In Long-Term Care, What’s Favoritism?

By Sheena Jones, an LPN who is in training to be an RN at Dutchess Community College, Poughkeepsie, NY

Is it really fair when we get the favoritism speech from our superiors when we supply residents who have no family or friends with hygiene supplies? When there are two roommates and one has family and friends who visit daily and bring her all that she could need or want and the other has nothing and no one? Am I wrong for getting a couple of supplies from the dollar store for her? We all know that the hygiene supplies in many facilities are watered down and cheap. Am I wrong for buying someone some socks when they have none? We can’t share supplies or clothing between patients, so do I let someone walk around with nothing? If these people were my family or friends I would want someone to make them comfortable. They can’t leave the facility to go shopping with family or friends, and many of them have lost most of their mental capacity and have no one to help them—but that does not mean that they should walk around less put together than someone with a family? Do we just let these residents go without?

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2016-11-21T13:18:26-05:00March 31st, 2010|nursing perspective, students|3 Comments
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What Nurses Need to Know About Continuous Glucose Monitoring

Case 1. A 27-year-old man has had type 1 diabetes for 19 years. His hemoglobin AIc level prior to starting RT-CGM [real-time continuous glucose monitoring] was 9.4%. . . . Over the 15 months of RT-CGM use, he was able to decrease his hemoglobin AIc level to 7.7% and maintain it at that level for several months. After he stopped using RT-CGM because his insurance didn’t cover sensors, his hemoglobin AIc level rose to 8.5%. When he got a new job and was able to resume use of RT-CGM, after three months his hemoglobin AIc level had once again decreased, this time to 7.9%.

Case 2. A 10-year-old girl has had type 1 diabetes for almost three years. Her hemoglobin AIc level before starting RT-CGM was 9.8%. By five months after starting RT-CGM her hemoglobin AIc level had decreased to 7.2%. After discontinuing sensor use because of the high cost of RT-CGM supplies and a lack of insurance coverage, her hemoglobin AIc level rose to 8.2%.

The above are composite cases of patients with type 1 diabetes who used real-time continuous glucose monitoring devices as a tool to improve their blood sugar control. They’re from an article in the April issue of AJN that gives a balanced overview of this technology, including how it works, its current uses (as a diagnostic tool, a warning system for hypo- and hyperglycemia, and a way to improve long-term glycemic control), its coverage and costs—and its advantages and disadvantages, […]

2016-11-21T13:18:31-05:00March 30th, 2010|Nursing|0 Comments
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‘What’s Not to Like?’ A British Nurse, Recently Treated for Cancer, Weighs In on U.S. Health Reform

Here’s a little perspective on health care reform in the U.S. from AJN’s contributing editor on international health. Jane Salvage, RGN, BA, MSc, HonLLD, FQNI, is a visiting professor at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, King’s College, London, and recently spent a year on the Prime Minister’s Commission on the Future of Nursing and Midwifery.

Just two weeks ago I learned I had a stage 1 endometrioid adenocarcinoma—a cancer in the lining of my womb. In many other countries today, and in the UK until recent years, this would eventually have killed me. But here I am today, happily home after a hysterectomy, probably cancer-free, thanking my lucky stars and our British National Heath Service (NHS).

My life has been saved by an army of people, from nurses and doctors to lab assistants, many of whom I’ll never meet. All my high quality care was free at the point of delivery, efficiently funded from my taxes instead of boosting the profits of insurance officials or millionaire surgeons. And I am pleased that my taxes have also subsidized the care of the demented, impoverished old lady in a nearby bed, even though her hollering and howling kept us awake most of the night.

What’s not to like? A great deal, you’d think from the nonsense talked about our UK NHS during your U.S. health reform debates. Last September, visiting the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing, I stayed at the same […]

2018-03-27T16:36:45-04:00March 26th, 2010|health care policy, nursing perspective|8 Comments
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‘After Heart Surgery’: A Survivor’s Account in March’s ‘Art of Nursing’

by Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

“I am grateful for the two hours my heart / stopped,”  says the narrator of  “After Heart Surgery.” It’s an incredible, heart-stopping line.  The voice is that of someone who has literally returned from the dead. He tells the tale with lively wonder, pledging  “allegiance to each leaflet of my bicuspid valve.” And yet as he lies in the bed, “eyes open,” attending carefully to his own heartbeat, we sense his lingering fear, too.

Poet Richard Waring doesn’t flinch from difficult subjects and offers them to us with rare clarity. In an earlier poem, “Oboe,” Waring wrote of a boy’s time on a locked ward and how music helped him find “the grammar of a new survival.” (For either poem, click on the link and then open the PDF.) Waring is also a senior layout artist at the New England Journal of Medicine; his poems have appeared in venues as varied as Chest and The Boston Globe. We’re honored to have his work in our pages.

If you’re a poet or a visual artist, we hope you’ll consider submitting to Art of Nursing. Read this blog post for details. Guidelines can be found here. Still have questions? Write to the Art of Nursing coordinator (me) at sylvia.foley@wolterskluwer.com.

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2016-11-21T13:18:35-05:00March 26th, 2010|Nursing|0 Comments
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Online Social Networks for Chronic Illness – Time for Providers to Take Them Seriously

For many people, social networks are a place for idle chatter about what they made for dinner or sharing cute pictures of their pets. But for people living with chronic diseases or disabilities, they play a more vital role.

“It’s really literally saved my life, just to be able to connect with other people,” said Sean Fogerty, 50, who has multiple sclerosis, is recovering from brain cancer and spends an hour and a half each night talking with other patients online.

That’s from an article in the technology section of today’s NY Times, which draws upon a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Foundation about how people with chronic illnesses are finding connection, support, and information in online social networks like DiabetesConnect.

Chronic illness can be isolating for many reasons: you often can’t explain a condition’s relentlessness and complexity to those around you; at the same time, you may be homebound or to some degree limited in the types of activities you can engage in.

Providers should be aware of such online networks and the role they play for patients. Patients get useful information about self-care, and they feel less alone—though some who study online social networks do caution against any sites where the mood is focused entirely on the negative. Good feelings and bad (like good information and bad) can both be infectious on the Web, as we’ve learned during recent political debates.

2016-11-21T13:18:36-05:00March 25th, 2010|digital health, Nursing|1 Comment
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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