PURPOSE: This study was conducted to compare job satisfaction, self-esteem, and nursing task performance between registered nurses (RN) and nurse assistants (NA) in long-term care hospitals. METHOD: The sample consisted of 203 nursing personnel (RN 99 and AN 104), who were working in one of 5 long-term care hospitals in 5 different areas. Data were collected by structured questionnaires from March 15 to April 30, 2010, and analyzed using the descriptive statistics, independent t-test, One-way ANOVA, and Pearson correlation coefficients with SPSS/Win 17.0 program. RESULT: There was no significant difference between nurses and nurse assistants in job satisfaction and self-esteem. But nurses had higher levels of nursing task performance than nurse assistants. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate the necessity of developing programs that will help to improve job satisfaction and self-esteem in nurses and nursing task performance in nurse assistants. Strategies need to be developed to maximize the value of the existing workforce without impacting on the quality of care delivered.
Job Satisfaction ; Long-Term Care ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Self Concept ; Task Performance and Analysis

PURPOSE: To evaluate the factors influencing the refractive changes and to predict the ideal intraocular lens powers in children who had undergone cataract surgery. METHODS: The medical records of the pediatric patients with aphakia or pseudophakia who were followed for more than 5 years postoperatively were reviewed retrospectively. They were grouped according to the age at surgery and were followed-up every six months postoperatively. The myopic changes and the factors associated with these changes among the groups were evaluated and compared. RESULTS: The follow-up time was 5 years. In the age-matched subset of patients, no statistically significant difference in the refractive change were found between the aphakic and pseudophakic eyes as well as between the unilateral and bilateral cataracts. Children operated on at 1 month to 1 year of age had a mean myopic shift of -5.58D (range -1.88 to -12.85) and children operated on at 1 to 3 years of age had a shift of -4.25D (range -1.78 to -8.71). The mean myopic shift decreased as the age at operation increased. Children operated on at 10 to 15 years of age had a shift of -1.46D (range 0 to -5.28). CONCLUSIONS: During the first 5 years after surgery, no statistically significant difference in refractive change was observed between the aphakic eyes and pseudophakic eyes as well as between the unilateral and bilateral cataracts. The increasing difficulty in deciding the ideal IOL-power is expected in young children as the refractive change becomes more unpredictable when surgery is performed on younger patients.
Aphakia ; Cataract* ; Child ; Follow-Up Studies ; Humans ; Lenses, Intraocular ; Medical Records ; Pseudophakia ; Retrospective Studies

BACKGROUND: Opioid delivered by epidural patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) is effective in relieving pain after surgery, but it is associated with side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, pruritus, respiratory depression, and urinary retention. The purpose of this study was to compare hydromorphone related side effects and the quality of analgesia when naloxone was added to epidural PCA regimen. METHODS: Fifty-two thoracotomy patients with PCA were allocated blindly into two groups. Patients in group H (n = 26) received continuous epidural hydromorphone (16microgram/ml) in 0.1% bupivacaine; patients in group N (n = 26) received an epidural infusion containing naloxone (2 microgram/ml) and hydromorphone (16microgram/ml) in 0.1% bupivacaine. The basal rate of PCA was 4 ml/hr and the demand dose was 1.5 ml with a lockout time of 15 min. Pain intensity, sedation, pruritus, nausea and vomiting, respiratory depression were checked at 6, 12, 24 hours postoperatively. RESULTS: The Visual Analog Scale (VAS) scores were significantly lower in group H than in group N. There were no significant differences in the overall incidence of pruritus, nausea and sedation between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: Continuous epidural infusion of naloxone combined with hydromorpho-ne is not effective in reducing the incidence and severity of pruritus induced by epidural hydromorphone.
Analgesia ; Analgesia, Patient-Controlled* ; Bupivacaine ; Humans ; Hydromorphone* ; Incidence ; Naloxone* ; Nausea ; Passive Cutaneous Anaphylaxis ; Pruritus* ; Respiratory Insufficiency ; Thoracotomy ; Urinary Retention ; Visual Analog Scale ; Vomiting