Archive for the ‘art and nursing’ Category

« Newer Entries
Older Entries »
h1

The Puzzle of Snowflakes: Treatments May Be Uniform, But Patients Are Not

January 4, 2011

Julianna Paradisi blogs at JParadisi RN; her artwork appeared on the cover of the October 2009 issue of AJN, and her essay, “The Wisdom of Nursery Rhymes,” is upcoming in the February issue.

My patient sits in a chair, watching a DVD presentation about caring for his new, surgically inserted, tunneled catheter. In a few weeks, this catheter will be used for his stem cell transplant. I am teaching him how to flush it and change the dressing. He’s from out in the sticks, too far away from the clinic for our nursing staff to provide the care for him. He doesn’t have family or friends for support. After the DVD, I bring out a chest manikin and dressing kit to demonstrate the sterile dressing change. As I explain the technique of donning sterile gloves, he stops me with a challenging glare.

“I can’t do sterile.”

I stop what I’m doing to explain the dangers of infection if the dressing isn’t sterile. Like a car stuck in a snowdrift, he remains unbudged. “I can’t do sterile,” he insists. I puzzle over what to say next. My coworkers flurry by in their white lab coats. I’m wearing a white lab coat, too. My patient is lost in a health care blizzard. He doesn’t see snowflakes. He only sees snow. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in art and nursing, healing/holistic, nursing perspective, patient perspective, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments »

h1

When They Can’t Tell You About the Hurt: Assessing Pain in People with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities

December 14, 2010

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Coffee Time (detail) / by S.M. Drawing used with permission of family.

When S.M., a 47-year-old resident at a facility for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, started hitting himself in the left eye, his caregivers weren’t sure why. S.M., whose developmental quotient is equivalent to that of a two- or three-year-old, couldn’t tell them. Some thought he was frustrated at not being allowed to drink as much coffee as he wanted; others thought a recent decrease in his medication—quetiapine (Seroquel)—might be a factor. But a chart review revealed that both his father and brother had a history of cluster headaches. Was S.M.’s behavior an indicator of headache pain? How could clinicians best assess him?

In this month’s CE feature, authors Kathy Baldridge and Frank Andrasik provide an overview of pain assessment in people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, summarize the relevant research, and discuss the applicability of the American Society for Pain Management Nursing practice guidelines for assessing pain in nonverbal patients. The guidelines describe various behavioral pain assessment tools, some of which might be useful with S.M. and others like him. Other assessment methods include

a search for pathologic conditions or other problems or procedures known to cause pain; the observation of behaviors that might indicate pain; and the use of proxy reports (also called surrogate reports) by people who know the person best, whether family caregivers or professionals.

S.M. was encouraged to draw himself and what the “hurt” felt like; two of these drawings illustrate the article (a detail from one is shown above). The authors also profile one facility’s approach to pain assessment of its patients. And they discuss collaborative team solutions with AJN interim editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy in this podcast interview.

Have you  faced the challenge of assessing pain in patients like S.M.?

Bookmark and Share

Posted in art and nursing, audio interviews, continuing education, nurses, nursing perspective, pain control, Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

h1

Fighting Malaria with Public Health Billboards and Mosquito Nets

December 2, 2010

By Dawn Starin

Metal billboard with an antimalarial public health message, Bubaque, Guinea-Bissau, 2010. Photo by Dawn Starin.

The metal billboard in the photo stands in the main marketplace on the island of Bubaque, the second largest in Guinea-Bissau’s Bijagós Archipelago. It depicts a mother and child sleeping under an insecticide-treated mosquito net. Translated into English, the text reads, “Malaria kills more pregnant women and children. Always sleep underneath the mosquito net.” But it’s not clear whether it gets its crucial message across effectively.

Half the global population—about 3.3 billion people—is at risk for contracting malaria, a parasitic infection transmitted by mosquitoes. The disease kills close to one million people each year; 91% of these deaths occur in Africa. A major global campaign, Roll Back Malaria (RBM), was launched in 1998 with a mandate “to implement coordinated action to combat malaria” worldwide; some 500 organizations now take part.

One RBM effort in sub-Saharan Africa (an area that includes Guinea-Bissau) is aimed at getting more people to use insecticide-treated bed nets, since the parasite-carrying mosquitoes are reportedly only active at night. In Africa malaria accounts for one in five deaths in children. 

Pregnant women are also at high risk, as they’re bitten by the mosquitoes twice as often as nonpregnant women. Why? According to a study published in 2000 in the Lancet, pregnant women have a higher body temperature and warmer skin and produce more sweat than do nonpregnant women; those in the last trimester also exhale greater volumes of air. (Read the abstract here.) All of these physiological differences give pregnant women a “larger host signature” and probably aid mosquitoes in detecting them as targets.

According to the RBM Partnership’s latest report, ”Every US $1,025 spent on insecticide-treated nets will protect 380 children and save one child’s life each year.” Is the message getting across?

(Editor’s note: For more on Guinea-Bissau’s public health billboards, see this earlier post.)

Bookmark and Share

Posted in art and nursing, children's health, infection control, public health nursing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

h1

Questions of Priority, Written in Vernix and Blood: Two Poems in ‘Art of Nursing’

October 1, 2010

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Handleaf by The Welsh Poppy / Rachel Davies, via Flickr

Jenna Kay Rindo’s poem “An Ode to My Certified Nurse Midwife” (Art of Nursing, August) brims with the narrator’s gratitude for the clinician who has seen her through a “gloomy complicated gestation” with great skill and compassion. (Art of Nursing poems are always free online—just click through to the PDF files.)

This is no sentimental paean, though. This ode is a gritty read, full of vernix and “unrehearsed pain,” euphoria and shame. The child, we learn, was “conceived completely out of wedlock, / in a rush of holy illicit love.” The narrator at first only wants to know how long she can hide the pregnancy. It’s the nurse midwife whose “jubilant congratulations” never seem to waver, whose “size seven hands covered in  / sterile latex” draw the infant’s wide shoulders into the world, and give the young mother courage. It’s an ode, perhaps, to something we strive for but rarely attain: a nonjudgmental attitude.

“It is lucky to live outside the target groups,” begins the narrator of Erika Dreifus’s poem “The Autumn of H1N1” (Art of Nursing, October). She is referring to those considered most at risk for the flu and thus at the top of the list for immunization.

But when she finds herself hemorrhaging and frightened, waiting to be seen by a gynecologist who minimizes her distress, she reveals far more complicated feelings about “the prioritized.” It’s an unusually frank poem about what it’s like to find out that, for the moment anyway, one’s blood “counts less.”

We invite you to have a look at these poems, sit with them, and if you’re so inclined, leave a comment and tell us what they evoke for you.

And if you’re in the Portland, Oregon, area this month, stop by the Anka Gallery for a look at nurse blogger and artist Julianna Paradisi‘s new show, From Cradle to Grave: The Color White. Paradisi’s Love You to Death appeared on  our cover (October 2009) and new work is forthcoming in Art of Nursing.

Bookmark and Share

Posted in art and nursing, H1N1 virus (swine flu), patient perspective, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

h1

Fighting HIV–AIDS with Public Health Billboards: September ‘Art of Nursing’

August 30, 2010

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Public Health Billboard, Guinea-Bissau (detail)

On a recent trip to the capital of Guinea­-Bissau, Dawn Starin noticed numerous public health billboards urging people to get tested for HIV or to practice safer sex by wearing condoms. One of the six poorest countries in the world, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, Guinea-Bissau faces an ongoing epidemic of HIV and AIDS. Prevalence is especially high in urban areas and among pregnant women and sex workers. Starin, a writer and a research associate in the department of anthropology at University College London, UK, was struck by the bright colors and larger-than-life figures in the billboards, and photographed several, including the one featured in the September Art of Nursing.

Are the billboards effective?  Starin writes, “Although the billboards are fabulous to look at, many health professionals I spoke with thought they exemplified time and money wasted, in part because of the high nationwide illiteracy rate.” One health worker emphasized the need for more culture-specific studies on sexual practices and tradition, so that appropriate education programs could be developed.

Starin has also photographed public art by Thongleum Damviengkum, a mixed-media artist whose work appeared in the April Art of Nursing. Damviengkum’s often witty pieces, intended to raise public awareness about HIV and AIDS and address the stigma associated with having the disease, are on display at a restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand. “Humor is important if you want people to listen,” he told Starin.

As always, Art of Nursing is free online (you’ll need to click through to the PDF files). We invite you to have a look and tell us what you think in the comments.

Bookmark and Share

Posted in art and nursing, HIV/AIDS, international nursing, public health nursing | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments »

h1

On Difficult Truths, Anger, and Compassion: Recent Poems in ‘Art of Nursing’

July 30, 2010

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Loafer Mod by pdstahl / Patrick Stahl, via Flickr

“Why couldn’t you leave cleanly?” asks the narrator of Ann Sihler’s poem, “Leavings,” featured in the June Art of Nursing. The poem, written in response to a suicide, speaks to the emotions of those left behind. Its central image, a pair of “oxblood loafers lying there / for all to see,” is somehow both mundane and horrifying. It’s a stark poem, suffused with the narrator’s anger; yet its lack of pretension also affords us  relief.

The married man with “schoolboy cheeks” in Nancey Kinlin’s poem, “Practicing at Post Office Square,” has just heard what no one wants to hear: “the result / is positive.” The poem, featured in July’s Art of Nursing, gives us the disclosure—from the nurse’s point of view. It’s a poem about mistakes and compassion, about what it feels like to be the one delivering bad news. Kinlin’s spare, clear writing doesn’t flinch from its difficult subject.

Both poems are free online (you’ll need to click through to the PDF files). We invite you to have a look, sit with them, and tell us what they evoke for you in the comments.

Bookmark and Share

Posted in art and nursing, HIV/AIDS, nursing perspective, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

h1

Fetal Pigs and Popcorn: ‘Lessons’ in May’s ‘Art of Nursing’

May 14, 2010

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Popcorn by twicepix / Martin Abegglen, via Flickr

To be frank, the opening scenario in Bernadette Geyer’s poem “Lessons,” featured in this month’s Art of Nursing department, made me uneasy when I first read it—and yet I was intrigued. In the poem, “Mom” has fallen asleep over a medical textbook, and her three daughters “watch as Dad / tosses popcorn, aimed for her slack mouth.” What’s going on here? The father’s action seems mocking, almost cruel.

But as good poems will, “Lessons” reveals more with each reading. The mother’s textbook is full of lurid photographs, including those of “a dissected fetal pig.” The young daughters find their own changing bodies “so embarrassing.” The father’s popcorn tossing makes his daughters giggle, and those garish photos of death recede just a little. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.  Read the poem—it’s free online (please click through to the PDF version)—and sit with it for a bit, see what you think. Then tell us in the comments!

Bernadette Geyer, a writer and freelance editor living in the Washington, DC, area,  received a 2010 Strauss Fellowship from the Arts Council of Fairfax County, Virginia.  Links to several of her poems can be found on her Web site.  She also blogs here about writing, motherhood, and life in “the exiles of suburbia.”

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

Bookmark and Share

Posted in art and nursing, children's health, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

h1

The Manifold Talents of Nurses Who Are Artists

May 5, 2010

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Ferris wheel through the sunroof in the rain, by aturkus / Alan Turkus, via Flickr

As the coordinator of AJN’s Art of Nursing department, I’m intrigued by intersections between the two fields: Art and Nursing. About a year ago I profiled several multitalented nurses (The Triple Talents of Some Nurse Bloggers), including Julianna Paradisi, an RN, artist, and writer who blogs about “where science, humanity, and art converge” at JParadisi RN’s Blog. (Her painting Love You to Death appeared on our October 2009 cover.) In March Paradisi launched a second blog, Die Krankenschwester, which emphasizes images. One series depicts rituals followed “From Cradle to Grave”; another considers the iconography of call lights. Paradisi’s work is beautiful and thought-provoking; stop by and have a look.

Recently I happened upon Nurse–Artists International, Inc. Started in 2009 by Kathy Iwanowski, an artist and former oncology and hospice nurse, the organization has an ambitious vision that includes “promoting the arts, humanities, and the therapeutic benefits of creativity in all aspects of life and living,” “creating and collaborating on projects related to arts and health with corporate, educational, healthcare, and other community partners” and “assessing the impact of the arts on health and healthcare costs.” Among its programs are the International Association of Nurse Artists, with membership open to nurses working in any artistic medium; Our Space to Create, a collaborative program for developing arts projects that meet community needs; and the Arts and Health Co-Lab, open to anyone interested in the connection between the arts and health. Iwanowski’s personal Web site offers samples of her found-object sculpture and visual art.

Art by Nurses states that its aim is to “bring nurses together as a community using art as a powerful self-care resource.” Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, it offers members an online venue for showing and selling art. A percentage of works sold goes into an Art Fund for Nurses, to which “any registered nurse can apply for funds to use art as a strategy to maintain balance and meaning in their lives as healers.” Worth a visit simply for its Art Galleries, which include striking photographs and artwork by more than 20 nurse-artists, including founder Lynda MacLeod, Shona Lalonde, and Pasquale Fiore, as well as Catherine Fraser, whose watercolor “Herb Store” was featured on AJN’s August 2007 cover.

Bookmark and Share

Posted in art and nursing, media depictions of nursing, nursing perspective, writing and nursing | Tagged , | 6 Comments »

h1

Photo-essay Depicts Home Nursing in Gaza Strip; All AJN May Articles Free for Next Two Weeks

April 29, 2010

The above photo is from a photo-essay on home nursing in the Gaza Strip that appears in the May issue of AJN. The text and images depict Palestinian nurses trained by a medical aid organization called Merlin to attend to local communities in need, especially those cut off from urban health care services. Have a look (since it’s a photo-essay, we suggest you click through to the PDF version once you reach the article). 

In honor of Nurses’ Week, which occurs in early May, this and all other articles in AJN will be free from now until May 15. At all other times, the departments and article types listed below are always free (along with other selected articles):

  • Reflections, a monthly personal essay from a reader
  • Viewpoint, a position piece from an expert or concerned citizen
  • news articles like this on turf wars between physicians and nurse anesthetists, this on the continuing trickiness of treating sepsis, and this on a new plan for radiation safety
  • Art of Nursing (it’s a poem this month; click through to the PDF to read it)
  • the editorial
  • letters like this one on end-of-life opioid use
  • CE features such as this comprehensive look at asthma in adolescents and adults

Bookmark and Share

Posted in art and nursing, continuing education, home care nursing, international nursing, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

h1

‘After Heart Surgery’: A Survivor’s Account in March’s ‘Art of Nursing’

March 26, 2010

by Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Heartstudy by James P. Wells, via Flickr

“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.

Bookmark and Share

Posted in art and nursing, patient perspective, spirituality and nursing, writing and nursing | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

« Newer Entries
Older Entries »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 291 other followers