AJN in April: Deep Breathing for Dialysis Patients, Isolation Care, Sleep Loss in Nurses, More

AJN0415.Cover.OnlineOn our cover this month is Pablo Picasso’s Le Rêve (The Dream). We chose this portrait of a woman in a restful pose to highlight the importance of proper sleep to a person’s overall health and well-being. Unfortunately, not many Americans are able to get the proper amount of rest. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimates that 50 to 70 million U.S. adults have chronic sleep and wakefulness disorders—and nurses are not immune.

Between long shifts and the stressful nature of their jobs, nurses are especially vulnerable to not getting an adequate amount of quality sleep. Fatigue from lack of sleep may diminish the quality of nursing care. Sleep loss has been linked to impaired learning, memory, and judgment and is also associated with a slew of chronic diseases. This month’s CE feature, “The Potential Effects of Sleep Loss on a Nurse’s Health,” describes the acute and chronic effects of sleep loss on nurses, strategies nurses can use to improve the quality of their sleep, and institutional policies that can promote good rest and recuperation.

This feature offers 2 CE credits to those who take the test that follows the article. You can further explore this topic by listening to a podcast interview with the author (this and other free podcasts are accessible via the Behind the Article podcasts page on our Web site, in our […]

Should We Be Wary of Magic Pills for Shift Work Sleep Disorder?

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editorial director/interim editor-in-chief

Nurses of course work shifts—in my first year in the ER, I rotated monthly: one month on days, one on evenings, and one on nights. Nights were the hardest—coming to work at 11:30 pm when everyone else was still partying or heading to bed. Then trying to sleep in a 3rd floor apartment on Second Avenue in Manhattan—you could still hear all the street noises with the windows closed. You never quite felt yourself on a night shift.

But eventually you found ways to deal with sleeping—you got used to the noise and the light (earplugs and sleep masks helped). And then there was coffee or Coke or Pepsi and chocolate; for some it was NoDoz because they didn’t like coffee. Many of us found it worked well to sleep once kids went off to school and until they got home; that allowed for some errands to get done and for some family time at dinner. Then, a quick “laydown” for a nap around  9 pm for an hour or so was enough to get us through the night shift. Colleagues without children would head right out to do chores early in the morning and then head home to sleep from 1 pm to 9 pm. Summers were […]

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