June Issue: Cardiac Devices for Heart Failure, Using EHR Data for Research and QI, More

“When nurses practice real self-care, they come to a place of self-respect, learn to hear their own voice, and recognize when their expressed needs are ignored. “—Emily Stice Laker in her Viewpoint article, “Nurses Need More Than Self-Care”

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

CE: Guideline-Directed Cardiac Devices for Patients with Heart Failure

The author reviews current device therapies for heart failure and uses a composite case to demonstrate how bedside nurses can help patients understand treatment options, potential complications of implantation, and post-op care.

Special Feature: Assessing EHR Data for Use in Clinical Improvement and Research

This article introduces nurses to the secondary analysis of EHR data, first outlining the steps in data acquisition and then describing a theory-based process for evaluating data quality and cleaning the data.

Nursing Research, Step by Step: Diagnostic Studies: Measures of Accuracy in Nursing Research

This article, one in a series on clinical research by nurses, reviews the use of diagnostic and screening tests and tools in nursing research and clinical practice.

[…]

2022-05-31T09:08:10-04:00May 31st, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
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Time to Stop Proving Burnout Exists and Start Researching Real Solutions

“Put simply, we know burnout exists and we know it’s getting worse. Let’s leave it at that and move forward. Let’s focus on what we know might mitigate burnout…”

That’s from this month’s Viewpoint, “Burnout Research at a Crossroads,” by Tim Cunningham and Sharon Pappas. Some readers may find it a relief to have this stated so baldly: let’s move on to solutions, say the authors. Let’s put research dollars, time, and energy behind the search for clearer information about what works and what doesn’t.

A two-pronged approach.

The authors see a crucial and legitimate place for investigation of what works and what doesn’t in wellness initiatives to support “personal resilience” through self-care (an increasingly nebulous term in itself).

But they caution against shifting the responsibility onto nurses’ shoulders and ignoring real systemic issues.

With this in mind, they call for research that first of all examines systemic factors:

“It’s only commonsensical that burnout and work experience are intimately tied. It’s time to look more closely at staffing, work hours, team nursing, equitable pay, and other work environment factors that may decrease burnout.”

[…]

2022-04-29T15:08:45-04:00April 28th, 2022|Nursing, nursing research, safe staffing|1 Comment
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April Issue: Trauma-Informed Care, Nurses’ Experiences During COVID-19, More

“As nurses we all care. It’s what we do. We care until our hearts hurt like an overused muscle.”—Eileen J. Glover in her Reflections essay, “The Suffering of Simone”

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

Original Research: Losing the Art and Failing the Science of Nursing: The Experiences of Nurses Working During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The authors of this qualitative descriptive study sought to understand nurses’ work experiences in various U.S. health care settings during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to learn more about barriers to and facilitators of their work.

CE: Trauma-Informed Care in Nursing Practice

This article presents the six foundational principles of trauma-informed care, using a case study to discuss the application of these core principles in nursing.

Improving Accuracy in Documenting Cardiopulmonary Arrest Events

The authors describe a quality improvement initiative to compare the timeliness and accuracy of paper-based versus electronic documentation of live cardiopulmonary arrest events.

[…]

2022-03-30T09:43:18-04:00March 30th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
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DNR Does Not Mean Do Not Treat

Nurses and the meaning of DNR.

I recall a patient I had as a very new nurse who was designated as do not resuscitate, or “DNR.” The patient had suffered an intracranial bleed and because of his advanced age and untreatable cancer, his family had agreed that no CPR should be used. I remember the nursing supervisor asking me why the patient didn’t have a footboard and foam heel protectors on (that’s what we did back then); my answer was that he was a DNR patient. She basically handed me my head and said that his DNR status had nothing to do with good nursing care.

I never forgot that incident, and when I spoke with the authors of a mixed methods study with direct care nurses on three different units that found that “varying interpretations of DNR orders among nurses were common,” I immediately said yes. Their article is the original research article in AJN‘s January issue, “Nursing Perspectives on Caring for Patients with Do-Not-Resuscitate Orders.”

Families and providers may understand DNR differently.

And it’s not just nurses who may have different ideas and think differently about what should or shouldn’t be done for these patients who hover between life and death—other health care providers and families need to be clear on what that […]

2021-01-27T11:35:45-05:00January 27th, 2021|Nursing, nursing research|1 Comment
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How Research Starts: Choosing a Question That Passes the ‘So What’ Test

As an undergrad at the University of Michigan School of Nursing more than 40 years ago, I was among the few students who loved the required “research” course. I don’t know whether I looked forward to that class because I was an avid reader of Nancy Drew and saw research as detective work, or simply because nursing was so new to me that everything about it seemed exciting.

The main idea behind the course was that all nurses should be able to read and understand research reports. We didn’t get into the nuts and bolts of study design, complex statistics, or modeling, but we were expected to be able to analyze basic nursing research articles and to identify a study’s strengths and weaknesses.

This early experience didn’t lead me to pursue a career in research, but it left me with a respect for the research process and an interest in asking clinical questions.

Research basics explained.

Now, I have a chance to update my understanding of the field through AJN’s new series on research basics, Nursing Research, Step by Step. The first installment, “How Does Research Start?” is in the October issue of AJN. In this introduction to the subject, author Bernadette Capili makes it clear […]

2020-10-29T08:57:25-04:00October 29th, 2020|Nursing, nursing research, nursing students|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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