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Whenever the term critical care is mentioned – most people immediately think about severely sick patients in intensive care units or ICUs. They are not mistaken. Intensive Care Units and Critical Care specialized areas in the hospital that care for patients in need of intense and one on one attention. These are the areas where a critical care nurse Practices.

What is a Critical Care Nurse

A Critical Care Nurse or a CCN is a highly specialized nurse that has been trained to work in Critical and Intensive Care areas. Critical care nurses care for patients who are severely ill and in need of individualized care. A CCN cares for patients of all diagnoses and gender. Patients may vary depending on the category of the Critical Care Unit. Critical care nurses also deal with complex technology that helps sustain patients.

The History of Critical Care Nursing

Critical Care Nursing is a relatively new nursing specialty. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that the very first Intensive Care Units appeared in the Western world. These units were created to deal with gravely ill patients. They were considered to need a more intensive form of care compared to the patients in the regular wards. The notion of a critical care unit quickly spread. Today, most hospitals are required to have these specialized areas and in turn specialized nurses and physicians to run them.

Back then, nurses assigned in CCUs and ICUs were not seen as different from regular ward RNs. It was only a few years later that critical care nursing was considered as a specialized nursing field.

Roles of a Critical Care Nurse

Like any other registered nurse, the roles of the critical care nurse are very complex. These nurses have to deal with severely ill patients. They also need to be familiar with complex technologies that are continually present in a critical care setting. The critical care nurse also has to know basic and advance life support. Such skills may be called upon at any point during his/her service.

The critical care nurse must also be skilled in the art of diagnosis. He/she must be able to diagnose and identify a patient’s immediate needs. This part of critical care nursing is important as it may be the difference between life and death for a patient. Nonetheless, the nurse must remember that despite being skilled at diagnosis, one must not overstep her boundaries and perform roles reserved for a physician alone.

Aside from dealing with patients and their needs, the CCN also has to deal with the patient’s family. The CCN often works as a counselor that helps the family get through the crisis at hand. He/she may have to deal with questions and concerns from the patient’s immediate family and significant others.

Qualifications and Requirements

IN THE PHILIPPINES – Locally, any registered nurse can become a critical care nurse. It is only a matter of area assignment. Most of the time, nurses who are assigned in critical care units are those who have shown promise in their previous areas of exposure. They are also the ones who have worked in similar areas such as medical/surgical or pediatric units.

ABROAD – Abroad, in the US specifically, there are no specialized requirement to be a critical care nurse other than an RN License. However, there are bodies of authority that certify CCNs.

 Although, certification is not required, most CCNs abroad are choosing to go for it because it increases their credibility. Employers also often require their CCNs to be certified in the field. Certification is achieved post graduation. It is not something taught in school. Some schools may expose their students to ICUs, but this is not considered enough for certification. The RNs get their CCN certificates while they are on the job. It is also often sponsored by the employer.

Work Opportunities in the Philippine Nursing Scene

There are a lot of opportunities to become a critical care nurse in the Philippines. But, nurses have to understand that these critical care units are often hard to get into. These units only require a limited number of nurses. Most of the time there are only a total of 12 nurses that work in a typical ICU with 8–10 beds.

Those who do get into these areas are considered lucky because their position opens great opportunities to work abroad. In most settings, CCNs have a lesser work load compared to nurses in large wards. Patients in ICUs need more attention but the numbers are much smaller compared to wards. A typical government hospital ward may hold 50-70 patients and with only a nurse or two to manage it.

Work Abroad as a Critical Care Nurse

There are a lot of work opportunities for a critical care nurse abroad. The CCN can work in any area where there is an intensive or critical care unit. Certification is often an option provided by employers to deserving and promising nurses. The employers are often the ones who fund certification seminars and the likes.

With the present shortage in nursing manpower, hospitals are clamoring to get their hands on specialized nurses. These employers would often offer big sign-in bonuses just to get a nurse to work with them. The average salary of a critical care nurse in the US often ranges from USD50,000 – USD 75,000. It is estimated that nearly 70% of the critical care nurse population earn that much.  Some earn slightly lower while others earn upwards of USD90,000 to USD100,000 annually

Since antiquity, spiritual adepts have claimed an aura, or a field of subtle, luminous radiation surrounds a person or object (like the halo of religious art) that some mystics are capable of observing. 

In Qigong theory, three external Wei Qi fields supposedly surround the body.  The first external energy field extends about one or two inches outside the body.  It is related to the Lower Dan Tian and serves as a holographic energy template for the body.  The second field extends a foot or more outside the body.  It is related to the Middle Dan Tian and the emotional energy body.  The third field extends a few feet to several hundred yards depending on the person’s spiritual evolution.  It is related to the upper Dan Tian and the spiritual energy body.  The dominant color of the aura surrounding the Qigong practitioner depends on which of the Dan Tians is dominant.  The most powerful healers are considered to be those in which the Upper Dan Tian is dominant and the color will be white.  Scientific research has attempted to find devices that will form pictures of the aura.

In 1911, Walter Kilner, M.D. of St. Thomas Hospital in London, saw a human aura, by looking through glass screens stained with dicyanin dye. It appeared to be a glowing mist around the body in three distinct layers: a 1/4 inch densest layer closest to skin; a more vaporous layer, 1 inch wide, streaming perpendicularly from the body, and a delicate exterior luminosity with indefinite contours, about 6 inches wide.  Dr. Kilner’s book, The Human Aura, published in New York, 1965, describes how the appearance of the aura differs from person to person, depending on their physical, mental, and emotional states. He developed a system of diagnosis based on the consistent differences in the aura in persons suffering a particular disease.              

Some researchers claim that Kirilian photography (KP) gives a picture of the aura.  It is named after, Semyon Kirilian, who in 1939 accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a source of high voltage, an image would be created on the photographic plate.

Dr. W. Tiller does not believe that aura is seen and the photograph has a physical explanation (1, 2).  When a Kirlian photo is taken, the object is placed either on a metal electrode or between two parallel metal plate capacitors that are separated by a small distance from a photographic film plate. An electrical current passed through the electrode or the capacitors produces a separation of charge, freeing valence electrons from the object and creating a small electric field that ionizes the molecules in the air around the object. Once this electric field is large enough, electrical breakdown of the air occurs and conducting paths in the visible light range can appear as the electrons recombine with the ionized molecules, emitting photons in the process.  Different colors are generated based on the elemental composition of the object, since each element in the periodic table gives off it own unique color spectra.  This is called a corona discharge by physicists and is not emanations of the supposed human aura.  In addition to living material, inanimate objects such as coins will also produce Kirlian photographs.

In the 1970’s, Dr. Thelma Moss did extensive research in Kirlian photography when she led the UCLA parapsychology laboratory.  One experiment designed to show the presence of energy fields generated by living entities involved taking Kirlian contact photographs of a picked leaf at set periods.  Its gradual withering corresponded to a decline in the strength of the aura. However it may simply be that the leaf loses moisture and becomes less electrically conductive, causing a gradual weakening of the electric field at the drier edges of the leaf.

In another experiment, a section of a leaf was torn away after the first photograph.  A faint image of the missing section remained after a second photograph was taken. The Archives of American Art Journal of the Smithsonian Institute published a leading article with reproductions of images of this phenomenon.  However, this effect might have beeen due to contamination of the glass plates, which were reused for both the “before” and “after” photographs.  The effect was not reproduced in later better, controlled experiments.

Dr. Moss correlated fingertip coronas with emotional states. Healthy subjects exhibit a blue-white corona with a deep blue band-from one sixteenth to more than a quarter of an inch wide, just beyond the boundary of the fingertip. States of relaxation lead to a blue-white corona.  In  states of arousal, tension, anxiety, or excitement, a red blotch consistently appears superimposed on the fingerprint.  Other observations were that meditators had brighter and wider coronas and that acupuncture increased the corona width and brightness, depending on the specific point being treated.

Dr. Konstantin Korotkov of the St. Petersburg State Technical University of Informational Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, has devised a GDV (Gas Discharge Visualization) instrument based on the Kirlian Effect, for direct, real-time viewing of the human energy field (aura).  The GDV uses glass electrodes to create a pulsed electrical field excitation (called “perturbation technique”) to stimulate objects so that they shine millions of times more intensely than normal.  Sophisticated technology is used to capture the tiny pulses of emitted photons and measure their electro-photonic glow. 

This technology claims to capture, by a special camera, the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy emanating to and from an individual, plants, liquids, powders, inanimate objects and translate this into a computerized model.

The Korotkov method is used in some hospitals and athletic training programs in Russia and elsewhere as preventative measurements for detecting stress.

Another method for studying auras is called Aura photography.  It is completely different from Kirilian photography.  In aura photography a colorful image is produced of a person’s face and upper torso by interpreting galvanic skin responses and adding color to the photograph using a printer. The images made with an Aura camera do not result from coronal discharge. In aura photography, no high voltage is involved as with the Kirlian technique, and no direct contact with the film is made.

In the late 1980’s, Harry Oldfield (3) developed a scanner which he thought would provided a real time, moving image of the energy field.  His system became known as Polycontrast Interference Photography (PIP).  He speculated that ambient (surrounding) light would be interfered with by the energy field both when the incident ray traveled towards the object and when the reflected ray bounced off the object.

To see the body’s energy field with PIP, ideally the person is in a room with full spectrum lighting at a controlled output, standing against a white backdrop. The picture is taken with a digital video camera.  A lead from the camera acts connects it to a computer. The sophisticated program analyzes the different light intensities being reflected from the person or object being scanned.  The computer screen then displays the end project seen. Harry Oldfield believes that his PIP can see the energy field from and around the body in much the same way as people with gifts of vision can.  His belief is based on the fact that some clairvoyants and mystics with their gifts helped him develop some of the filters in PIP which simulate what they see, including the colors.

The photographs cannot be used automatically.  Experience and training is required to interpret them.  Certain colors indicate illnesses.  When a healer projects energy the colors indicating illness can be seen to change to colors indicating health.

Tim Duerden’s paper (4) explores the claims of aura producing devices.  It argues that the images produced can be explained using concepts from the physical sciences. It is suggested that techniques such as KP, GDV or PIP currently offer insufficient reliable research evidence concerning their use as diagnostic or imaging alternatives. Consequently their clinical use is debatable.  Kirlian photography and its derivatives may however be useful as a research tool by providing visual records of complex bodily responses to experimental situations, such as, responses to physiological or psychological stressors.

Some medical Qigong doctors base their diagnosis and treatment on the aura’s appearance and colors (5).  Aura colors and patterns constantly change depending on the patient’s physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and physical health.

 A simple test for the ability to see auras, the “Doorway Test”, appears in (6).  A subject with a large aura is behind a wall so that he cannot be seen by the aura reader.  He approaches the doorway and stands so that his shoulders are at the edge of the doorway and his body is not visible.  The reader attempts to detect the subject’s presence by his aura, which will protrude into the doorway. Some people, who claimed to see auras, were only correct in detecting peoples’ presence, only a small number of times, as if they were guessing.

 Some skeptics believe that there is no aura.  Rather, the mystic suffers from synaethesia, especially if the ability is inborn.  Synaesthesia is a condition found in 1 in 2000 people in which stimulation of one sense produces a response in one or more of the other senses. For example, people with synaesthesia may experience colors with tastes or smells with sounds. It is thought to originate in the brain.  Some scientists believe it might be caused by a cross-wiring in the brain, for example, between centers involved in emotional processing and smell perception.  Synaesthesia is known to run in families.

 References

1    Tiller, W. A.  Are psychoenergetic pictures possible? New Scientist 62(895), April 25. pp. 160 – 163, 1974.

 2    Boyers, D. G., & Tiller, W. A.  Corona discharge photography. Journal of Applied Physics 44(7), July. pp. 3102 – 3112, 1973.

3.  Harry Oldfield’s Invisible Universe, Campion Books, 2003.

4.  Duerden, T. An aura of confusion Part 2: the aided eye—‘imaging the aura?’, Complementary Therapies in Nusing and Midwifery, Vol. 10, (2), pp 116-123, 2004.

5.  Johson, J/ A. Medical Qigong.  Int. Institute of Medical Qigong, Pacific Grove, Ca, 2000.

6.  Tart, C.  Concerning the scientific study of the human auras, J. of the Soc. for Psychical Research, 46, No. 751, pp 1-21, 1972.  

You have just had a baby, and although you got many lovely baby care products at your baby shower, you would like to add to the collection some of your own preferred baby care products. However, there are many baby care products on the market, so how do you go about find the right ones?
About Baby Care Products
Now, when it comes to buying baby care products, many parents really go out of their way to find the best that money can, and in the process put a considerable dent on their budget. Remember that baby care products really should only have one function, and that is to help in taking care of the baby.
Despite that fact, many parents will buy many different baby care products regardless of the cost because they think that they higher the price, the more dependable the product. This is not always true, so as a parent be sure not to fall into that trap.
Babies basically need several things: food, diapers, clothes, a car seat, a high chair, a changing table, and a crib. Of course babies have no concept of what these things are, but they depend on those things anyway. It is up to you as the parent to choose the best ones.
For a new baby, food will basically consist of either formula milk or breast milk. If you have chosen to use formula milk, be sure that it has all of the proper nutrients needed for the baby’s health. Also, be sure that it is safely packaged.
When it comes to diapers, choose the biodegradable kind. Your baby will go through hundreds of diapers in its lifetime, and regular brand name diapers are not as easy to dispose of when it comes to being environmentally conscious. Also, be sure that the diapers are the right fit for the baby. The diaper should fit snugly, but not be too loose either.
As with baby care in general, finding the right baby care products is a learning process. Ask family and friends what they would recommend. Also, check online for user reviews of products that you have been thinking about purchasing. These sites might also tell you where and how to find them for the best price. With the proper research, you are sure to find the right baby care products.

Gestational diabetes is one of the diabetes which is found during the pregnancy. It is during the pregnancy that the insulin becomes higher and causes difficulty for deliveries. During the pregnancy it is done as it will be helpful to both the mother and the child.
For more information meet : dr jack
Gestational diabetes is the diabetes that is found for the first time during pregnancy. It can be defined as carbohydrate intolerance of variable severity with onset during pregnancy. Diabetes means the blood sugar is too high. Among 1000 pregnant women three to eight are affected with this disease. The body produces the glucose which is good for your body but too much of glucose production is not good or it is harmful to body. When it occurs during the pregnancy then it harms the baby which is growing in the uterus.
This gestational diabetes occurs mainly during the pregnancy and disappears after delivery. The test of this gestational diabetes is done during the 24th or 28th week of pregnancy. This disease does not occur to all the pregnant women and it also does not cause any life threatening as the symptoms are mild. The increase in the maternal glucose makes the risk for the baby that includes size at birth, birth trauma, low blood sugar, jaundice and sometimes the fetus also dies with in the womb. This can be control and completely cured with the treatment of herbal and natural supplements
The causes for this diabetes are the changes that take place in the women body during pregnancy. There is a change in the hormones and weight gain which are the part of healthy pregnancy. But when this change takes place then it makes difficult for the body to take up the hormones called insulin.
It can be controlled if the woman maintains the blood sugar levels during her pregnancy and it reduces the risk to the baby during the delivery. The risk factors are if you are:
older enough for pregnant
unexplained death of your fetus in the past
previous baby weighing less than 9 pounds
birth defect in previous child and recurred infections
if a family background of diabetes
if an African American, America Indian, Asian American
if you are overweight
if your previous baby weighed only 9 pounds
if you are referred to be as predicaments before you got pregnant.
The gestational check up is done by the physician according to the need. The physician or the health care taker will recommend for the gestational diabetes test to check the glucose level in the blood. The blood glucose level may be checked at your first visit after your conformation as pregnant. If it is normal then it will be checked sometimes during the 24th or 28th week of pregnancy.
Some of the symptoms that are founded for this gestational diabetes are:
Increased thirst
Increased urination
Weight loss in spite of weight gain
Fatigue
Nausea and vomit
Frequent infection including those of bladder, vaginal or skin.
Blurred vision
So it is an urge need to control the glucose level during the pregnancy is to keep the fetus healthy and have a healthy safe delivery. There should be frequent check ups during pregnancy as it would be helpful for the close monitoring of the fetus and the mother. The self check or self monitoring helps the women to keep her fit and away from this gestational diabetes. There should be frequent tests of the fetus its growth and well being so that there is no problem in the delivery. The health care provider checks the heart beat of your baby and the moment so that whether the baby is well doing or not.
During pregnancy it’s an urge need to maintain dietary management provided by the health care provider to have adequate nutrients, proteins, and calories in the diet you daily intake. So to have a control of this gestational diabetes it is an urge need that there should be planned meal, physical activities and insulin’s or medications if needed.
The planned meal consists of limited sweets, three small meals and three snacks per day, have a care about the intake of the carbohydrates that is when it is needed, should include fiber in the meals that is fresh vegetables or fruits, grains, cereals and other healthy food. Physical activity consists of swimming, walking, some easy asanas which are good at pregnancy and the exercises suggested by your health care provider. Some women need insulin though there meal is planned or have a physical activity. So this will be provided by the health care provider.
For most of the women this gestational diabetes goes away after delivery. This can be checked after 6 to 12 weeks of the delivery. But you should be careful enough when your gestational diabetes disappears after your delivery. But it has a chance to occur when your get second pregnancy or this can also turn to diabetes type 2 in the future.

One of the most important components of diagnosing gestational diabetes, is the screening process. One test that has become popular, in the screening process, involve the use of jelly beans for gestational diabetes. Since many women to not see specific symptoms of this disease, diagnosis can be difficult. And since there is no certain cause of gestational diabetes, it is hard to connect the dots between symptoms and this condition.

Yes, caring for gestational diabetes when pregnant, is important, which is why testing is done. There are a number of tests that are a part of the screening. These are used essentially, to determine whether there are inappropriately high levels of glucose in a pregnant woman’s blood samples. These tests fall under the line of the non-challenge type of glucose tests.

The tests include a fasting glucose test, a 2-hour postprandial glucose test, and a random glucose test. The postprandial test focuses on the state of the pregnant woman’s blood after she has eaten. Then there is often a screen glucose challenge test performed. In the past there have been problems with this testing. Some pregnant women became nauseated or vomited, during one component of the screening.

This was generally the portion where they were expected to drink a thick, sweet cola like drink. Many of these women had problems keeping this drink down, which effected the testing process. Prompted by these troubles in determining gestational diabetes, the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology stepped in.

The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology did a study on women who consumed this old cola like drink. They also looked at them in comparison to women who consumed jelly beans for getational diabetes testing. This study was very specific in its criteria. In the study there were specific types of jelly beans for gestational diabetes are used. They used jelly beans for gestational diabetes studies, made by the Brach & Brock company. They also used a certain number of jelly beans for gestational diabetes results.

In the traditional test, 50mg of oral glucose is used. This is administered in the sweet cola liquid. They found that anywhere from 10 to 15% of pregnant women vomited after drinking this liquid. So, the jelly bean alternative entered the picture. In the study women were given 18 jelly beans to eat. Use of this particular brand of candy, it equals the amount of glucose, needed in the screening process.

The traditional test required a certain period of time, before results could be checked. These pregnant women would be given tests, requiring a specific time interval for results. But women who were given the jelly bean test, results could be checked within 2 minutes of eating them. A venous plasma glucose value reading could be determined. This test unlike the ones of the past didn’t have to wait because of time restraints. The results of these tests allow you to focus on caring for gestational diabetes when pregnant, after receiving a diagnosis.

The jelly beans for gestational diabetes test did require a focus on whether a woman had eaten, or even when her last meal was. The study found that this test was a success and could be used instead of the cola drink.