Thoughts After an INANE Editors Conference

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief—I just returned from 10 days out of the office, a long time for me. The first three days were in San Francisco at the annual conference of the International Academy of Nursing Editors (or INANE), a group that steadfastly declares itself a non-organization, with no officers, no dues, and no bylaws.

Begun almost 30 years ago, the group depends on the goodwill of its 200+ members, who volunteer for Web site operation, take turns organizing the annual meeting, and contribute when needed to support small expenses like mailings, Web site fees, etc.

It’s simple and it works. This year’s conference covered things editors of nursing journals find interesting—copyright, impact factor, ethics, and the like (see INANE’s blog, From the Editor’s Pen—“Cherry Ames” blogged from the conference!), plus a lot of great networking. (Full disclosure: the conference was sponsored by the specialty nursing journals of Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, AJN’s publisher.)

I’m always struck by the breadth and variety of nursing knowledge among the members of this group—there’s everything from skin and wound care and infusion practices to broader topics like oncology and home health. (Not to mention a few broad-based journals, like AJN, that cover all of nursing.) The editors of these journals are passionate about meeting the needs of their readers—for some association journals, this means meeting members’ […]

2016-11-21T13:12:08-05:00August 16th, 2011|Nursing|4 Comments
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Compassion for Those Among Us: Recent Poems in ‘Art of Nursing’

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

In Carolyn Scarbrough’s poem “A Rose By Any Other Name” (Art of Nursing, August), a nurse sees an “opaque rose, unfurling” on a CT scan of an infant’s brain. Recognizing this as “evidence of violent acts,” she knows the outcome will almost certainly be tragic. Yet when she looks from the scan to the exhausted young father, another memory shifts her thoughts from “trauma to love.” With each reading, this poem reveals more about the intertwining of outrage and compassion. (Art of Nursing is always free online—just click through to the PDF file.)

“I try / to meditate on emptiness, // receive the next lungful, ignore / my prattling mind,” says the narrator of Risa Denenberg’s poem “Three-Part Breath” (Art of Nursing, July). The poem’s title refers to a yoga breathing practice, one built on trust; as the yoga teacher says, “There will always be // another inhalation.” […]

2016-11-21T13:12:09-05:00August 12th, 2011|nursing perspective|2 Comments
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Return on Investment: A Nurse’s Mother Makes Her Wishes Clear

By Margaret Gallagher, BSN, RN. Margaret is a cardiovascular nurse currently working in Georgia. This is her first post for this blog.

Fly Away / jenny.nash712, via Flickr

My parents believed it was their obligation to educate their children. My sister and I both walked out with a college diploma and no debt. Susan went to a state university for her pharmacy degree, but I fell in love with a private nursing school. So my mother spent her inheritance on her own alma mater’s archrival because it was where I wanted to go. Mom got what she paid for, however, as I graduated with a BSN that has done more than just keep the roof over my head.

Shortly after I passed my boards, I planned a trip to visit my parents. I got report for my last shift, then walked in on a shouting match. My patient lay comatose between his two adult sons. Awareness of my presence brought a thick silence, followed by the younger son muttering an “excuse me” as he bulldozed his way out. After a pause, the remaining son searched my face as he began to speak.

“The doctors just told us today that Dad’s never going to get better than this. They asked us how far we […]

2016-11-21T13:12:10-05:00August 10th, 2011|nursing perspective|6 Comments
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We’re Not Going to Lie to You

By D’Arcy Norman, via Flickr

By Marcy Phipps, RN, whose essay, “The Soul on the Head of a Pin,” was published in the May 2010 issue of AJN.

“Hgb 4.1,” the lab tech said, and we jumped as though someone had fired a starter pistol. While one nurse called the on-call trauma doctor, the rest of us mobilized in preparation for the interventions we anticipated.

The “critical results” call wasn’t a surprise. The teenager’s pelvis had been crushed when he was run over by a delivery truck. His blood pressure was holding fairly steady, but we didn’t put much faith in that. In cases of hemorrhagic shock, young patients tend to compensate until the very last second, and we knew that.

His heart rate was soaring and his color was terrible. In the 15 minutes since he’d been wheeled into the unit, flat and flaccid on a stretcher, he’d gone from barely arousable to completely nonresponsive. Aside from his shallow, even respirations, he looked strikingly dead.

A good nursing team functions like a choreographed troupe, and we were at our best that day, moving with staccato precision. Massive transfusions can do wonders; still, it was amazing how quickly he improved. He lost the gray-white pallor and his heart rate stabilized. Then his lashes fluttered and he opened his eyes.

He regarded us working over him for several minutes. The air of urgency remained, and the gravity of his condition was no secret.

“This is bad, isn’t it?” he asked.

And it wasn’t a time for platitudes.

“We’re […]

2016-11-21T13:12:12-05:00August 8th, 2011|nursing perspective, nursing stories, Patients|3 Comments
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Fecal Impaction and Dementia: Knowing What to Look For Could Save Lives

By Amy M. Collins, associate editor

Last October, I wrote a blog post about my grandmother, who is 85 and suffering from the first stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and about the failure of many providers to assess and treat the underlying cause of a sudden and extreme acceleration of her dementia symptoms (mania, agitation, and violence, along with nonstop, nonsensical talking).

The post generated a slew of comments on both the blog and Facebook, with over 20 nurses suggesting the probable cause for her symptoms to be fecal impaction or urinary tract infection. They were right. But several physicians and specialists had been shockingly wrong, diagnosing her with everything from closet alcoholism to VERY-late-onset bipolar disorder.

My grandmother did, in fact, have a severe fecal impaction, finally diagnosed—after several weeks of family turmoil—by a nurse in an ED. She was treated, and within a few weeks her symptoms slowly dissipated. I’m happy to say that she’s now back to her sweet and gentle self, with no memory of the episodes she herself would have deemed crazy.

Although her Alzheimer’s symptoms are still heartbreaking (she recently introduced me to a fellow assisted-living resident as her ‘special friend’ instead of her granddaughter), she isn’t agitated, hallucinating, accusing people of stealing, […]

2016-11-21T13:12:13-05:00August 4th, 2011|nursing perspective|6 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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