I get that this is a TV show and designed for entertainment and that Nurse Jackie is a fictional character. And I’ve worked with nurses who have some of Jackie’s problems, though not all rolled up into one person. But I still find myself wondering if the writers thought that in order to make nurses’ work interesting to others they had to add such extreme behaviors. Aren’t nurses’ stories compelling on their own?
In keeping with its long history of successfully opposing health care reform, the American Medical Association (AMA) is, surprise, doing it again. And here's a recent AJN editorial on some nurse-led solutions to improving care and reducing costs that should be part of any reform plan: "nurses can help to build the infrastructure we’ll need if we’re to shift from an emphasis on acute care to one on health promotion, chronic care management, and primary care . . . . "
Nursing Times reports today that a nurse in Scotland has contracted the H1N1 virus from a patient. As the World Health Organization (WHO) meets this morning to almost certainly upgrade the virus to a phase 6 pandemic—perhaps reflecting not so much its severity thus far as its rapid spread around the globe—here's a useful table succinctly describing the phases of a pandemic.
What we'd like to know from you is the role spirituality or religion plays in your life as a nurse. How does it inform your practice or help you make meaning out of what you do? Does it have a place in serious discussions of nursing as an evidence-based profession deserving of equal respect to medicine as practiced by physicians—or should it be kept out of sight and seen as a strictly private matter?
When I worked in primary care I was always frustrated by orders to give patients a handout on low-fat diets (and two minutes of explanation) and send them on their way. Once, a patient came in with back pain; she’d fallen out of a chair that broke when she sat on it. While her eyes glazed over, I spent a few minutes going over the diet the doctor ordered for her. At the end of this painfully futile exchange I asked her if she had any questions. She responded, “Have you ever thought of cutting your hair short?” Something tells me she didn’t run right out to buy vegetables and join a gym.