Background:Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a complex clinical condition. The higher survival rate after heart attack and other heart diseases, plus aging population, has led to more CHF patients. Symptoms can have negative impact on exercise capacity, ability to perform activities of daily living and quality of life. Heart failure clinics have been established to help better quality of life. Helping to stabilize and maintain patients´ health can reduce the need of hospital admission.

Hydropericardium or pericardial effusion (PE) is the accumulation of fluid in the pericardial sac and is often secondary to pericardial diseases or diseases related to the heart. It is unusual with clinically relevant pericardial diseases in cats but pericardial effusion is the most common one. Since PE causes serious symptoms and may lead to death it is important with a quick diagnosis and treatment. PE can be acute and cause cardiac tamponade, which gives severe clinical signs. Cardiac tamponade needs to be treated immediately or else the cat will die from cardiogenic chock. More common is chronic PE where the fluid accumulates during a longer period of time and the pericardial sac stretches.

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis is a common disease worldwide. The disease is described as a chronic inflammation that afflicts mainly the joints, the tendrons and the synovial joint. The inflammation breaks down cartilage, ligaments and bone. When the patient gets the diagnosis he/she frequently reacts with chock, denial or/and dissociation. Active support from the nurse can have an important impact on the patient in accepting and processing that he/she suffers from disease.

Achievements within the fields of computer- and telecommunication technology have led to a revolution when it comes to managing information. These achievements have made it possible to offer new services in healthcare, especially in telemedicine. New technology has become a complement to traditional care, thus partly compensating for insufficient time and resources. Telephone Linked Care (TLC) is a telecommunication technology that enables automated dialog counselling and monitoring of patients in their homes. During the last two decades numerous randomized controlled studies with TLC have demonstrated improvement among outpatients with chronic and health behaviour disorders.

Bakgrund: Vid omvårdnad av personer med bensår är det lätt att lägga fokus på bensåret med risk för att den subjektiva upplevelsen kan komma i skymundan. Därför kan det vara viktigt att belysa patienters upplevelser ur ett holistiskt perspektiv. I tidigare forskning har det framkommit att livskvaliteten påverkas negativt där smärta visat sig vara en betydelsefull faktor. Syfte: Att ur ett livskvalitetsperspektiv belysa personers upplevelse av att leva med svårläkt bensår. Metod: En litteraturöversikt baserad på 10 vetenskapliga artiklar med kvalitativ ansats.

Sjukdomen Fibromyalgi är vanlig bland kvinnor och innebär symtom som bland annat kronisk och utbredd smärta samt trötthetssyndrom där behandlingen går ut på att lindra symtomen. Fibromyalgi är lågprioriterad inom hälso- och sjukvården och möts fortfarande av en viss skepticism. Detta gör att patienter med denna sjukdom riskerar att känna sig misstrodda och kränkta när de söker hjälp. Därför är det viktigt att sjuksköterskan skapar en bra vårdrelation för att inte kränka patientens värdighet. Fibromyalgi kan leda till en förändrad livsvärld, vilket gör att det är viktigt att få en ökad förståelse för denna patientgrupp.

Introduction Postoperative wound infections leads to increased patient suffering and cost society money because it leads to longer hospital stays. Previous research shows that patient related risk factors such as smoking, diabetes, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), advanced age (>65 years) a low preoperative hemoglobin level (<140g/L) and a high BMI (> 30) increases the risk of suffering a postoperative wound infection. Aim To investigate whether patients that underwent surgery with Coronary artery Bypass Graft (CABG) in a university hospital in central Sweden in 2013 and had any of these risk factors more often suffer from post-operative wound infection.MethodThe study has a descriptive design and is based on an ongoing infection registration area of operations. The study included 148 patients out of 255 (58%) undergoing CABG in 2013. Possible risk factors were collected through medical record review.Results There was no significant correlation between surgical wound infection and patient-related risk factors such as smoking (not quit smoking four weeks before surgery), diabetes, COPD, advanced age (>65 years), low preoperative hemoglobin (<140g/L) or a high BMI (>30) and suffered a postoperative wound infection.Conclusion More research and a larger sample is needed in the field to produce a reliable result could be presented..

Introduction: Diabetes type 1 is a common chronic disease in children and adolescents. The disease affect, not only the child, but also the parents in their everyday life. The specialist diabetic nurse has a huge responsibility in supporting the parents to feel confident in managing the child?s diabetes.Aims of the study: To investigate how parents of children with diabetes type 1 perceive the care given from the specialist diabetic nurse and what wishes they have concerning the care they receive.Design and methods: Searches for studies in electronic databases were conducted between January 2013 and march 2013. A literature review containing 16 studies was compiled.

Background:Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a complex clinical condition. The higher survival rate after heart attack and other heart diseases, plus aging population, has led to more CHF patients. Symptoms can have negative impact on exercise capacity, ability to perform activities of daily living and quality of life. Heart failure clinics have been established to help better quality of life. Helping to stabilize and maintain patients´ health can reduce the need of hospital admission.

The Swedish dairy production today consists of big farms and different housing systems are in use. These systems put demands on the cows? ability to cope with the environment and one challenge is the claw health in the herds. Some claw lesions that are frequently observed are foot rot, hemorrhages, digital dermatitis and sole ulcers, which can be caused by, for example, the claws? environment and the flooring type used.

SammanfattningBakgrund: Långvarig smärta är en individuell upplevelse och kan orsakas av skador eller sjukdomar, och är ihållande mer än tre månader. Detta kan innebära att det blir svårt att klara av sina vardagliga aktiviteter då funktionsförmågan kan försämras, vilket kan medföra ett lidande för individen.Syfte: Syfte med studien var att belysa individers upplevelser av långvarig smärta.Metod: En systematisk litteratur studie genomfördes och 14 kvalitativa studier kvalitetsgranskades utifrån Forsberg och Wengströms (2013) checklista för kvalitativa studier. Artiklar analyserades enligt Axelssons (2012) metod som innebär att gå från helhet till delar och till slut komma fram till en ny helhet, detta resulterade sedermera i sex teman.Resultat: Att leva med långvarig smärta kunde påverka och begränsa individens liv både fysiskt, psykiskt och socialt. Smärtan gjorde att individerna försökte anpassa sin vardag genom att hitta strategier för att hantera sin smärta. En del beskrev bristande förståelse från både anhöriga och vårdpersonal.Slutsats: Genom att lyssna och vara lyhörda kan sjuksköterskor öka sin förståelse för hur individer upplever långvarig smärta.

Bakgrund: Smärta och smärtbehandling är en viktig del i sjuksköterskans yrkesutövning. Det är därför viktigt att ha kunskap om olika behandlingsmetoder för att på ett individanpassat sätt främja en god omvårdnad. Cannabis har länge använts i medicinskt syfte bland annat för att hantera smärta. En adekvat smärtlindring är av betydelse för patientens livskvalitet.Syfte: Att beskriva hur patienters livskvalitet påverkas av att använda cannabispreparat som analgetika vid långvariga smärttillstånd.Metod: Litteraturstudie med systematiska sökningar valdes som metod. Sökningarna utfördes i databaserna PubMed, CINAHL och PsycInfo, även manuella sökningar genomfördes.Resultat: Resultatet är baserat på 21 vetenskapliga artiklar med olika ansatser.

Syftet med studien var att jämföra skattad hanteringsförmåga och hälsorelateradlivskvalitet hos närstående till personer med kronisk hjärtsvikt och stroke. Ett annat syfte var också att studera om samband fanns mellan hanteringsförmågaoch hälsorelaterad livskvalitet.  Metod: En komparativ och korrelativdesign med kvantitativ ansats användes. För att mäta hanteringsförmåga ochhälsorelaterad livskvalitet användes Jalowiec Coping Scale (JCS) och Shortform- 36 (SF- 36). Urvalsgruppen för studien var närstående till patienter med kronisk hjärtsvikt och stroke (n = 46).

Background: Type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease that vigorously increases worldwide. The disease can affect the entire everyday life which usually results in major lifestyle change. The treatment consists largely of self care which the patient itself has great responsibility for. The nurses have an important role in supporting, guiding and teaching the patients. Since every patient is unique the nurse would benefit from an increased knowledge about the patients experiences of what promotes and prevents self care in type 2 diabetes. Aim: The aim was, from a patient perspective, describe the experience of what promotes and prevents a self care in type 2 diabetes. Methods: A literature review based on nine scientific articles gathered from the databases CINAHL plus with full text, PubMed and Medline.

During the last decade a number of studies have been published that investigate how the most fundamental aspect of political organization, the regime type, affects population health. The results unanimously show that citizens of democracies live longer and healthier lives than citizens of non-democracies. Many explanations for this have been suggested, among these are that democracies redistribute more and invest more in salutogenic resources, and that the tendency of dictatorships to control the media negatively affects the ability to spread information crucial to public health. When these mechanisms are controlled for, however, it turns out that democracy has a large residual correlation with for example life expectancy, which suggests that other mechanisms are also involved.In this paper two new mechanisms regarding the possible psychosocially mediated health effects of the regime type are investigated, namely political repression, and the possible negative effects this might have on the levels of chronic stress, and autonomy, which connects to a large previous literature in social epidemiology. In the paper an ecological cross-country design is used and country-level data, provided mainly by the World Bank and Freedom House, is analyzed with a simple multiple OLS-regression model.