In this article the authors provide a background for the discussion of childhood obesity, examine factors contributing to overweight and obesity in children, review the literature describing interventions and prevention strategies for childhood overweight, and describe nursing skills to prevent childhood obesity. The literature supports a family-focused approach to influencing dietary habits of very young children, prevention interventions that start early in childhood prior to established poor dietary patterns, and the need for community support and involvement. Given these findings, nurses are encouraged to develop skills, such as advocacy, collaborative leadership, and social marketing skills, that will contribute to the prevention of childhood obesity.

advocacy and policy role for preventing childhood obesity --- childhood obesity --- childhood overweight --- collaborative leadership --- community centered approaches to preventing childhood obesity --- nursing role in preventing childhood obesity --- prevention of childhood obesity --- race --- ethnicity --- and childhood obesity --- recommendations for preventing childhood obesity --- social marketing

As the prevalence of obesity sky rockets worldwide, the search for successful weight- management strategies follows. For select individuals, surgical intervention is the most appropriate weight-management intervention for sustained weight loss. Surgical procedures, such as the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, sleeve gastrectomy, and laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding, bring about both dramatic weight loss and the ability to provide the patient with marked improvement in obesity-related conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, and obstructive sleep apnea. In this article the authors will address the incidence of obesity and the criteria for weight-loss (bariatric) surgery; describe the preoperative evaluation and selection of the appropriate surgical procedure; discuss postoperative complications and required nursing care; and give readers a preview of future options for surgical weight loss.

bariatric surgery --- bariatric-surgery nursing care --- laproscopic adjustable banding --- nursing role in bariatric surgery --- obesity --- Roux-en-Y gastric bypass --- sleeve gastrectomy --- surgical intervention for obesity

The global nursing shortage, coupled with an ageing nursing workforce, has placed significant pressure on the Australian Government to implement strategies to meet future nursing demands as well as develop strategies to manage the current crisis. In response, the Australian government funded additional undergraduate places at universities between 2002 and 2008 and offered financial incentives for nurses who were not currently employed to return to practice. Many undergraduate places at the university (in all disciplines) have been taken up by mature-aged students. The high percentage of graduating, mature-aged nursing students is helping to alleviate the current nursing shortage, but runs the risk of exacerbating the shortage projected to occur around the year 2020. This article postulates that graduating this high percentage of mature-aged nursing students is making a significant contribution to nursing today, helping to alleviate the current nursing shortage. However, it runs the risk of exacerbating the shortage projected to occur around the year 2020. In this article the authors explore the current nursing shortage and the changing educational opportunities that affect recruitment of mature-aged students into tertiary-based nursing programs. Recommendations are provided for appropriate succession planning for the future.

mature-aged students --- nursing education --- nursing workforce --- undergraduate education

There is a large body of literature devoted to physicians' abilities to communicate effectively regarding medical interventions. However, nurses’ use of a variety of communicative techniques to advocate appropriate patient care effectively has gone largely unexamined. Although a great deal of formal power in the distribution of healthcare resides with organized healthcare systems, clinical administration, and physicians, nurse participants in this study demonstrated they communicatively exercised informal power strategies in the performance of their role as patient advocates. This study is a qualitative analysis of the narratives of six registered nurses, gathered over a six month period of time, which reveals the ways nurses influenced the outcomes of patient care through their use of the informal power available to them. The narratives of these nurses revealed how they were able to draw on informal power to manage both organizational and also hierarchical constraints in order to advocate for proper patient care.

communication --- formal power --- hierarchical constraints --- informal power --- narrative discourse --- organizational constraints --- patient advocate --- patient care --- patient health outcomes --- power