Nurses working or living near a community disaster have the opportunity to study health‐related consequences to disaster or disaster recovery. In such a situation, the researchers need to deal with the conceptual and methodological issues unique to postdisaster research and know what resources are available to guide them, even if they have no specialized training or previous experience in disaster research. The purpose of this article is to review issues and challenges associated with conducting postdisaster research and encourage nurses to (...) seek resources and seize opportunities to conduct research should the situation arise. Current disaster studies and the authors' personal experiences conducting maternal‐child research in post‐Katrina New Orleans (2005–2013) provide real‐life examples of how health professionals and nurses faced the challenges of doing postdisaster research. After catastrophic events, nurses need to step forward to conduct disaster research that informs and improves future disaster planning and healthcare responses. (shrink)

Nurses’ duties and patients’ rights have been important foci in nursing. Nurses’ rights legitimate the power and responsibility of the profession. There are few published articles on this subject in the nursing science literature. This article is a theoretical examination of nurses’ rights that aims to structure (i.e. show the internal logic of) those that have been little studied. It is based on the philosophical literature and published research. Nurses’ rights can be divided into: human and civil rights, rights based (...) on health care legislation, professional rights, and earned rights. In this context, professional rights relate to nursing and also to tasks shared with other health care professions. Analyzing nurses’ rights will help to promote these rights, improve nurses’ position both nationally and internationally, and provide possibilities for enhancing patient care. (shrink)

Healthcare workers carry a substantial risk of harm from infectious disease, particularly, but not exclusively, during outbreaks. More can be done by healthcare institutions to identify risks, quantify the current burden of preventable infectious disease amongst HCWs and identify opportunities for prevention. We suggest that institutional obligations should be clarified with respect to the mitigation of infectious disease risks to staff, and question the duty of HCWs to care while healthcare institutions persist with a reactive rather than proactive attitude to (...) infectious disease threats. (shrink)