nursing blog Archives - Off the Charts

The Significant and the Superficial

Libby Kurz, BSN, MFA, RN, works as an OR nurse. Formerly a nurse in the U.S. Air Force, she lives in Virginia with her family. Her work has been published in several literary magazines. To read more of her writing, visit www.libbykurz.com.

I often wonder why the world is the way it is. Why, above all other possibilities, do we have two eyes to see, a mouth that tastes, a body that needs food and fluid to sustain itself, but a mind that can entertain thoughts far beyond the realm of the physical world? The more I think about it, the stranger life seems.

People are odd, too. I’m always blown away by our quirks. There’s a surgeon I work with who has to eat his cereal every morning in the shower. He had a shelf built into his shower just for his cereal bowl. One of my coworkers has a pet scorpion and two snakes, but she hates spiders. An acquaintance of mine eats mayonnaise and peanut butter sandwiches.

Working as a nurse provides an environment where these ironies and oddities of life seem even more […]

Guest Author2017-04-13T12:11:56-04:00April 13th, 2017|Nursing, nursing stories|1 Comment

Have a Safe and Happy 4th of July Weekend

If you’re in the U.S., we hope you enjoy the long 4th of July weekend.

By Bob Jagendorf/via Flickr

Wherever you are, and this blog’s readers are sometimes surprisingly far-flung, we will be back with new posts on Monday, the 6th of July.

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:02:19-05:00July 3rd, 2015|Nursing|0 Comments

Some Recent Notable Posts from Nursing Blogs

Some posts of interest from the nursing blogs (those that are currently active; a fair number of familiar bloggers seem to be taking breaks, having kids, starting new jobs):

“Certified Medical Assistants Calling Themselves Nurses” can be found at The Nurse Practitioner’s Place. It’s not just inaccurate to do so, says the author. It’s often illegal.

Photo from otisarchives4, via Flickr.

At My Strong Medicine, a short post about men, women, USPSTF guidelines, becoming an NP, and reaching a certain age, called “Heard While Studying: Everything Falls Apart at Age 40.”

One blogger, among others, who has been pretty quiet for some months (and who used to organize a regular “blog carnival” that helped create a community among nurse bloggers) is Kim McCallister at Emergiblog. She popped back up several weeks ago with a post called “The Voice,” which is about exactly that—how a nurse blogger lost the sense of freedom she started with as a staff nurse jotting down experiences, and instead internalized a “Sister Superego” that cautioned her to be “prim and proper,” rapping her knuckles until she just fell silent instead. Frustration with computerized charting and the general state of health care seems to be part of it as well. We hope the spirit moves her to write more soon.

Lastly, there’s a nice post by Megen Duffy (who often writes AJN‘s iNurse column, and who […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:08:29-05:00January 25th, 2013|healthcare social media, nursing perspective|0 Comments

Top 10 New AJN Posts of 2012

British Nurse and Baby, via Flickr/jdlasica

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor

Maybe, who knows, some social media content isn’t really quite as ephemeral as we usually believe. Some of our posts seem to keep finding readers, like 2009’s “New Nurses Face Reality Shock in Hospitals–So What Else Is New?” They’re still relevant and timely, addressing as they do some of the more perennial topics in nursing.

Our 20 most-read posts for the year include several others that aren’t “new” this year: “Parting Thoughts: 10 Lessons Learned from Florence Nightingale’s Life”; “Confused About the Charge Nurse Role? You’re Not Alone”; “‘Go Home, Stay, Good Nurse’: Hospital Staffing Practices Suck the Life Out of Nurses”; “Is the Florence Nightingale Pledge in Need of a Makeover?”; “Do Male Nurses Face Reverse Sexism?”; “Fecal Impaction and Dementia: Knowing What to Look for Could Save Lives”; “Are Nursing Strikes Ethical? New Research Raises the Stakes”; and “One Take on the Top 10 Issues Facing Nursing.”

The upstarts. Putting aside posts that have shown a certain longevity, here are the top 10 new posts of 2012, according to our readers, in case you missed them along the way. Are they our best posts of 2012? We will leave that to you. Thanks to everyone who wrote, read, and commented on this blog over the past year.

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Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:08:45-05:00December 12th, 2012|healthcare social media|0 Comments

Tortoise and Hare: Top 15 AJN Blog Posts for Past Quarter

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor

Dance Floor, via Flickr

We haven’t done as many posts as usual for the past few months. Various contributors are on the lam, vacationing, singing arias, earning PhDs, watching “Game of Thrones” episodes over and over and the like. So be it.

But here is a list of the most popular posts over the past three months, in case you missed any of these at the time. Of necessity, since this is a blog, some are more ephemeral in their subject matter and relevance than others.

One or two, like “Do Male Nurses Face Reverse Sexism?”, are several years old but still hit the mark. Some were quick studies, grabbed all their readers in a matter of a few days and then tapered off quickly, while others came on slowly like the tortoise, steadily accumulating readers, asserting their charm via random Google searches.

Feel free to let us know what topics you’d like to see covered in the future. We can’t promise we can deliver, but it’s good to get a variety of perspectives. A greater clinical focus? More on policy? More on the nuts and bolts of nursing subspecialties? More personal narratives from nurses or patients? More posts related to recent published research? More polls? Trivial gossip about celebrities? To repeat: Let us know! And enjoy the early summer weekend.

“The Case of Amanda Trujillo”

“New Nurses Face Reality Shock in Hospital Settings – So What Else is New?”

“‘How Can You Bear to […]