A Day to Honor Our Veterans Who Have Served

Today, on Veteran’s Day, AJN would like to honor all of those who have served in the U.S. military, including the 19 million who served during at least one war. This of course includes all those nurses who have served in the armed forces.

Veterans’ health care.

Nurses in every care setting, from hospital to primary care clinic, may encounter veterans, and it’s important to be aware of particular health concerns that may affect them. Please visit our collection of articles on the military and veterans’ health care, which will be free for the next week.

Topics in the collection include, among others:

  • caring for families with deployment stress
  • screening for posttraumatic stress disorder
  • enhancing veteran-centered care
  • traumatic brain injury.

While some of the articles are older, they are still pertinent today. We honor and thank all those who have served.

(Photo credit: Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash.)

2021-11-11T10:50:27-05:00November 11th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Remembering Veterans – All of Them

In the November 2010 issue of AJN, we published an editorial, “Families are Veterans, Too,” recognizing the stress and sacrifices of families of those who serve in the military. On this Veterans Day, we’re sharing an excerpt of that editorial below, and also offering free access to “Caring for Families with Deployment Stress,” the article mentioned in the editorial. This article was also published in the November 2010 issue and, unfortunately, is still very much pertinent, given that many families are still experiencing the stress of having a loved one deployed to a conflict zone. We honor and thank all those who have served.

As Erin Gabany and Teresa Shellenbarger explain in “Caring for Families with Deployment Stress,” that stress can be considerable. In families with children, deployment means that a two-parent household becomes in effect a single-parent one; when a single parent is deployed, grandparents, aunts, or uncles may find themselves filling that role. The deployment period may be especially difficult for families of soldiers in the National Guard or in reserve units—they’re less likely to be living on or near a military base or to have access to its resources and to other families going through the same experience. They’re also likely to have less income when the reservist’s civilian pay stops. Such stressors can play a role in a range of physical, emotional, and behavioral problems.

Nurses in all settings—not just those in clinics serving military families—may […]

2019-11-11T13:44:06-05:00November 11th, 2019|Nursing|0 Comments
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Are There Veterans Among Your Patients?

When vets get non-VHA health care, some issues may be missed.

Most U.S. veterans—and in 2014, there were approximately 19.3 million—do not get their health care from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Overburdened facilities with long waiting times and the fact that many veterans live considerable distance from a VHA facility mean that many get their health care from local and private organizations.

And while this may mean more convenient and timely care, it also might mean that health issues related to their military service might be missed by providers who do not have experience providing care to service members and veterans.

This Saturday, November 11, marks another Veterans Day. It’s been our tradition to include content related to health care for veterans or active duty military in November. This year, we have an original research CE article, “Primary Care Providers and Screening for Military Service and PTSD.”

Few providers screen for military service.

The authors of this article sought to examine whether non-VHA primary care providers were screening patients for military service and PTSD. Based on their survey of providers in western Pennsylvania, they found that most did not ask patients about a history of military service—and of those providers who did, few screened patients for PTSD. […]

2017-11-10T10:21:53-05:00November 10th, 2017|Nursing, nursing research|0 Comments
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Always a Nurse

By Janice M. Scully. The author worked in psychiatric nursing for four years before becoming a physician. After 20 years as a physician, she retired to pursue a career as a writer. For more information, click here.

The author's parents The author’s parents

Nurses have to be resilient and resourceful—Florence Nightingale,  of course, is the template. My mother, Betty, was a smart and practical woman, the oldest of three siblings. She attended nurses’ training in the 1940s while the Second World War raged overseas. I have a photo of her as a young woman just out of high school, dressed in her starched uniform, standing by Binghampton (NY) City Hospital, her alma mater.

According to her, the lives of young nurses back then were not unlike the lives of nuns. After lights out in the dorm, the dorm mother would walk through and shine a light on each bed, as a night nurse on a medical ward at 2 AM might do. But instead of observing for signs of life, dorm mothers were checking to be sure the young female nurses were in their beds. Sometimes they weren’t.

Although the students might not be allowed out at night, they had a great deal of responsibility during the day. Nurses did everything for the sick, even the hospital laundry. They gave bed baths and back […]

2016-11-21T13:03:31-05:00November 19th, 2014|career, Nursing, nursing perspective|4 Comments
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Focusing Nurses on Long- and Short-term Health Needs of Veterans and Their Families

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

I’m always humbled when I speak with veterans or families of veterans. The commitment to duty of the military and the sacrifices their families make—long periods of being single parents; nerve-racking times wondering after the well-being of a spouse or child; missed birthdays, graduations, and milestones—never cease to amaze me.

served2Last October, nurse Linda Schwartz, at the time commissioner of Veterans Affairs for Connecticut, spoke at the American Academy of Nursing (AAN) meeting about the health needs of veterans.

As we pointed out in a blog post about the meeting, she emphasized “the importance of knowing whether a patient has a military service history because many health issues may be service associated. For example, toxic effects from depleted uranium and heavy metals such as those found in ordinance or from exposure to agents like Agent Orange may not manifest themselves for years.” […]

2016-11-21T13:03:34-05:00November 11th, 2014|Nursing|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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