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In clinical practice, identifying positive and negative attitudes toward older patients is very important to improve quality of care provided to them. The Older People in Acute Care Survey – United States (OPACS-US) is an instrument measuring hospital nurses attitudes regarding older patients. However, psychometrics have never been assessed. Furthermore, knowledge being related to attitude and behavior should also be measured complementing the OPACS-US. The purpose of this study was to assess structural validity and reliability of the OPACS-US and assess whether the OPACS-US can be complemented with the Knowledge about Older Patients-Quiz (KOP-Q). A multicenter cross sectional design was conducted. Registered nurses ( n = 130, mean age 39,9 years; working experience 14,6 years) working in four general hospitals were included in the study. Nurses completed the OPACS-US section A: practice experiences, B: general opinion and the KOP-Q online. Findings demonstrated that the OPACS-US is a valid and reliable survey instrument that measures practice experiences and general opinion. Furthermore, the OPACS-US can be combined with the KOP-Q adding a knowledge construct, and is ready for use within education and/or quality improvement programs in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The Knowledge about Older Patients-Quiz (KOP-Q) is designed as a unidimensional scale measuring knowledge of hospital nurses about older patients. Furthermore, the KOP-Q measures a second unidimensional construct, certainty of hospital nurses about their knowledge. The KOP-Q is developed and validated in the Netherlands. Whether the KOP-Q can be used in other countries is unknown given the cultural and language differences. Objectives Investigate the level of measurement invariance of the KOP-Q between the Netherlands and United States of America (USA). Design A multicenter international cross-sectional design. Settings Four general hospitals in the Netherlands and four general hospitals in the USA. Participants Nurses from the Netherlands (n = 201) and the USA (n = 130) were invited to participate by email from the ward manager, distributing flyers and present messages on the online hospital communication boards. Questions of the KOP-Q were completed online. Method The level of measurement invariance (configural, metric or scalar invariance) across countries was tested by running increasingly constrained structural equation models, and testing whether these models fitted the data. Results Both the knowledge and certainty construct of the KOP-Q proved unidimensional in the Netherlands and USA sample. Test results of the measurement invariance across the Netherlands and USA indicated a stable, partial scalar invariance (15 items full scalar invariance) for the knowledge items and full scalar invariance for the certainty items. Conclusions The KOP-Q shows to function uniformly across both language groups and can therefore be used to assess nurses' knowledge and their certainty about this knowledge which can be important for educational and/or quality improvement programs in the USA. Furthermore, the KOP-Q is suitable to make comparisons between the Netherlands and the USA using latent variable models. Before the KOP-Q can be used in other countries, cross-cultural tests should again be performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although significant strides have been made in increasing the numbers and proportions of minorities in nursing, at 2.0% of the RN population (MinorityNurse.com, 2001), Latinos continue to lag far behind other minorities (Buerhaus & Auerback, 1999). As the fastest growing minority group in the United States—an increase from 9% of the population in 1990 to 11.9% in 2000 and projections of 14.6% by 2001 and 17% by 2020 (U. S. Census, 2001)—Latino's under-representation in all fields of health care is expected to continue unless concerted efforts are taken to recruit and educate more students. This paper presents an analysis of narratives of high school completion as articulated by Latino adolescents in group interviews. Narrative inquiry of the focus group data found three major categories of supports and challenges: peers, family, and schools. The paper concludes with a discussion of how these findings can be used to develop community based interventions to increase high school completion and thus increase the pool of applicants for nursing and other health careers. Key Words: Rural Latinos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Nazi Germany, nurses played pivotal roles in the euthanasia programs in which thousands of civilians were murdered. This article is an analysis of the sociopolitical contexts and specific historically situated discourse used at the 1945 Hadamar Trial in defense of the actions or inactions of three nurses, primarily those of Irmgard Huber. It identifies the major implied and stated premises, supporting evidence, and conclusions of arguments attempting to absolve Huber of guilt. Following critical nursing models, it considers discourse as a window into the publicly presented reasoning of these nurses and into factors that made it possible for nurses in the 20th century to commit murder. The article concludes with a critique of the ethical framework that can be inferred from this discourse and suggests essential components of nursing ethics today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]