Although nursing shifts have increased from 8 to 12 hours, few studies have examined the effects of this on nurses’ completion of vital procedures. Calhoun and colleagues conducted a study using a simulated environment to test if nurse completion rate and accuracy of key tasks would deteriorate over a 12-hour shift. Twenty-eight pediatric intensive care unit nurses performed 3 simulated assessments conducted at start of the shift, 6 hours into the shift, and immediately after the 12-hour shift. They found the following:

The authors noted the tasks in this study were simpler and more rote in nature than tasks studied in other research that found nursing care errors.

—Rhonda Board,rn, phd, ccrn

See Article, pp 387–395

To assist care providers in identifying patients at risk for agitation, Burk and colleagues examined predictors of agitation in 200 patients in 2 intensive care units (ICUs) at the time of...

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