August Issue: CBT for Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia, RNs’ Role in Transforming Primary Care, More

“It is not to save the world we are called—it is to care.”—Alison Stoltzfus in her August Reflections essay, “To Care When There Isn’t Enough”

The August issue of AJN is now live. Here’s what’s new. Some articles may be free only to subscribers.

Original Research: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Symptom Management in Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia

This integrative review examines the efficacy of CBT as an adjunct to antipsychotics—notably clozapine—in alleviating symptoms of treatment-resistant schizophrenia in various study populations.

A Tai Chi for Arthritis and Fall Prevention Program for Older Adults During COVID-19

The authors describe their experience converting an in-person tai chi fall prevention program to a virtual program during the pandemic, as well as participants’ responses to the virtual program.

The Role of RNs in Transforming Primary Care

A discussion of the need to improve primary care delivery in the United States, and how preparing RNs to practice at the top of their license can play an important role in this effort.

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2022-07-25T10:36:55-04:00July 25th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
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A Year of Nursing, in Photos

During National Nurses Week, a reflection on nursing in the pandemic and plans to continue spotlighting the global contributions of nurses and midwives.

Photo courtesy of Jhpiego, by way of International Confederation of Midwives.

One photo shows a proning team at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago turning a patient. The photo that accompanies this post shows a midwife in head-to-toe personal protective equipment as she provides breastfeeding counseling to a woman wearing a mask and holding her newborn in a hospital bed in Kabul, Afghanistan. A third focuses on more than 150 white clogs—each pair representing a nurse’s life lost during the pandemic—placed on the lawn outside the U.S. Capitol.

Reflections on the essential care nurses provided this year.

These are just some of the images included in the May issue’s feature article, “A Look Back at the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife.” This photo-essay highlights the diverse experiences of nurses and midwives globally in the last year and the variety of ways they responded to these circumstances.

The photos depict resilience—a group of nurses and physicians with their names and smiley faces drawn on […]

2021-05-07T11:05:47-04:00May 7th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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The Complex Working Relationships Between National and Expatriate RNs on Humanitarian Missions

Photo via Flickr / Andrew Smith

Each summer, many nurses and nursing students join humanitarian aid missions, traveling to countries where health resources are scarce in order to work in medical clinics, on surgical teams, or as part of a public health brigade to serve impoverished communities. They work alongside local health workers, often under crisis conditions. We tend to take for granted that there are no downsides to these efforts. But how do local nurses feel about working with (and usually under the supervision of) nurses from other countries?

In 2014, nurse Debbie Wilson worked in an Ebola treatment unit in Liberia. It wasn’t her first overseas medical mission. But under the particularly intense conditions of the deadly Ebola outbreak, she worked very closely with the Liberian nurses in the unit—nurses whose own family members, friends, and coworkers had died of the disease. (Read about Wilson’s experience here.) Over time, these nurses shared with Wilson their stories of positive and negative experiences working with other expatriate nurses in the center.

Since that deployment, Wilson has teamed up with her Liberian colleague Darlington S. Jallah to formally explore the working relationship between expats and local nurses. They share their findings in Exploring Working Relationships Between National and Expatriate RNs on Humanitarian Aid Missions: The Perspectives of Liberian Nurses in the June issue of AJN.

Wilson and Jallah led focus groups with Liberian […]

2019-06-19T10:54:55-04:00June 19th, 2019|Nursing|2 Comments
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Rightness: A Flight Nurse Taps Into the Universal Language of Nursing

“Immersed in a nursing role that I didn’t even know existed when I entered the profession, I find there to be a common language—one rooted in science but strongest in humanity and compassion, transcending culture, geography, and words.”

By Marcy Phipps, BSN, RN, CCRN, chief flight nurse at Global Jetcare

MarcyPhipps_Flight_NursingI’m standing in the doorway of our plane, watching our patient sleep and eyeing the monitor. The monitor’s beeps keep steady time and mix with the sounds of the pounding waves that batter the atoll.

We’ve stopped for fuel on this narrow runway that stretches down a spit of land in the Pacific. As the sun rises we snack on cold gyudon, a Japanese dish we picked up in Guam. It’s not the best breakfast, but somehow feels right—like a lot of other aspects of this job lately.

We’d started our mission in eastern Asia, picking up an American citizen who’d fallen ill in a city that didn’t cater to tourists and where almost no one spoke English.

While there, our crew’s handler—someone whose job it is to facilitate our lodging, transportation, and generally ease our way—had taken us to a dimly lit restaurant on a back street and treated us to a myriad of local delicacies, some of which I recognized, many of which I didn’t. My usual morning run had led me through parks and a street market […]

2016-11-21T13:01:31-05:00February 1st, 2016|nursing perspective|4 Comments
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Farewell to Nurses Week 2011

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

So Nurses Week 2011 has come and gone. I was in Malta at the start of it—at the 2011 International Council of Nurses (ICN) meeting in Valletta—and in New York City at the end of it.  From two disparate locations, there was a singular thread: nurses seeking information to improve the lives of their patients and themselves.

In Malta, there were over 2,000 nurses from all over the world. Some participated as their nation’s representatives in the Council of National Representatives (see an earlier post describing ICN activities); some came for the educational sessions, or to share experiences or initiatives that have made a difference in the lives of nurses or patients. (I wrote about two of these moving stories.) The conference also served as a reminder of how much I regret not being fluent in another language—four years of high school French and a French-speaking grandfather helped a little, but there’s nothing like meeting colleagues who speak two or three languages (their own native language, English, and usually a bit of another one) to make you realize how necessary it is to be multilingual in today’s world.

On one day, I was eating lunch with colleagues from Brazil and Belgium. […]

2016-11-21T13:12:58-05:00May 18th, 2011|career, nursing perspective|3 Comments
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