Cast Into the Shadows: COVID-19’s Power Over Non-COVID Cases

As a pediatric ICU nurse in a hospital that has not experienced an overwhelming surge of COVID-19 patients, it has taken me some time to register the ways this pandemic has affected my perspective and practice.

Non-COVID diagnoses left in the shadows.

Photo by Unjay Markiewicz/ Unsplash

I recently took care of two young patients, each with acute and unexpected conditions. One was under post-operative care after a brain tumor had been removed the day before. The other had been newly diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. What stood out to me as I interacted with their families was that these were some of the only people I would interact with in this period who did not have COVID foregrounded in their mental and emotional space. This feeling was followed by the sobering realization that this was only because they found themselves dealing with something just as insidious, if not more so.

In both cases, the families observed confusing symptoms in their children and had to wrestle with whether or not to go to the ED in the midst of a pandemic. Only when the symptoms became so severe and concerning did these families decide they could no longer avoid the ED. Now facing an inpatient hospital […]

2020-06-02T09:32:44-04:00June 2nd, 2020|family experience, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing stories, patient engagement, Public health|1 Comment
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Promoting Awareness of Patient-Centered Care

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

October is, among other things, patient-centered care awareness month. At AJN, we’ve been focusing on patient-centered care for some time, most recently by virtue of our collaboration on a series of articles with Planetree, a nonprofit that “facilitates patient-centered care in healing environments.” The first article, Creating a Patient-Centered System, appeared in March 2009; the final article (from which we took the image above) was published in September 2010, and they’re all available in a collection on our Web site. Articles focus on such topics as creating quieter hospital environments and promoting patient access to medical records. We’re excited that this collaboration evolved into a four-part free webinar series supported by the Picker Institute. The final webinar, A Patient-Centered Approach to Visitation, presented by Planetree vice president Jeanette Michalak, MSN, RN, along with Wendy Tennis, BA, and Nancy Jane Schreiner, BSN, RN, will be on October 19 at 1 pm EST. We hope you will register and learn how to facilitate family visitation that meets patient needs. (The Planetree Web site also offers a downloadable toolkit and suggestions to focus attention on patient-centered care.)

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2016-11-21T13:15:25-05:00October 7th, 2010|nursing perspective, patient engagement|0 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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