Improving Patient Throughput: Recommended Reading in AJN’s April Issue

The April issue of AJN is now live.

How can an acuity-adaptable model improve patient throughput and care? This month’s Original Research article, “Breaking Through the Bottleneck: Acuity Adaptability in Noncritical Trauma Care,” evaluates the implementation of such a model on a 20-bed noncritical trauma unit, examining the pre- and postimplementation metrics for throughput efficiency, resource utilization, and nursing quality indicators. (CE credit available)

Read “The Occupational and Environmental Hazards of Uncovered Toilets” to learn about the potential exposure risks associated with toilet plume aerosols—and how nurses can address these risks.

Crowdsourced registries have been used to quickly gather information, especially during emerging public health concerns. In “Developing Crowdsourced Clinical Registry Studies,” the authors describe the process of planning, developing, executing, and evaluating the crowdsourced COVID-19 and Invasive Cryptococcal Disease Registry, and highlight the use of a project management approach to successfully implement the resulting study. […]

2024-03-28T11:11:15-04:00March 25th, 2024|Nursing|0 Comments
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Disaster Care, Brain Drain, More: Recommended Reading in AJN’s March Issue

The March issue of AJN is now live.

“Nurses play a critical role in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery,” says Linda M. MacIntyre, PhD, RN, PHN, FAAN, chief nurse of the American Red Cross (see On the Cover). Two articles in this month’s issue address disaster care:

Brain drain is increasing in health care. “Original Research: Nurses’ Attitudes Toward Brain Drain and the Associated Factors” explores the attitudes of Turkish nurses, nurse academics, and nursing students toward this problem in the nursing profession.

In this month’s CE article, “Beyond PICO—A New Question Simplifies the Search for Evidence,” the authors present the framework for an alternative to the PICO question—PPCO, or problem, population, change, outcome—that provides a universal approach to question development for evidence-based practice QI initiatives and for all nursing issues that need addressing.

Read

2024-02-26T09:29:37-05:00February 26th, 2024|Nursing|0 Comments
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Why Nurses Assist Falling Patients Despite the Risk

A too-common scenario.

Joe opens his eyes and looks through the window of his hospital room. He has always been early to rise. Even at age 82, he can’t shake the habits he learned when he was young.

“I’m woozy again,” Joe thinks as he sits up in bed. His medication sometimes makes him feel that way. Joe presses the call light so a nurse can help him to the bathroom. The nurses have been reminding him to do that so he won’t fall.

Then he reconsiders. “I can make it on my own. I don’t want to bother the nurses. They need to help the patients who really need it.” Joe moves to the edge of his bed. His walker isn’t nearby, but he urgently needs to reach the bathroom. Still dizzy, Joe holds onto the bed for a moment to keep from falling forward. After a moment, he manages to stand up and walk to the bathroom. As he enters the room, his dizziness returns, and his legs suddenly feel weak.  A feeling of dread washes over Joe as he begins to fall…

Nurse Smith starts her rounds and is looking forward to seeing Joe. He is always up early to greet her with a smile and a joke. As she opens the door to his room, she sees him entering his bathroom without his walker. She moves quickly toward him, but he suddenly sways forward. She knows he is going to fall. Reacting immediately, she grabs him by the torso […]

2024-02-20T10:44:39-05:00February 20th, 2024|Nursing, nursing research, patient safety, Quality improvement|1 Comment
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Nurses’ Experiences on Staffing Committees: Recommended Reading in AJN’s February Issue

The February issue of AJN is now live.

“Original Research: A Real ‘Voice’ or ‘Lip Service’? Experiences of Staff Nurses Who Have Served on Staffing Committees,” explores nurses’ perspectives on staffing committee participation—including how they perceive their committee’s effectiveness, and how these committees can benefit patients, nurses, and organizations.

In this month’s CE article, “Our Journey to Pass a Surgical Plume Evacuation Law,” the authors describe their experience leading a grassroots coalition to address surgical plume evacuation in Illinois, and outline strategies nurses can apply to their own advocacy efforts.

New series! “Cultivating an Evidence-Based Decision-Making Mindset,” the first article in a new series on how to teach and facilitate learning about evidence-based practice and quality improvement, offers educators the content and tools needed to prepare nurses to be evidence-based decision-makers.

Read “Improving the Timing of Acute Care Insulin Delivery” to learn about an initiative to reduce both time to insulin delivery and percentage of bedtime insulin doses withheld.

See also the extensive health care news sections, the Journal Watch and Drug Watch sections, an editorial on Black nurses’ contributions to health care, a Viewpoint column on empowering NPs to […]

2024-01-25T13:11:25-05:00January 25th, 2024|Nursing|0 Comments
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Implementation Science: Systematic, Sustainable, Evidence-Based Change

By Cagkan/Adobe Stock

Reading the article by Russell-Babin and colleagues in the December 2023 issue of AJN made me grateful for all the work that went into developing the nursing implementation science (IS) program at Inova. As a nurse working at this health care system, I’d like to share how I benefited from being in the first cohort of nurses trained and engaged in IS over the last three years.

For the past eight years, I’ve been a clinical coordinator of two different disease-specific programs—first stroke and now sepsis. In these roles, I’ve been engaged in many different quality improvement (QI) projects and have become familiar with the tools and processes used to improve patient care and outcomes.

Towards more comprehensive and systematic evidence-based change.

However, as I was invited to step into the world of IS, I began to realize that a strict QI approach cannot alone bring about all the changes we desire within the complex systems of health care. The fact is that […]

2024-01-11T10:06:42-05:00January 11th, 2024|Nursing, nursing roles, Quality improvement|1 Comment
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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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