AJN in June: Gastrostomy Complications, Nursing and Mindfulness, Cultural Competence, More

01AJN0615 CoverAccording to one of the authors of “Cultivating Mindfulness to Enhance Nursing Practice,” the Cultivating Quality article now available in our June issue, mindfulness can be understood as a practice centered around “remembering to pay attention with care and discernment to what is occurring in your immediate experience.” On the cover of our June issue (left), nurses at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston practice mindfulness in a spacious garden, as part of a multifaceted program to help nurses manage stress and make the best of opportunities to more fully connect with patients and families. The article discusses the outcome of the program and how nurses in all settings can use mindfulness-based techniques to enhance their well-being and the care of patients.

Also in the June issue, a continuing education (CE) feature article, “Early Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy Tube Dislodgment,” describes the details of a case study of early percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube dislodgment, attempted replacement, and subsequent sepsis that resulted in the patient’s death. This case is used to better inform nurses about gastrostomy techniques, complications, preventive strategies, and proper tube management. […]

2016-11-21T13:02:28-05:00June 1st, 2015|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|0 Comments
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May AJN: A-Fib and Epilepsy Updates, an Ethics Collection, Diversity, Resolving Conflict, More

AJN0515.Cover.2ndAJN’s May issue is now available on our Web site. And in honor of the upcoming Nurses Week, we are offering free access to the entire issue for the month of May. In addition, because the American Nurses Association has designated this the “Year of Ethics” and the theme of this year’s Nurses Week is “Ethical Practice, Quality Care,” we have also made available a collection of some of our top ethics articles from 1925 to the present. Here’s a selection of what else not to miss in our May issue.

Atrial fibrillation adversely affects the quality of life of millions of people, resulting in significant morbidity and mortality and health care costs. Our CE feature, “Atrial Fibrillation: Updated Management Guidelines and Nursing Implications,” reviews the recently updated guideline for the management of atrial fibrillation and stresses how nursing intervention in patient education and transition of care can improve outcomes. This feature offers 3 CE credits to those who take the test that follows the article.

Epilepsy is a serious neurologic disease that affects around 2.2 million people in the U.S. “Epilepsy Update, Part 1: Refining Our Understanding of a Complex Disease,” the first in a two-part CE series, discusses new research on the causes of epilepsy, new definitions that are changing the ways we evaluate the disease, and the […]

2016-11-21T13:02:40-05:00April 24th, 2015|career, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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A Fine Line Between Patient and Provider, and a Mother’s Plea for More Epilepsy Research

by Eric Collins, ecol-arts.com by Eric Collins, ecol-arts.com

Thomas is a frequent flier in our ER, a bespeckled 40-something with coke-bottle glasses, a man who seems to run, like a dog out for a joyride, right into the arms of the dogcatcher. The police bring him in, one man on each arm, his legs limp. Thomas has schizoaffective disorder, dives into the fountain at the mall, screams at strangers at the YMCA, paces outside the grocery store. In a way, I understand—sometimes behaving according to convention can be a little dull.

That’s the start of “Thomas,” the July Reflections essay in AJN by Emily Maloney. It’s about the fine, but still absolute, line that can exist between paid provider and patient at moments when life feels overwhelming to both. Or something like that—it’s hard to summarize a nuanced, lightly ironic account like this in a few words. Like all Reflections essays, it’s short, free, and worth a full read.

The July Viewpoint essay, “A Son’s Seizures,” is written from the perspective of a mother, Linda Breneman, who looked beyond her own experience to become an advocate for all those with epilepsy, particularly those with the intractable sort that doesn’t respond to most treatments. While most people with epilepsy respond to medications and can eventually live more or less normal lives, it’s the author’s well-argued conviction that more research needs to be done to help the subset of those with […]

2016-11-21T13:06:58-05:00July 19th, 2013|Nursing|1 Comment
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Fictional Nurses, Intractable Conditions, Nonspecific Symptoms, Frustrating Patients, More

COPD smoker Dept. of Bad Ideas..

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

Keeping up with the Web-sters. If you happen to use a Web reader of any sort to collect updates (feeds) from all your favorite nursing blogs and health care news sources in one place—we ran an article on using RSS feeds a while back, “RSS for the Uninitiated,” which will be free for the next month—you may know that Google Reader, long a convenient choice, will soon no longer exist. Here are 10 alternative readers you might want consider as replacements (and if you don’t use a reader already, you might want to try it).

A new kind of nursing blog. Nurse, artist, blogger Julianna Paradisi, who writes a monthly post for this blog, has just launched a new blog that will be narrated by a fictional nurse called Niki. This sounds like a really great idea that could go in a lot of potential directions.

Lyme disease continues to grow as a health threat in leafy environments further and further afield. It’s insidious, can attack the body in multiple ways, and there’s a huge amount of controversy about whether conventional short-term antibiotic treatments actually wipe it out or not. Many argue that it can be chronic, and that it’s often missed by the tests most often used to detect its presence. This article in the New Yorker gives a really good overview […]

2016-11-21T13:07:08-05:00June 27th, 2013|nursing perspective|0 Comments
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When Your Child Has a Scary Chronic Illness

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

It may be easier to live with a chronic illness than to have a child who has one. The June Reflections essay, “Seized,” is by a mother who eloquently evokes her struggle to accept her daughter’s epilepsy. She honestly confronts her own resistance to letting her daughter be a normal child—despite the terrifying episodes, the sense of helplessness she feels as a parent, the wish that she could always protect her daughter.

Here’s how it begins, but I hope you’ll click the link and read the entire essay.

It begins with a gurgle from deep in Daney’s throat: low, primal, guttural. In the next few seconds, her back will arch and her palms will turn up. Her 10-year-old self will twitch, then tremble, like she’s being electrocuted—and in a way, she is.


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2016-11-21T13:09:55-05:00June 13th, 2012|nursing perspective|0 Comments
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