On the Road to the Future of Nursing

By Shawn Kennedy, interim editor-in-chief  

I’m writing this on the train to Washington, DC, heading to the National Summit on Advancing Health through Nursing, which is taking place November 30 and December 1. This is the next step of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Initiative on the Future of Nursing (see my October 8 blog post) and will launch the Campaign for Action—the plan for implementing the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine’s report, The Future of Nursing. (You’ll be able to access the webcast and a live chat of webcast users on November 30 here.)

If you haven’t read anything about this initiative, do so. If you’re a nurse and plan to be working for the next 10 years, the recommendations from this report, if implemented, will affect you in some way. Expect to see changes in the following areas, to name just a few:

  • how and where nurses practice
  • undergraduate and graduate curricula
  • licensing and certification criteria
  • reimbursement policies
     

Other nursing initiatives have come and gone, some more successful in achieving their goals than others. AJN will cover the progress of this initiative as it attempts to evolve from a written report to an active process that creates sustainable change. As a start, in the December issue, now available at ajnonline.com, AJN brings you a guest editorial by Susan Hassmiller, director of the Initiative on the Future of Nursing. There’s also a summary and analysis of the report in […]

2016-11-21T13:14:49-05:00November 29th, 2010|career|1 Comment
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Turkey, Sweet Potatoes, and Living Wills

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor

When I was growing up, my family spent Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother’s house. She was a star in the kitchen, with cooking and baking skills beyond compare. However, while she made a chocolate cream pie to kill for, her knack for turning every conversation into a newsfeed of various neighbors’ illnesses, symptoms, and near-death experiences, if not actual deaths, stood out more. She did this so much that my brother began referring to her as Grandma Kevorkian.

It turns out that death-and-dying discussions on Thanksgiving might not be such a bad thing, according to Engage with Grace, a nonprofit organization that promotes end-of-life discussions. In 2008 they launched a blog rally timed with Thanksgiving weekend, for bloggers to get the word out about end-of-life discussions. The idea is to have the conversation when most of the family members are together, and the Thanksgiving holiday is a perfect fit. There’s a five-question tool available on the site that can be used as a conversation starter, as well as other resources.

While talking about these topics could potentially clear a room, it’s a lot worse to be sitting at a family member’s bedside in the ICU and not knowing what to choose for them because they didn’t let you know in advance.

For additional information on end-of-life discussions and options, see the AJN articles “Life-Support Interventions at the End of Life: Unintended Consequences,” by […]

2016-11-21T13:14:50-05:00November 24th, 2010|nursing perspective, patient engagement, Public health|2 Comments
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Time to Pause and Commit to Act

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

Of all the holidays, Thanksgiving seems to me to be the most pure—it began way before the greeting card folks thought of it and commercialized it. And it was born out of something that often gets lost during the course of our busy days—connecting with others and saying thank you for what they do or what they mean to us.

Christine Moffa, AJN’s clinical editor, and I were discussing the holiday at a staff meeting, saying how we had never minded working on Thanksgiving. Patients, visitors, and colleagues—everyone was in a friendly, appreciative mode. Most hospital cafeterias served turkey dinners to the staff, so everyone was happy about that—and everyone got to have a real dinner break for a change!

It also seems that at Thanksgiving we’re still in the “giving” mode, maybe because it’s early in the holiday season. My first request-for-your-support e-mail this season came from photographer Ed Kashi; it’s one I’m glad he sent. Ed is an incredibly talented megastar of documentary photography (in my humble opinion); we’ve been fortunate to have some of his work grace our covers (July 2007 and our 2008 Family Caregiver supplement, as examples) and articles. His e-mail was about an online auction of photographs called Commit to Action, a collaborative project by VII Photo (a photo agency) and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to generate funds for MSF work around the world.

The […]

2016-11-21T13:14:51-05:00November 24th, 2010|Nursing|1 Comment
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AJN Webnotes: Anatomizing Medical Errors; Insurance Rebates; Social Media and Nurses

The most popular article in last week’s New England Journal of Medicine did not tout the discovery of a novel gene, nor describe a cardiology clinical trial with a clever acronym as its title. Rather, it was the report of a case in which a surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital performed the wrong operation on a 65-year-old woman.

So begins a nicely engaging summary post at The Health Care Blog of the main points of an NEJM article describing how a medical error occurred—and yes, nurses play a major role in the story too.

Feel like your insurance company spends too much time trying to weasel you out of your money? Kaiser Health News reports today that the Affordable Care Act may soon result in a little payback, in the form of rebates:

Millions of Americans might be eligible for rebates starting in 2012 under regulations released Monday detailing the health care law’s requirement that insurers spend at least 80 percent of their revenue on direct medical care.


“I have nothing listed under my work experience, yet Facebook somehow knows where I work,” cries Not Nurse Ratched, in a post called “Latest Facebook creepiness rant.” Such surprises are worth considering for anyone who might forget that information has a life of its own on the Web. Speaking of social media and nurses, A Nurse Practitioner’s View gives a quick survey of social media networking platforms […]

2016-11-21T13:14:53-05:00November 22nd, 2010|health care policy, healthcare social media|0 Comments
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Anti-Antibiotics Week

Not only is antibiotic resistance dangerous and expensive, it’s on the rise. Unfortunately cold and flu season can make people so uncomfortable they’ll do anything to feel better, including insisting their health care provider write a prescription for a medication that can’t help them. In an effort to change this, the CDC and FDA have teamed up for the 3rd annual Get Smart about Antibiotics Week (November 15–21).

2016-11-21T13:14:54-05:00November 18th, 2010|patient engagement, Public health|3 Comments
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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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