Built for This: One NP’s Revitalized Practice

March 30, 2020, was the first day working at this clinic; it was the same day I was supposed to be returning from my honeymoon in Panama.

That’s from our May Reflections essay, “Built for This,” which is free for the rest of May (along with the entire issue, in honor of Nurses Month). Written by Janey Kottler, a family nurse practitioner and clinical instructor, the essay is about volunteering at a clinic on Chicago’s West Side, which was hard-hit by Covid-19. There she encountered families placed under impossible pressure and risk by the need to keep their jobs during the pandemic.

I think about the single mother and her two children I treated recently. The mother is an essential worker at a grocery store and utilizes her neighbor for childcare during work hours. The family’s neighbors are elderly: the wife stays at home while her husband is an essential worker, working on a factory line. They were grateful to have an income throughout the pandemic until her husband fell ill after COVID exposure at work. He has now inadvertently exposed his wife and the children she babysits.

[…]

2021-05-17T12:42:41-04:00May 17th, 2021|Nursing, nursing career, nursing stories|0 Comments
Read More

Clinic Vision

By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay, “The Soul on the Head of a Pin,” was published in the May 2010 issue of AJN.

By Ctd 2005, via Flickr

I’ve begun volunteering at a local free clinic. While it’s been rewarding and satisfying, it’s also been fraught with challenges I didn’t expect; I’ve only worked in an ICU, and the assessment skills specific to critical care don’t translate smoothly to the clinic setting. I’m out of my professional comfort zone, and I feel so inexperienced.

Here’s what I’m used to: By the time a patient is admitted to the ICU, they’ve already been “worked up” in the emergency room. Physicians have been assigned and a preliminary diagnosis is in place. The patients are connected to equipment that displays their vital data continuously, on monitors I can see from almost anywhere, and alarms are triggered by any alterations. I’ve got easy access to radiology reports and films, laboratory values, and microbiology reports. The nursing physical assessment is thorough and paramount; I know what I’m looking for, what I’m listening and feeling for, what certain smells indicate, and I trust my instincts. I’m accustomed to not only the forced intimacy that comes with the in-depth physical assessments of critical care, but the technology and data that supplement my assessments, as well.

At the clinic my nursing role is quite different. I sit at a desk. I am […]

2016-11-21T13:10:52-05:00January 26th, 2012|nursing perspective, Patients, Public health|2 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

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.
Go to Top