From NAFLD to MAFLD: Nurse and allied health perspective

Fatty liver disease associated with metabolic dysfunction is the most prevalent liver disease worldwide, though both patient and health professional still lack awareness of it. An international consensus panel has produced what is sure to be an influential report renaming the disease from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) to metabolic (dysfunction) associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) and suggesting how the disease should be diagnosed. This viewpoint explores the call from the perspective of nurse and allied health practitioners. This group have raised serious concerns on the existing nomenclature, which labels the disease as NAFLD, and its diagnostic criteria, including provoking nurse role confusion and representing a major barrier to various key aspects; patient-nurse communications, patient awareness, partnership working, motivation of patients to undertake lifestyle changes and multiple health behaviour change promotion and nurse-led clinics. Therefore, they are enthusiastically supportive of this call to reframe the disease that we believe will ultimately have a positive impact on nurse-patient communication, and through this, improve patient care and quality of life and reduce burden on health system.

Nurses' Perspectives on Health Education and Health Literacy of Older Patients

In the context of population aging, enhancing the health of older patients has become an urgent issue for public health. Health education and health literacy need to be further understood from the healthcare providers’ standpoint to increase older patients’ effective application of such information into their daily lives. We aimed to further understand nurses’ perspectives on the education of older patients and their health literacy, as nurses are one of the frontline providers interacting with older patients. In total, 16 nurses and nurse practitioners who had 5 or more years of clinical experience participated. Data were collected via face-to-face interviews and emails. Data analysis followed the thematic analysis suggested by Braun and Clarke. Five themes emerged from the analysis, as follows: attitudes that are hard to change; physical and cognitive functional barriers to understanding teaching materials; family caregivers—surrogate vs. gatekeeper; major contexts that moderate the elderly’s health literacy; and strategies to enhance teaching effectiveness and health literacy. These findings illustrate the conditions pertinent to communication with older adults from the patients’, providers’ and healthcare delivery viewpoints. Systemic assistance and interventions specialized for older patients and their healthcare providers need to be developed and tested to improve clinical practice and patient health literacy.

[Development of the Patient Caring Communication Scale]

PURPOSE

This study attempted to develop a scale that measures the level of patients' recognition of the nurses' care, based on Watson's caring theory, and confirmed its reliability and validity.

METHODS

The items were developed through a literature review and an expert content validity test. The questionnaires were administered to 285 inpatients of internal medicine and surgical units at two general hospitals. Construct validity was tested using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and reliability was tested using Cronbach's alpha.

RESULTS

This process resulted in a preliminary scale composed of 34 items; We used item analysis and five exploratory factor analyses, and consequently selected 14 items composed of three factors (respect, genuineness, and relationality). The confirmatory factor analysis verified the model fit and convergent and discriminant validity of the final items; criterion validity was confirmed with the positive correlation with the measurement scale of the patient-perceived quality of nursing . The overall scale reliability had a Cronbach's alpha of .92, which indicated internal consistency and reliability.

CONCLUSION

The developed scale showed content, construct, and criterion validity, and reliability, as well as convergent validity for each item and discriminant validity between the factors. This makes it suitable for use in a diverse range of future studies on nurse communication using structural equation models.