September Issue Highlights: Discussing Gun Safety with Patients, Trauma-Related Hemorrhagic Shock, More

“It is abundantly clear from this pandemic that we are all connected and need the strength of nations working together to thwart any threat to global health and well-being. We ignore
our connectedness at our own peril.”Pamela F. Cipriano in her guest editorial, “Standing with the WHO”

The September issue of AJN is now live. Here are some highlights.

Original Research: Nurses’ Knowledge and Comfort with Assessing Inpatients’ Firearm Access and Providing Education on Safe Gun Storage

The authors sought to determine hospital nurses’ knowledge of firearm safety and current state law, and their comfort with asking patients about gun access and educating them on gun safety.

Trauma-Related Hemorrhagic Shock: A Clinical Review

This article discusses the general principles underlying the pathophysiology and clinical management of trauma-related hemorrhagic shock.

Special Feature: An Intimate Glimpse of Emergency Nurses at Work

A photo-essay featuring scenes from a new film by Carolyn Jones, In Case of Emergency, which profiles the daily lives of ED nurses across the country.

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2020-09-01T08:51:36-04:00September 1st, 2020|Nursing|0 Comments

Former Pediatric ICU Nurse: Where Are the Smart Guns?

Stars for the dead.

On the afternoon of Thursday, November 14, 2019, I visited our local art museum to see a retrospective exhibit by a conceptual artist. Walking into the museum gallery, the first piece you encounter is an installation of several dark blue banners suspended from the ceiling. On their blue fields are embroidered white stars; lots of white stars, 14,718 in all. Each star represents a person killed in the United States by another person with a gun in 2018.

It’s a sobering statistic, but what caught my attention was the half-dozen high school students seated cross-legged on the museum floor inside the circle created by the hanging banners. They faced each other silently. None of them was texting or taking selfies, which was remarkable in itself.

I hadn’t yet heard that earlier in the day two high school students died, and several more were injured in another school shooting, this one at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Later the shooter, a student, died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

As seen in the pediatric ICU.

As a former pediatric intensive care nurse, I have personally cared for several child gunshot victims. They were nice children from nice families who happened to have loaded guns in their homes.

Forgive my […]

2019-11-20T10:13:03-05:00November 20th, 2019|Nursing, Public health|1 Comment

Thinking About Las Vegas

This latest mass shooting, in which 59 people were killed and 500 wounded in Las Vegas, is distressing—and it won’t be the last. Again we find it incredible that this can be allowed to happen.

And again we are reminded of the unique position of the United States compared to most other countries, our astronomically higher numbers of gunshot deaths and the financial and emotional costs they exact. As I wrote in my February 2016 editorial on gun violence, “firearms accounted for 417,583 deaths—253,638 suicides and 163,945 homicides between 2003–2013.”

There’s more information about gun violence and the dismaying number of injuries and deaths among children in our report in the September issue. And a study just published in Health Affairs puts the annual cost of emergency and inpatient care for firearm injuries at $2.8 billion.

The numbers of deaths and injuries we can measure. The sense of helplessness and frustration, and the creeping sense of anxiety we experience as we go into public spaces, are more invidious. […]

2016: An ‘Unbelievable’ Year

“When I think about 2016, one word that keeps coming to mind is ‘unbelievable.’ It’s a word I’ve found myself using many times over the past year, often while shaking my head in disbelief.”

That’s the opening of AJN editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy’s January editorial. In it, she lists serious public health challenges facing this country and the ways political considerations get in the way of acting in the public’s best interest—whether in relation to gun violence, funding to fight infectious disease threats, the ever-increasing cost of essential medications, or health care reform. Too often lies and distortions are now treated by people who know better as the equals of truth and fact.

But you probably have your own list of ‘unbelievable’ things that happened in 2016, perhaps some of them hopeful. Click the above link to read the article, which is free.

Orlando: Another Reminder of Public Health Measures Not Taken

Mary_Magdalene_Crying_StatueOnce again, we’re reading about a mass shooting—this one the deadliest so far, with 50 dead in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. We’ve learned that the alleged shooter, born in the United States to immigrant parents, appears to have been volatile and prone to angry outbursts.

He’d made threats about killings months earlier, according to news reports of interviews with coworkers and family members. Reports also indicate that he professed a hatred of gays and, during the attack, pledged allegiance to the radical Islamic terrorist group ISIS. He had been investigated by the FBI at earlier dates in conjunction with suspected terrorist activities.

And also once again, we learn that the guns, including an assault-style semiautomatic rifle*, were purchased legally. Assault rifles like the one used in Orlando are often used by mass shooters. Assault weapons had once been banned—but when the ban expired in 2004, it was not renewed by Congress, nor does it seem likely to be. […]

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