Racism, Social Justice, and Nurses

By Karen Roush, PhD, RN, FNP-BC

The murder of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer, following so quickly on the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, shot down while jogging in February, and Breonna Tayler, an EMT with plans of becoming a nurse who was killed by police in her own home in March, coalesced years of anger, fear, and despair into an extraordinary outcry for racial justice that has not been seen since the civil rights movement.

Black Lives Matter.

Credit: National Nurses United

The chilling casualness with which Derek Chauvin ended George Floyd’s life over nearly nine agonizing minutes exposed more dramatically than anything else why we need to insist that black lives matter. The fact that it took four days for any charges to be brought against Chauvin, and over two months for the murderers of Mr. Arbery to be charged, only serves to reinforce what many have been saying for a long time, that all lives do not matter equally.

People have filled the streets of large cities and small to march in solidarity for racial justice and the end of police brutality. (Looters and rioters are not part of the protests and unwelcome by those marching for justice.) Not everyone may agree on how to […]

2020-06-12T13:22:12-04:00June 11th, 2020|Nursing, Public health|3 Comments
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A Safety Paradox: Stay-at-Home Policies and Domestic Violence Risks

What happens when the very measures put in place to keep us safe and healthy instead place us at risk for harm? For women in abusive relationships, the stay-at-home strategy for controlling the spread of COVID-19 can do just that.

A perfect storm of risk factors for escalating violence.

High stress levels, loss of a sense of control, unemployment, increased time together—all are known to increase the frequency and intensity of intimate partner violence (IPV). A study of IPV rates before and after Hurricane Katrina found a 98% increase in physical IPV and a 35% increase in psychological IPV against women after the hurricane, with stressors as one of the strongest predictors for increased violence. IPV rates are known to rise with unemployment rates; a study of IPV during the economic recession of 2007-2008 found that a rapid rise in unemployment led to increased violence and controlling behaviors. And multiple studies have found that IPV incidents occur at much higher rates on weekends and during the summer—times when couples spend more time together. With Covid-19, people are suddenly unemployed and experiencing stress due to economic hardship, fear of illness, and uncertainty about the future. And couples are now spending all their time […]

2020-05-04T12:27:03-04:00May 4th, 2020|Nursing, Public health, women's health|0 Comments
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A Message from Frontline Nurses: Let’s Keep the Real Enemy in Sight

The recent protests against stay-at-home restrictions across the country are painful to watch for nurses most affected by the pandemic, those caring for COVID-19 patients. Four RNs working in hospitals in New York City who are graduate students at the Lienhard School of Nursing at Pace University decided to work together with one of their professors to share their thoughts on behalf of nurses on the front lines.

There are refrigerator trucks filled with bodies outside our hospitals. Many of us have to pass by them when we go into work, knowing that among those bodies are the patients we cared for yesterday and when we leave 12 hours later, some of the patients we cared for today will join them. Even harder to handle is the knowledge that among those bodies may be a colleague or friend, fellow nurses who caught COVID-19 while caring for others. It is heartbreaking and terrifying because we know that we too could end up in a body bag shelved in a refrigerator truck.

So, it is no wonder that the sight of people protesting protective measures generates such strong emotions for us—anger, fear, sadness. Anger that in choosing to ignore restrictions, or insisting on the right to risk their own health, they […]

2021-01-21T11:07:20-05:00April 29th, 2020|infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective, Public health, students|7 Comments
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When Brokenness Transforms Nursing

photo by Karen Roush/all rights reserved

I’ve had opportunities to sit in peer interview panels for new grad nurses looking to start their career in our unit, an experience which prompted me to consider what it takes to be a good nurse.

The obvious qualities were, well, obvious: critical thinking skills, strong communication, compassion, teachable, team player. But I’ve had a sense for a while that we nurses have been missing something when we consider what it takes to be a good nurse. While this something is strongly tied to empathy, it’s still a bit different. I tend to think of it as the nurse’s recognition and embrace of his/her own brokenness, even as the nurse looks to take care of others who are in some manner broken.

By brokenness, if the term is unfamiliar, I simply mean the awareness that we all know what it is to suffer, to struggle, to feel lost or wounded or weak. So in speaking of brokenness, I don’t mean it as a condescending lens through which we view everyone as objects to be fixed. I use the term brokenness to acknowledge the humbling reality that every person will crack a bit under enough pressure; every person who has been tossed around […]

2018-01-18T10:03:17-05:00August 9th, 2017|Nursing, nursing perspective|4 Comments
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What Types of Articles Do Journal Editors Want to Read?

Writing is time-consuming and difficult to do—the last thing you want is to spend time working on a manuscript that has little chance of being published. There are many strategies you can use to enhance the likelihood of publication, which we discuss throughout this series, but the first and most important is writing the type of article that journal editors want to publish.

Those opening sentences from “What Types of Articles to Write,” the third in AJN‘s ongoing Writing for Publication: Step by Step series by Karen Roush, PhD, RN, FNP, speak directly to the uncertainty that besets many would-be nurse writers (and in fact, all writers). Form is intimately tied to content. Ideally, the two should support each other, but first they have to be a good fit.

What type of article should you write?

What types of articles will get journal editors’ attention? And what will hold their attention once they open your manuscript? […]

2017-05-25T11:07:23-04:00May 25th, 2017|Nursing, writing|0 Comments
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Ongoing Article Series Helps Nurses Write for Publication

Do you have an idea, experience, or knowledge that you feel other nurses can benefit from? Most nurses outside of academia or the policy arena don’t think about writing for publication as something that they should or must do.

But in AJN’s ongoing four-part series, “Writing for Publication: Step By Step,” author Karen Roush, PhD, RN, FNP, highlights the need to make nurses’ voices heard:

Think about all you know and all you do as a nurse. Think about the clinical expertise you bring to your practice, the insights you’ve gained through experience. Think about the problems you solve, improving patient care or creating systems that run more effectively and efficiently. And think about the times you’ve been present at life-defining moments, at moments of suffering and renewal, at beginnings and endings. You carry all of this with you—knowledge and skills, wisdom and insight. It’s time to share it.

In the series, Roush, former clinical managing editor of AJN and an assistant professor at both Lehman College, Bronx, New York, and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, shares her experience and inside knowledge in writing and publishing in practical, easy-to-digest articles that take nurses through the […]

2017-04-24T09:53:25-04:00April 24th, 2017|Nursing|0 Comments
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Women’s History and Nursing’s History

This year’s theme of Women’s History Month, which we celebrate each March, is focused on women’s achievements in business and the labor force, but we don’t need this reason to take time out to remember the strong women who have shaped nursing. We certainly have many of them.

As I wrote in an editorial marking women’s history month in 2015:

Most people still don’t understand all that nurses have done—and continue to do—to improve health care. Most would likely recognize the name of Florence Nightingale. But I wonder if any other nurses would come to mind. I wonder how many nonnurses know that Lillian Wald developed the community health system (she founded New York City’s Henry Street Settlement), pioneered public health and school nursing, and helped establish the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; or that Florence Wald (no relation to Lillian) brought hospice care to the United States; or that it was Kathryn Barnard’s research that established the beneficial effects of rocking and heartbeat sounds on premature infants, which is why most neonatal ICUs and newborn nurseries contain rocking chairs.

Lillian Wald and other notable nurse pioneers, 1923 March 2015 cover showing Lillian Wald and others at Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service, 1923.

Despite gains in professionalism and education, nurses still are not well […]

2017-03-29T11:15:38-04:00March 16th, 2017|Nursing, nursing history|0 Comments
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This is What Democracy Looks Like, Nurses Included

Photos by Karen Roush.

“Nursing leaders have called upon all nurses to be heard, from bedside to boardroom and beyond. Not all of us share the same political views, and that is how it should be.”

By Karen Roush, PhD, RN, assistant professor of nursing at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York, and founder of the Scholar’s Voice, which works to strengthen the voice of nursing through writing mentorship for nurses.

On Saturday, I marched with over a million others in Washington, D.C., to protest the policies and rhetoric of the incoming Trump administration, along with millions more who marched in sister protests throughout the world. It was a day marked by exhilarating solidarity, determination, and hopefulness.

People of every age, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation—all the ways you can try to divide people—stood together. Many carried signs and banners: some funny or clever plays on words, many serious messages of inclusiveness or demands for rights and action. Throughout the day strangers exchanged smiles and nods, […]

2017-01-24T11:15:20-05:00January 24th, 2017|Nursing|1 Comment
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Intimate Partner Violence: ‘Troubling Knowledge and Practice Gaps’ among Rural Providers

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Table 8. Perceived self-efficacy on a 1-to-5 scale (mean score above 2.5 indicates greater sense of self-efficacy). Table 8. Perceived self-efficacy on a 1-to-5 scale (higher score indicates greater self-efficacy).

Intimate partner violence (IPV) remains a widespread health and social problem in the United States, affecting an estimated one in three women during her lifetime.

Health care providers can make a critical difference in the lives of these women, yet a lack of IPV-related knowledge, negative attitudes and beliefs, and low rates of screening are common. And women in rural areas face particular challenges.

To learn more about rural providers with regard to IPV, nurse researchers Karen Roush and Ann Kurth conducted a study. They report their findings in this month’s CE–Original Research feature, “Intimate Partner Violence: The Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors of Rural Health Care Providers.” Here’s an overview:

Methods: Health care providers working in a large rural health network were asked to complete electronic surveys that examined their IPV-related knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Descriptive and correlational statistical analyses of the data were conducted.
Results: A total of 93 providers returned completed surveys. In general, the respondents demonstrated good overall knowledge, judicious attitudes, and beliefs congruent with […]

2016-11-21T13:01:08-05:00June 10th, 2016|health care policy, Nursing, nursing research, Public health|0 Comments
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AJN in June: IPV, Late Effects of Breast Cancer Treatment, Nurse Activists, More

AJN0616 Cover Online

This month’s cover photo evokes the isolation faced by victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). According to Karen Roush, PhD, RN, lead author of the study in this issue that reports on the perceptions of rural health care providers who care for these victims, “ [i]solation is one of an abuser’s biggest weapons,” especially for those who live in rural areas.

Health care providers are positioned to provide support for victims of IPV, but knowledge and practice gaps get in the way. For more on this topic, read this month’s original research CE, “Intimate Partner Violence: The Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors of Rural Health Care Providers.”

Some other articles of note in the June issue:

CE Feature: “Late and Long-Term Sequelae of Breast Cancer Treatment.” More than 12% of women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives; 78% of them can be expected to survive for at least 15 years. There are more than 2.8 million breast cancer survivors in the United States and as many as 90% of them report physical problems that can reduce functional ability, produce or exacerbate emotional problems, negatively affect body image, and diminish quality of life.

This third article in a series on cancer survivorship care from […]

2016-11-21T13:01:12-05:00May 27th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective|0 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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