Here are some recent posts of interest we noticed on the nursing blogs. Many of these blogs can actually be found on our blogroll, so we hope you’re exploring what’s there from time to time, even if we know the list isn’t exhaustive and is probably missing some other excellent (and at least somewhat frequently updated) blogs.
It’s good to know that Will, the nurse/comic artist who shares his drawings at Drawing on Experience, has started posting again more regularly. One of his most recent efforts depicts a night shift nurse as a kind of vampire. It’s funny and, in a way, insightful. We give just a thumbnail version of it below on the right, in the interests of preserving the artist’s copyright; to see it enlarged, click the image and visit the version posted on his site, where you can also find a bunch more drawings, many about his life as a relatively new nurse. 
The INQRI Blog (that INQRI stands for Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative, a real mouthful) has a new post about an increase in enrollment in nursing doctorate programs. Here’s an excerpt:
According to new data released recently by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), enrollment in doctoral nursing programs increased significantly in 2010. The AACN believes that this shows a strong interest in both research-focused and practice-focused doctorates.
The post also connects this enrollment trend with some recommendations from the IOM Future of Nursing Report, which we’ve written about more than once on this blog in recent months. But no more policy today! Whatever your degree, if you’re a nurse, you probably wonder from time to time why you do such a challenging job. An evocative post at Those Emergency Blues recounts an after-dinner conversation between two friends about just this. One of them asks the other, “What’s your best moment in nursing?” The author struggles to find an answer. Here’s part of what she says:
I stopped and thought. I could see my reflection in the dining room mirror, dimly, and even I could see bone-tired in my face. But I thought about codes and trauma. I thought about why I was once made Employee of the Month. I thought of smaller moments of giving care— warm blankets, a back rub, a cup of ice chips, repositioning. I thought about missed findings. I thought about the time a patient an ambulance gurney went VSA while I was triaging her, and walked out of hospital ten days later. I thought about innumerable STEMIs caught and thrombolysed (and later sent for rescue cathetherization) within minutes of arrival. I thought about the times when I pushed for some extra intervention which made a real difference in the patient’s life.
It’s engaging, but it’s probably not the most important part of her answer, which you’ll have to read the entire post to learn. Anyway, maybe we’ll steal the question and ask it here, since we’d really like to know what our readers think (as the chill air hangs on at the end of March and energy levels waver). So what’s your best moment as a nurse?—JM, senior editor/blog editor
