A Nurse So Cold

Al is weak, frail, and most important, scared. At 55 years of age, after 34 years providing care, she finds herself in a major medical center— on her back, staring at ceiling tiles. The woman who’s always had skin as pure as a china doll now ironically has a porcelain hip. She’s just 36 hours out from a total hip replacement, and she knows something is wrong. She feels her heart pounding, she can hear the beating in her ears, feel the pulsing on her pillow. She rings the call bell to ask for the nurse to check her. An hour comes and goes, and no one comes to her room.

That’s from the August Reflections essay, titled “Miss Orienting Nurse.” The author is Linda Pellico, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Nursing, who tells of her chagrin at witnessing rote care provided to a hospitalized friend by a former student of hers. We hope you’ll read the essay and let us know your own experiences as a nurse or patient—or both. How many of us will someday have to rely on such cold and distant figures as the nurse and MD portrayed in this essay?-JM, senior editor

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2016-11-21T13:16:06-05:00August 16th, 2010|career, nursing perspective, students|2 Comments
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Sand, Surf, and CF

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, clinical editor at AJN

Ever wonder how the staff at AJN decide what to put on our covers? We wanted an image that celebrated the summer, but we also wanted a tie-in with our CE feature. The August cover depicting children running down the beach at Sunny Shores Sea Camp, a four-day summer camp that caters to children with cystic fibrosis (CF) and their families, is a perfect fit. 

Some former colleagues once volunteered at the camp. Several years ago I was working on a pediatric floor where several of our patients had CF, ranging in age from toddlers to adults in their 30s. CF was long considered a childhood disease, due to a short life expectancy associated with it; even though life expectancy has drastically increased, these patients are still often treated on pediatric units, regardless of their age. This month’s CE, Original Research: Parents and Children with Cystic Fibrosis, is by Paula Harff Lomas, MAS, RN, CCRP, and Susan B. Fowler, PhD, RN, CNRN. According to Lomas and Fowler,

“More people with cystic fibrosis are living longer, reaching milestones like starting college, embarking on careers, and marrying. Many adults with cystic fibrosis are interested in starting families; one recent review notes that the number of live births to women with the disease has increased significantly. Thus, there’s a greater need for age-appropriate care in areas such as fertility and reproduction.”

The purpose of this descriptive study was to […]

2016-11-21T13:16:07-05:00August 13th, 2010|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Diabetes, Hypertension, Obesity. . .The Case of the Missing School Nurse

By Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN

I was amazed by a MarketWatch article this week about the overall lack of school nurses. According to the article, the National Association of School Nurses recommends that one nurse be available for every 750 well children. Many states operate with ratios greatly exceeding that number. For example, in 2009 Michigan had one nurse for every 4,836 children. To give credit where it is due, that same year Vermont provided one nurse for every 311 students. As a nurse, and a parent, I find this data frightening. Not only are there fewer trained professional nurses available to our children every year, but approximately 30% of American children suffer from chronic conditions such as type 1 or type 2 diabetes, asthma, and high blood pressure.

Having more nurses available to patients in an inpatient setting has been proven to promote better patient outcomes. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the same is probably true for school nurses.

Lousy timing. This acute shortage of school nurses could not come at a worse time. With more families than ever feeling the pinch of the recession, children are not immune to the oft-reported outcomes related to our current overall economic condition. Less money can […]

2016-11-21T13:16:09-05:00August 11th, 2010|Nursing|7 Comments
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Taking Away Choice — The Wrong Answer to Domestic Violence

By Meg Stone, MPH. Stone is the executive director of IMPACT Boston, an organization that works to prevent violence and abuse by giving people the tools to protect their safety and advocate for healthy relationships and sexual respect in their communities. A long-time domestic violence advocate with a degree in public health, she has, in her own words, “a strong interest in raising awareness of the issues facing women who present to emergency departments with injuries related to abuse. My professional background includes training nurses and first responders in asking about domestic violence and documenting incidents of abuse on medical records.”

This post is longer than our usual, but we thought it was worth running in entirety. The names and identifying details of those mentioned have been changed.

In the mid-1990s it was rare in most places for nurses and social workers to call domestic violence organizations when women came to the emergency department with injuries related to abuse. I only remember one call from a hospital social worker in the upstate New York town where I worked as an advocate at the local battered women’s program.

Carolyn, the director of the battered women’s service, called me at home on my day off. Nobody else was available, she said, so could I please please […]

2016-11-21T13:16:11-05:00August 10th, 2010|Nursing, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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Social Media and Nurses — Does Betty White Have a Point?

50 Social Media Icons/Ivan Walsh, via Flickr

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

I’ve been extremely busy and have had trouble finding time to write a post for this blog. And it’s not enough just to write a post—we’ve got to think about what should go on Facebook and what should be Tweeted, whether we should do a mention in the eNewsletter and if a topic deserves a spot on AJN’s home page. All this communication takes time.

When she hosted Saturday Night Live, the inimitable Betty White acknowledged all the fans on Facebook who were the driving force behind the campaign to have her become the host. She confessed she didn’t know what Facebook was, and said, “Now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it seems like a huge waste of time.”

Facebook and Twitter sort of remind me of the Valentine’s Day card exchange in grammar school—everyone bought boxes of 100 cards (actually, more like small, cheap postcards) so you could give them out and, hopefully, get as many in return. It was about the number of cards you could collect—even if they were from classmates you didn’t care about or even disliked. You felt good if you had lots of cards and people saw […]

2016-11-21T13:16:12-05:00August 9th, 2010|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective|5 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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