assignments, or watch one more viral video before dashing out the door. That's because autopilot takes over, eliminating temptation from the equation. Having established good habits, little to no willpower is required to choose wisely.

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