The End of Summer Is Nearly Here: Use Those Vacations

Every July 4th at the end of the day, a friend used to say, “Well, summer is almost over.” And summer did seem to fly by in a blink after that day. Now here we are again, putting the summer of 2018 to bed as we face Labor Day weekend. This last chance at summer always seems a little sad. It’s the marker of so many things—the end of lifeguards at the beach, the last chance to get school supplies, the beginning of another school year. (That includes nursing school. Here’s some good advice for new nursing students that we collected a while back from our readers.)

Like many others, I recently spent a week on vacation with family. It took some doing to get things organized and some working ahead to meet deadlines, but it was worth it. As a manager, there’s no one to keep certain things moving while you’re gone. So the week leading up to vacation is a frenzied time, organizing and working ahead to cover deadlines, and getting ready to leave. Then, once back, there’s another frenzied time to try to catch up. My strategy is to check email once a day while on vacation. It keeps what I have to deal with […]

2018-08-31T07:59:34-04:00August 31st, 2018|Nursing, nursing career, wellness|0 Comments
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10 Lessons Learned from Clara Barton’s Life and Work

By Jean Johnson, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor and founding dean (retired) at the George Washington University School of Nursing, member of the Red Cross National Nursing Committee, and Linda MacIntyre, PhD, RN, chief nurse of the American Red Cross

Clara Barton at desk in Red Cross headquarters Clara Barton at desk in Red Cross headquarters

This is the final post in the Clara Barton Study Tour series. There have been many lessons learned during the tour. All of the participants have agreed to take what we learned and reflect on how our lives have been changed by this trip and what we are going to do to use what we learned to further the humanitarian work of Clara and the Red Cross.

For reasons mentioned in previous posts, this tour was very emotional, as well as informative. Here are ten lessons we learned from our investigation into Clara Barton’s career and its continuing implications for ongoing efforts in the U.S. and internationally.

  1. Clara Barton was resilient and a renegade, transforming some of her biggest fears and bouts of depression into constructive humanitarian action.
  2. Clara was a superb logistician, gathering goods and transporting them during the Civil War and during disasters in the U.S. and internationally, such as her relief work in the Franco-Prussian War.
  3. Clara was tenacious. If she did not get what she wanted, she kept at it. When trying to meet with President Lincoln about establishing the Missing Soldiers […]
2016-11-21T13:00:53-05:00October 13th, 2016|Clara Barton 2016, Nursing, nursing history, Public health|0 Comments
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In Geneva, a Wider Perspective on Clara Barton’s Humanitarian Vision

By Jean Johnson, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor and founding dean (retired) at the George Washington University School of Nursing, member of the Red Cross National Nursing Committee, and Linda MacIntyre, PhD, RN, chief nurse American Red Cross

To Geneva, Oct. 2-3: The Red Cross Mission Is International

Red Cross and Red Crescent Symbols Outside ICRC Museum, Geneva Red Cross and Red Crescent Symbols outside ICRC Museum, Geneva

The Clara Barton Study Tour was the idea and passion of Sue Hassmiller. As you may know from the most recent post in this series, Sue and her husband Bob were prevented from coming on this trip due to Bob’s tragic bicycle accident. Sue had insisted that Geneva needed to be part of the tour because it’s where she learned of Henri Dunant’s work to create the international Red Cross in Geneva. With Bob’s steady support in the planning phase, Sue had somehow made the trip a reality, with the second leg of the tour taking place here in Geneva.

The study tour in Geneva and the organizations we visited on our first two days there were in complete harmony with Bob’s commitment to […]

2016-11-21T13:00:53-05:00October 12th, 2016|Clara Barton 2016, Nursing, nursing history, Public health|0 Comments
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The Call to Service Is Personal: From Vietnam to Red Cross Volunteer

Sue and Bob Hassmiller. Photo courtesy of the American Red Cross. Photo courtesy of American Red Cross

This post was written by Bob Hassmiller the day before a serious bicycle accident, when he was looking forward to beginning the Clara Barton Tour. He did not make it to Geneva, and died two days after we published this post. The post shows the type of man Bob was—creative, thoughtful, caring, and committed to the Red Cross. We are publishing this post to honor Bob and Sue Hassmiller (pictured at right) and give voice to his commitment to the Red Cross.

Henri Dunant’s Awakening

Geneva is perhaps as beautiful and tranquil a spot as any on earth. We’ve looked forward to going there to explore how this unique city became the nexus between overwhelming disaster and the hope (and action) that alleviates that disaster.

Just as in the first part of the Clara Barton Tour, we learned that the ideals and actions of determined, caring, dedicated, and sometimes flawed individual like Clara Barton could result in the founding of a great humanitarian organization, the American Red Cross, so too do we review the efforts of her European contemporary Henri Dunant.

2016-11-21T13:00:54-05:00October 2nd, 2016|Clara Barton 2016, nursing history, Public health|12 Comments
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A 40-Year Red Cross Volunteer’s Ongoing Quest to Learn More

Sue Hassmiller, on left, as American Red Cross volunteer following 2011 Alabama tornado strikes.

By Susan B. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) senior advisor for nursing, and director, Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, American Red Cross volunteer national ambassador. (Second post of ongoing Clara Barton Study Tour series.)

The ‘Red Cross lady’ on the phone.

Earthquake hits Mexico City! said the news flash on my television screen 40 years ago as I sat in my childhood home. I was a college student, house-sitting for my parents, who were in Mexico City for a long-deserved vacation.

I had no idea what to do. There were no cell phones in those days, no Internet. I hurried to the yellow rotary phone on the wall at the end of the kitchen cabinets and dialed 0 for the operator. I implored her help. She said she couldn’t help me, but would connect me to an organization that could. It was the American Red Cross. […]

2016-11-21T13:00:57-05:00September 23rd, 2016|Clara Barton 2016, nursing history, Public health|1 Comment
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Following in the Footsteps of Clara Barton

clara-barton-photographed-by-matthew-bradyAt Antietam: From government clerk to “Angel of the Battlefield”

This Saturday marks the 154th anniversary of the Civil War Battle of Antietam—what has been called “the single bloodiest day in American military history.” Confederate army and Union troops faced off in Sharpsburg, Maryland. They fought for almost two days and when the battle ended, there were over 22,000 casualties among both sides. In the middle of it all, Clara Barton, a former teacher and government clerk, drove wagons of supplies around battle lines and tended to wounded soldiers.

Antietam marked the beginning of the legacy of Clara Barton, who on that day earned the title “Angel of the Battlefield.” Today, a monument to her stands at one end of the battlefield.

Bringing the Red Cross to America

arc-logoWhen the war ended, Barton continued to work for the soldiers, founding the Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the Armies of the United States to identify the millions of missing and dead soldiers. After a visit to Geneva with the International Red Cross in 1880, she returned and established the American Red Cross and […]

2016-11-21T13:00:57-05:00September 16th, 2016|Clara Barton 2016, Nursing, nursing history|0 Comments
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AJN Hits the Road: From Wall Street to New Orleans

AJN’s editor-in-chief watches the nursing profession get a chance to ring the New York Stock Exchange bell, is exhorted to courageous action by critical care nurses in the Big Easy, records a podcast conversation with two nursing leaders.

May is always busy with professional meetings. I attend many of them, scouting out issues, trends, and authors. And then, of course, there’s Nurses Week, with its own flurry of activities.

NYSE JJ Podium Group 1 courtesy of Diane Mancino

Nurses ring the bell! This Nurses Week included a first for nursing: recognition by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Johnson & Johnson’s Campaign for Nursing’s Future was invited to ring the closing bell of the NYSE on May 12, the official end of Nurses Week and the birthday of Florence Nightingale. Andrea Higham and Lorie Kraynak of the J&J campaign, along with Sue Hassmiller (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), Beverly Malone (National League for Nursing), Diane Mancino (National Student Nurses Association), and other representatives of nursing organizations crowded the bell platform to watch the CFO of Johnson & Johnson ring the bell. I watched from the trading floor along with other nurses, nursing […]

2016-11-21T13:01:11-05:00May 31st, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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AJN in October: Ablation for A-Fib, Holistic Nursing, 50 Years of NPs, Care Coordination, More

AJN1015 Cover OnlineThis month’s cover celebrates AJN’s 115th anniversary with a collage of archival photographs and past covers. The images are intended to reflect the varied roles and responsibilities of nurses past and present, as well as to commemorate AJN‘s chronicling of nursing through the decades.

In this issue, we also celebrate another nursing milestone, the 50th anniversary of the NP, with a timeline (to view, click the PDF link at the landing page) that illustrates and recaps the significant progress made by this type of advanced practice nurse.

To read more about what has changed—and what hasn’t—for AJN and its readers after more than a century in print, see this month’s editorial, “Still the One: 115 and Going Strong.”

Some other articles of note in the October issue:

CE feature: “Integrative Care: The Evolving Landscape in American Hospitals.” As the use of complementary and alternative medicine has surged in popularity in the United States, many hospitals have begun integrating complementary services and therapies to augment conventional medical care. This first article in a five-part series on holistic nursing provides an overview of some of the integrative care initiatives being introduced in U.S. hospitals and reports on findings from a survey of nursing leaders at hospitals that have implemented such programs.

CE feature: “Catheter Ablation of Atrial Fibrillation.” This treatment for the most […]

2016-11-21T13:01:58-05:00September 30th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Abandonment Guilt

This is the last in a series of posts by Sue Hassmiller, who has been blogging from the tornado destruction in Alabama, where she’s been volunteering with the Red Cross.—JM, senior editor/blog editor

I will do hospital visits today and have been told that the first family I will visit is a priority—an 8-year-old is not expected to make it through the day.  If he dies, then he will join his mother and brother, who were killed instantly. The father, who was at work when the tornado hit, was spared. We will talk to the father or the uncle. He speaks Spanish, so a translator will be present. 

How do you convey in words—especially through a translator—what you need to say, what you want to say? I will hug him . . . I know I will . . . everybody hugs here. And I know there will be survivor’s guilt. Not being a war veteran, this is the closest I have been to so much of it: a grandfather who survived while holding his 7-week-old granddaughter, who was “swept up and away”; an elderly mother who lost her 42-year-old daughter (a “famous paramedic . . . and helping so many”);  a wife of 32 years who lost her husband, the only breadwinner for the family—it goes on and on. 

The stories fill large white notebooks now, here at headquarters in Birmingham. And I am leaving tomorrow. I am leaving all of this behind and feel very acutely that I am abandoning them, all […]

2016-11-21T13:13:14-05:00May 16th, 2011|Nursing|2 Comments
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Meeting Nightingale in Alabama; Where Were the Young Nurses? Further Notes from the Disaster Zone

Sue Hassmiller has been blogging from the tornado-damaged area in Alabama, where she’s volunteering for the Red Cross. This and all other posts in this series are collected on a separate page for easy reference.—JM, senior editor/blog editor

Finishing up some very difficult hospital visits with victims and family members at the University of Alabama–Birmingham Medical Center today, I saw the sign for the school of nursing. I remembered Dean Dodi Harper telling me last year of a man who had donated to her school what might be the largest grouping of original Florence Nightingale letters. A priceless gift indeed! Her intent was to transcribe the letters and eventually have an exhibit. As I saw the School of Nursing sign, the conversation all came back to me . . . and then I realized it was May 12, Nightingale’s actual birthday, the day we celebrate Nurses Day! Too good to be true: I e-mailed the dean and got an immediate response (I love those type A personalities!). She was away, but the assistant dean for clinical affairs and partnerships, Cindy Selleck, would welcome me—and indeed on this occasion the letters were on display in a temporary exhibit. Having been on a special Nightingale tour last year to England and Istanbul/Scutari, the words of this great mentor had taken on a whole new meaning for me (here’s the blog series I wrote at the time). 

Seeing this very special exhibit and Nightingale’s words on her very […]

2016-11-21T13:13:15-05:00May 13th, 2011|Nursing, Public health|1 Comment
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