Effect of implementing epilepsy educational guidelines on nurses’ performance and patients’ outcomes

Objective: Epilepsy is considered one of the most common neurological diseases affecting 65 people worldwide. People with epilepsy are more likely to get injured and die prematurely than the general population. Nurses must acquire professional knowledge related to epilepsy and should strengthen patients to play a more active role in their care to improve their understanding of their diseases. The study aimed to evaluate implementing epilepsy educational guidelines on nurses’ performance and patients’ outcomes.Methods: A quasi-experimental research design was conducted at the Neurology department in Mansoura University Hospital. This study sample is a convenient sample of 28 nurses and a purposive sample of 60 adult patients with epilepsy who attend the neurological department in Mansoura University Hospital.Results: The results indicate a significant improvement in nurses’ knowledge and practice regarding epilepsy. Also, it helped to improve patients’ knowledge and thus promoted epilepsy self-management behaviors in the study group.Conclusions: The designed nursing guidelines have achieved their objectives by improving nurses’ knowledge and practice regarding epileptic patient care, in addition to improving patients’ knowledge and epilepsy self-management scale for the study group compared with the control group.

Unprofessional conduct by nurses: A document analysis of disciplinary decisions

Background: A small minority of nurses are investigated when they fail to meet the required professional standards. Unprofessional conduct does not just affect the nurse but also patients, colleagues and managers. However, it has not been clearly defined. Objective: The objective was to identify unprofessional conduct by registered nurses by examining disciplinary decisions by a national regulator. Design: A retrospective document analysis. Data and research context: Disciplinary decisions delivered to 204 registered nurses by the Finnish national regulatory authority from 2007 to 2016. The data were analysed with quantitative statistics. Ethical consideration: The study received permission from the Finnish National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health and used confidential documents that were supplied on the basis of complete anonymity and confidentiality. Findings: The mean age of the registered nurses who were disciplined was 44 years and 81% were female. Two-thirds had worked for their employer for 5 years or less, 53% had two or more employers and 18% had a criminal history. All the decisions included a primary reason for why the nurses were investigated, but there were also 479 coexisting reasons. In most cases, unprofessional conduct was connected to substance abuse (96%). In addition, stealing of medicine, a decreased ability to work and neglect of nursing guidelines were reported. Discussion: We found that the nurses were investigated for unprofessional conduct for complex combinations of primary and coexisting reasons. Our study highlighted that more attention needs to be paid to the key markers for unprofessional conduct. Conclusion: Unprofessional conduct is a complex phenomenon that is connected to nurses’ individual and working backgrounds and has an impact on their work performance. More research is needed to identify how nursing communities can detect, manage and limit the serious effects and consequences of unprofessional conduct.