This book updates current trends in practice and reviews the origins, standards, and competencies of the advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) in the United States. It discusses APRN roles within a nursing context, identifies organizational roles for APRNs, and examines ethics in guiding APRN clinical decision making. The book is organized into three parts comprising 16 chapters. It examines and addresses all four APRN roles. The book reviews useful tools in advanced clinical decision making, practice issues (regulation, certification prescriptive authority, credentialing, and liability), and the exploration of employment opportunities and strategies. It explores the role of the APRN in the team’s formation and leadership. The chapter discusses the composition of interprofessional teams that will include a variety of healthcare providers. It challenges APRNs to assume more prominent leadership roles in healthcare delivery systems. The book emphasizes the importance of leadership competencies necessary for the delivery of quality care, evidence-based practice, and patient safety. Different leadership development models and curricula related to leadership in master’s and doctor of nursing practice (DNP) programs are considered. The book describes the multifaceted roles of APRNs internationally. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has placed APRNs on the front lines of healthcare reform. The book reviews the critical events that have sculpted the APRN policy role in influencing and creating legislation and discusses how to become an engaged citizen in directing change. It discusses health information technology competencies for nurses and APRNs, as well as common information management resources that APRNs are using or likely to encounter in the near future. The book explores the multiple modalities that are incorporated into the scholarship of practice, such as sharing tricks of the trade, completing quality improvement projects, collaborating with nursing researchers, and being an active member in professional organizations.

This book provides information and strategies to help an experienced nurse begin her journey forward and achieve her educational and career goals. It is divided into three units. The first unit deals with the starting of the journey, with the first chapter covering the transtheoretical model (TTM). TTM is composed of four constructs: stages of change, decisional balance, self-efficacy, and processes of change. The chapter on decisional balance focuses on the motivations and barriers nurses may consider when making the decision to return to getting educated. Others chapters cover the various choices, which nurses have for getting educated again, and the steps necessary to apply to a graduate nursing program. Unit II deals with the preparation at various levels that have to be undertaken by the nurses to succeed in their efforts with the chapters discussing the mental-emotional preparation, financial preparation, computer and technology preparation, academic preparation, family/social preparation, physical preparation and work preparation. Nurses need to know to how handle change in their lives and self-assess their attitudes, the various financing options available, and to use social media to access sites of professional organizations. In addition, nurses need to have academic skills essential for success, and family and social support when they return to the school. They also have to maintain their physical health while in school and negotiate their work schedule to fit with the school. Unit III highlights the need to enjoy the journey back to school and to stay motivated.

Over the years there has been a call and mandates by national originations such as the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN), Institute of Medicine (IOM), and American Nurses Association (ANA) that nurses have more technology skills to meet ever-evolving workforce demands in the newer high-tech healthcare practice environments. This book provides a basic understanding of technology requirements using nursing informatics (NI) knowledge and skills needed in today's practice workforce as well as the basic considerations needed for professional development and lifelong learning. First it provides a foundation explaining the rapid evolution and importance of NI. The book then provides the basics to understating the primary tool used by nurses in today's clinical practice—the computer—as well as other technology and software needed in practice. It presents case scenarios and critical thinking questions and activities to engage the reader and enhance understanding of concepts. The book takes the reader further into clinical application such as general, everyday uses in project management as correlated with the nursing process, applications of NI and computer concepts used in research, as well as how NI and technology tie into and support education. It provides an overview of the connection between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom; definitions for quality and data quality; and criteria for quality data and information during input, storage, and at retrieval, display, and printing. The book also reviews competencies needed by the baccalaureate-prepared nurse in today's healthcare setting to recognize data quality, problems with data quality, and corrective measures.

This book helps students to learn about fundamental brain functioning and to apply the information with various clinical populations with whom they may help to serve. It also helps the professor to advance beyond the typical mindset of teaching only the basics in brain functioning. The book is divided into two sections. In Section I of the book, a foundational framework of neuroscience is provided, including important historical events, patients, and neuroscientists as well as an explanation of all the different techniques used in understanding human behavior. The first part of the text also focuses on core foundations of brain functioning, with an emphasis on the important neural systems often found dysregulated in psychopathology. Clinical techniques such as electrophysiology recordings, neuroimaging techniques, MRI scans are also discussed. The second section of the text explores many areas of psychopathology from a behavioral, cognitive, and neurobiological perspective before describing typical effective strategies used to treat the various disorders. The various disorders that are covered in this section include childhood disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), schizophrenia, mood disorders including bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, the three types of eating disorders, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating, sleep disorders such as parasomnia and insomnia, substance disorders, and personality disorders including antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder.

Health care delivery is complex and scientifically grounded, and requires its practitioners to possess considerable knowledge and expertise. This book guides the reader through a conceptual framework for building effective patient relationships. Based on concepts of mindfulness, it provides a kind of mental scaffolding or operating platform on which to build thoughts, perspectives, and skills that help the busy clinician to achieve inner composure, attain greater self-awareness, and develop critical interpersonal skills that result in satisfying and compassionate patient care. In the first section of the book, mindfulness principles are embedded in discussions of the critical elements of interpersonal effectiveness, such as hope, empathy, and listening. The second section discusses how to navigate professional communication challenges. The third section provides chapters in which mindfulness principles are applied to challenging clinical situations. The fourth section describes effective approaches with challenging populations. Together, the applications in third and fourth sections give the reader concrete examples of mindfulness in action. The scenarios depicted throughout the book involve practitioners primarily from medicine and nursing. Nurses and physicians, trainees, social workers, and others are also presented in examples. However, with slight modifications, the scenarios are applicable across disciplines. Although the roles of nurses, social workers, and physicians certainly vary, the fundamental principles for establishing effective patient-provider encounters remain constant. And although the primary aim of the book is to promote mindfulness as a powerful method of enhancing patient-provider communication, the secondary aim is to promote mindfulness as a means of enhancing cross-disciplinary understanding.

This book presents a unique pioneering classification system, written by the author of a bestselling textbook on functional behavioral assessment (FBA), for school psychologists and other personnel who conduct FBAs for problem behaviors. The Cipani Behavioral Classification System (BCS) is a pioneering function-based classification system for categorizing problem target behaviors in education and mental health settings. The Cipani BCS is theoretically sound as it is procured from the four major functions of operant behavior: Socially Mediated Access (SMA), Direct Access (DA), Socially Mediated Escape (SME), and Direct Escape (DE). Hence, such is content-valid given the extensive and longitudinal history of work and research in behavior analysis experimentally demonstrating functional relationships between behavior and its environmental outcome. From these four major categories of behavioral function, the Cipani BCS derives 13 subcategories or specific functions under these primary generic functions. For each function, there is a general description, explanation, and illustrative examples of the category. Also included are practice case illustrations to facilitate understanding of how to diagnose the function and its category. Using this system, assessment activities are more expertly guided by a cognizance of a number of potential diverse functions, and assessment becomes an iterative process. The delineation of a diagnostic phase as an outcome of assessment activities, until now, has not been cogently presented in other FBA materials.

This book presents a system to guide health care professionals in providing ethically sound care. It is grounded in the concept of “symphonia”, which, within the health care arena, is the study of agreements between health care professionals and patients and the ethical implications of these agreements. The book examines a variety of bioethical dilemmas from patients’ conflicts about their own care to withdrawing all life supports. It demonstrates the relevance of bioethical standards to these, and by extension to all, bioethical dilemmas. It also examines how to define and understand bioethical standards in different contexts in order to use them effectively in ethical decision making. In this way, even the novice health care professionals will have the tools to examine and manage ethical issues with their patients. Topics discussed in the book include: the ethical journey taken by the patient and nurse, the nurse-patient agreement, the bioethical standards and their role as preconditions of the agreement, the nature of the ethical context. contemporary ethical systems, legal decision making within a symphonological ethical perspective, practice-based ethics and moral distress. The book is intended to promote the welfare of both patient and health care provider.

An understanding of biostatistics is necessary for reading and comprehending published literature, for performing retrospective research, and for designing and analyzing prospective clinical trials. Biostatistical concepts are also tested on oncology board exams. This book is organized into four sections covering 13 chapters. Section I begins with the basic foundations of biostatistics that are tested on board exams such as summarizing and graphing data, sampling, and statistical estimation. In Section II, these basics are then expanded on to include the concepts used in retrospective study design, analysis, and interpretation. It discusses hypothesis testing, correlation, regression, categorical data analysis, survival analysis methods, and noninferiority analysis. Section III focuses on prospective clinical trials, guiding readers in their understanding of published clinical trials and in the design and analysis of novel clinical trials. It describes cohort studies, case-control studies, cross-sectional studies, matched studies, analysis of studies, and sample size. The final section presents self-study multiple choice questions with answers and rationales.

Integral to the growth of radiation oncology over the past 110 years has been the rise and fall of various types of brachytherapy, often in a reciprocal manner to the changes in external beam radiation therapy technology. This book serves to update practitioners and students on the latest developments in brachytherapy by assembling the literature, describing techniques, and illustrating these with actual clinical examples. It should be a practical source to clinical teams answering two basic questions: why and how. Ten clinical disease site chapters are preceded by chapters on the history, practical radiobiology, practical physics considerations. Chapter 2 starts with a very clear explanation of the basics of this subject, through the explanation of radiobiologic equivalence, to the four Rs of radiobiology: repair, repopulation, reoxygenation, and reassortment. Starting off with the needs for personnel, imaging equipment, and treatment planning, the third chapter goes on to cover the facilities and equipment, written procedures, the Quality Management Program, calibration, and emergency contingencies. Chapters 4 to 12 are on clinical disease sites and talk about genitourinary brachytherapy, gynecologic brachytherapy, breast brachytherapy, thoracic brachytherapy, skin brachytherapy, head and neck brachytherapy, central nervous system brachytherapy, gastrointestinal brachytherapy, soft tissue sarcoma brachytherapy, pediatric brachytherapy, and vascular brachytherapy. The final chapter deals with on organizational practical considerations.

This book employs and transcends the customary methods of diagnosis and treatment by providing several unique assessment procedures, as well as many distinctive therapeutic recommendations. Major factors that have made brevity possible in psychotherapy are the learning-based, problem-focused, and solution-oriented approaches, and the evolution of sophisticated and effective techniques for biological assessment and intervention. Whereas many clinicians derided behavior therapists for their emphasis on being active, giving homework assignments, and maintaining specific foci, procedures of this kind have now become standard fare across a diverse range of brief therapies. Specific boundaries have been proposed to protect patients from exploitation and any form of harassment and discrimination, and to emphasize the significance of respect, integrity, confidentiality, and informed consent. In many circles these well-intentioned guidelines have reached a point of absurdity and are transformed into rigid straitjackets that force clinicians into a remote and cold posture. In addition to the psychotherapy literature, the author modernizes his eclectic and goal-oriented approach to psychotherapy. Using traditional acronym--BASIC I. D.--the author stresses the assessment of seven dimensions of a client’s personality: Behavior, affect, sensation, imagery, cognition, interpersonal relationships, and drugs/biology. In multimodal assessment, the BASIC I. D. serves as a template to remind people to examine each of the seven modalities and their interactive effects. The book demonstrates how brief multimodal therapy can be adapted and applied to specific disorders. When individual agendas, hidden or other, undermine a relationship, individual therapy is often essential before the couple can benefit from conjoint therapy. When distressed couples are relatively stable and are genuinely interested in achieving a harmonious relationship, salubrious outcomes can usually be achieved in six or seven sessions of “didactic instruction”.