Nurses' experiences of advocacy in the perioperative department: a systematic review.

Patient advocacy is central to nursing practice; acting as a patient advocate in the perioperative environment requires the care of patients that are highly vulnerable and unable to speak up for themselves, in a busy and often highly pressurized environment involving multiple professional groups providing care simultaneously. This can present particular challenges for nurses, particularly those unfamiliar with the expectations of being a patient advocate. The objective of this review was to identify the meaningfulness of perioperative nurses' experiences of advocacy. The specific objectives were to explore the following questions: • What are perioperative nurses' experiences as patient advocates? • How do perioperative nurses define advocacy? • What are the barriers to and strategies for promoting advocacy in the perioperative environment? Registered nurses, enrolled nurses, licensed practical nurses, licensed vocational nurses, and midwives working in the perioperative department, including anesthetic, scrub/scout and post-anesthetic care room nurses, were eligible for inclusion. Perioperative nurses' experiences of acting as patient advocates were the phenomena of interest in this review. This includes experiences of the barriers to nursing advocacy, strategies used, and explorations of how nursing advocacy benefits perioperative patients. The perioperative department, including preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative recovery areas, was of interest in this review. TYPES OF STUDIES: This review aimed to consider all qualitative studies that sought to examine perioperative nurses' experiences of advocacy including but not limited to phenomenology, ethnography, hermeneutics, action research, grounded theory, feminist research and naturalistic inquiry. Searches were conducted across 13 databases, including four for unpublished studies, with no language restriction, and with the date range of 1985 to April 2014. Studies were assessed for relevance to the review using a Verification of Relevance form developed by the reviewers and based on the recommendations of the Cochrane Collaboration. Papers selected for retrieval were assessed by two independent reviewers for methodological validity using standardized critical appraisal instruments from the Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument. A third reviewer was used to assess three papers where disagreements between the first two reviewers could not be resolved through discussion. Data were extracted from papers included in the review using the standardized data extraction tool from Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument. Findings were pooled using Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument. Findings were assembled and rated according to their quality, and categorized on the basis of similarity in meaning. These categories were then subjected to a meta-synthesis in order to produce a single comprehensive set of synthesized findings. The ConQual approach for grading the synthesized findings was used. Nine studies were included in the review. From these, 31 findings were aggregated into five categories, which were then meta-synthesized into two synthesized findings which provide evidence for nursing practice. The two synthesized findings are: safeguarding from harm - being the patient's voice; and challenges of patient advocacy can be alleviated by experience and training. Perioperative nurses identify being a voice, communicating with, and safeguarding the patient as key advocacy activities that they undertake within their roles. Establishing trust between the nurse and patient is an important aspect of patient advocacy in this environment. Acting as a patient advocate can expose perioperative nurses to workplace conflict and cause them distress. While professional experience prepares nurses to be patient advocates, less experience in the perioperative environment and time pressures were reported as barriers to the role.

Munday J ，Kynoch K ，Hines S 《-》

The experiences of midwives and nurses collaborating to provide birthing care: a systematic review.

Macdonald D ，Snelgrove-Clarke E ，Campbell-Yeo M ，Aston M ，Helwig M ，Baker KA ... -  《-》

Older nurses' experiences of providing direct care in hospital nursing units: a qualitative systematic review.

Parsons K ，Gaudine A ，Swab M 《-》

Health professionals' experience of teamwork education in acute hospital settings: a systematic review of qualitative literature.

Teamwork is seen as an important element of patient care in acute hospital settings. The complexity of the journey of care for patients highlights the need for health professionals to collaborate and communicate clearly with each other. Health organizations in western countries are committed to improving patient safety through education of staff and teamwork education programs have been integral to this focus. There are no current systematic reviews of the experience of health professionals who participate in teamwork education in acute hospital settings. The objective of this systematic review was to search for the best available evidence on the experiences of health professionals who participate in teamwork education in acute hospital settings. This review considered studies reporting on experiences of registered health professionals who work in acute hospitals. This included medical, nursing and midwifery and allied health professionals. The focus of the meta-synthesis was the experiences and reflections of health professionals who were involved in teamwork education in acute hospital settings. The geographical context for this review was acute hospitals in rural or metropolitan settings in Australia and overseas countries. The review focused on the experiences of health professionals who work in acute hospitals and participated in teamwork education programs. This review considered studies that focused on qualitative data including, but not limited to, designs such as phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, action research and feminist research.In the absence of research studies, other text such as opinion papers, discussion papers and reports were considered. Studies published in English and from 1990 to 2013 were included in this review. The literature search for relevant papers occurred between 13 September and 26 October 2013. A three-step search strategy was utilized in this review. The databases searched were PubMed, CINAHL, Embase and Scopus. The standardized critical appraisal tool the Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument (JBI-QARI) was used to assess the methodological quality of included papers. Data that included statements and text of interest was extracted from papers included in the study using the standardized data extraction tool from JBI-QARI. Qualitative research findings were pooled using JBI-QARI. This involved the aggregation and synthesis of findings to generate a set of statements that represented that aggregation. In total, 116 papers were selected for analysis of full text, 11 papers were selected for critical appraisal and seven papers were selected for data synthesis. This resulted in 44 findings. The findings were assigned to 16 categories based on identified similarities across the papers. The categories were integrated into six meta-syntheses. These were: Meta-synthesis One: It is important to recognize that organizational culture and expectations have an impact on health professionals' participation and experience of teamwork education. Meta-synthesis Two: Understanding how successful teams function is central to the development of teamwork education programs and the experience of participants. Meta-synthesis Three: A health professional's experience of teamwork education will be influenced by his/her starting point of learning. Meta-synthesis Four: Participants highly value teamwork education programs that are implemented by facilitators who create practical authentic learning opportunities and foster reflection and debriefing for participants. Meta-synthesis Five: High fidelity simulation used with specific communication strategies provides a powerful learning opportunity for health professions to practice teamwork skills. Meta-synthesis Six: Participants have increased confidence and are motivated to apply their newly learnt teamwork skills into their daily practice. The review identified qualitative evidence that can guide organizations and education facilitators in the development and implementation of teamwork education in acute hospital settings. Although the quality of the specific teamwork education programs was an important factor, there were a number of issues that also impacted on the experiences of health professionals who participated in teamwork education programs. These included the context that the program was delivered in, the diversity of health care teams, starting points of individual learners, the type of tools utilized in education programs, the levels of confidence and motivation of learners post training and the opportunity to transfer into practice new learning. Drawing from the synthesized findings of the review, recommendations for practice have been devised in order to guide the development and implementation of teamwork education in acute hospital settings and to improve the experience of participating health professionals. The Joanna Briggs Institute utilizes Grades of Recommendation to rate a health management strategy in terms of its desirable effects, evidence of adequate quality supporting its use, benefits of use, and the inclusion of patient experience, values and preferences. A strong recommendation has a Grade A and a weak recommendation has a Grade B. The FAME (Feasibility, Appropriateness, Meaningfulness and Effectiveness) scale was used to inform the strength of the following six recommendations for practice from the review: RECOMMENDATION ONE: All members of a team should be encouraged by their organization/managers to participate in teamwork education programs in order to foster a positive culture of learning and teamwork within the team.JBI Recommendation: Grade A. This recommendation is appropriate and applicable to all health professionals in acute hospital settings, is associated with positive experiences for participants of teamwork education programs and has a beneficial effect on participants. Facilitators of teamwork education programs should understand how successful teams function and consider these factors when planning or delivering training.JBI Recommendation: Grade A. This recommendation is associated with positive experiences for participants and creates a beneficial effect to the quality of a teamwork education program. Facilitators of teamwork education programs need to explore participant learning needs and their prior experiences of working in teams before implementing teamwork education programs.JBI Recommendation: Grade A. This recommendation creates a beneficial effect to the participants of teamwork education programs and to the quality of education provided by facilitators. Facilitators of teamwork education programs should provide learning opportunities that are practical, authentic to participants and foster constructive debriefing and reflection.JBI Recommendation: Grade A. This recommendation is applicable to all health professionals and circumstances in which teamwork education occurs, is associated with positive experiences and has a beneficial effect on participants. High fidelity simulation should be considered in acute hospitals for the training of teamwork skills in addition to clinical skills. Scenarios provide realistic opportunities for participants to practice communication strategies that enhance teamwork.JBI Recommendation: Grade A. This recommendation is applicable to all health professionals and circumstances in which teamwork education occurs and has a beneficial effect on participants of education programs. Team managers should harness the new confidence and motivation of staff around teamwork skills following participation in teamwork education programs and ensure that there are opportunities in the workplace to apply new skills and knowledge into daily practice.JBI Recommendation: Grade A. This recommendation is applicable to all health professionals and circumstances in which teamwork education occurs, is adaptable to a variety of circumstances and has a beneficial effect on health professional's daily practice of teamwork skills. In order to strengthen the evidence base about teamwork education in acute hospital settings there needs to be quantitative and qualitative research into:How organizations that have successfully embedded a culture of collaboration and safety in health teams have planned, implemented and evaluated teamwork education programs in acute hospital settings?What are the characteristics of teams that have led to successful participation in teamwork education and positive outcomes for team performance?What are the experiences, training and support provided to education facilitators who successfully implement teamwork education programs in acute hospitals?

Eddy K ，Jordan Z ，Stephenson M 《-》

The influence of workplace culture on nurses' learning experiences: a systematic review of qualitative evidence.

Davis K ，White S ，Stephenson M 《-》