About Amanda Anderson, MPA, MSN, RN

Amanda Anderson is a PhD candidate and research project assistant at the State University of New York University at Buffalo School of Nursing and a fellow in Clinical Scholars, a national leadership program supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She is also on the editorial board of AJN.

As Sepsis Awareness Increases and Guidelines Change, Timing Remains Crucial

By Amanda Anderson, a critical care nurse and graduate student in New York City who is currently doing a graduate placement at AJN two days a week.

stopwatch/wikimedia commons stopwatch/wikimedia commons

September was Sepsis Awareness Month, but the urgency of the issue didn’t disappear when the month ended. I still remember my first day in the medical intensive care unit (MICU) I’d soon call home. I was shadowing the charge nurse, and an admission had just come in from the ED.

“Here, we need a CVP setup.” A crinkly bag of normal saline and a matching package containing something evidently important were shoved into my hands—a medical football passed to the only open player.

Very quickly, I would learn what a CVP, or central venous pressure, was and to monitor it. I would learn all about sepsis, and septic shock, and the treatment of its devastating process. Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) was a primer for my care in this unit, and on my first day off of orientation, I was entrusted with one of its full-blown victims: Septic shock from pneumonia, causing respiratory, renal, and heart failure. Learning to spike a bag of saline for a CVP transducer was just my first step into the vast and complicated land of sepsis management.

This was 2007. Sometimes, as in all hospitals, care was delayed and septic patients sat without timely treatment for hours. Back then, we tubed people, snowed people, and flooded people. […]

2016-11-21T13:03:47-05:00October 6th, 2014|Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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End-of-Life Discussions and the Uneasy Role of Nurses

Amanda Anderson, BSN, RN, CCRN, is a critical care nurse in New York City and enrolled in the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing/Baruch College of Public Affairs dual master’s degree program in nursing administration and public administration. She is currently doing a graduate placement at AJN two days a week, working on a variety of projects. Her personal blog is called This Nurse Wonders.

Evelyn Simak/ via Wikimedia Commons Evelyn Simak/ via Wikimedia Commons

Nurse and writer Theresa Brown wrote a piece for this past Sunday’s New York Times on the dilemmas physicians face when their patients want to stop aggressive treatment (the latest installment of Brown’s quarterly column, What I’m Reading, is in the September issue of AJN [paywall]).

Brown’s Times column talks about physicians who have trouble letting patients go and instead push for more unnecessary and often unwanted treatment. She describes a case in which—after palliative care has been decided upon by the patient’s family members, the palliative care team, and even the heartbroken oncologist—the patient’s primary care physician intervenes and pushes for still more futile treatment. (Much of the article delves into the broader issue of palliative care and the benefits it has for patients in many stages of chronic illness.)

Have you ever disagreed […]

2016-11-21T13:03:57-05:00September 11th, 2014|career, Ethics, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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Writer or Nurse? The Costs of an Untold Story

Amanda Anderson, BSN, RN, CCRN, works in critical care in New York City and is enrolled in the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing/Baruch College of Public Affairs dual master’s degree program in nursing administration and public administration. Her blog is called This Nurse Wonders.

via Wikimedia Commons via Wikimedia Commons

I found myself getting annoyed with a dying cancer patient today. I don’t think this is an occurrence any honest nurse would deny, but when I could feel my blood pressure rise every time she dry-heaved, I knew it’d been a mistake to come to work this morning.

Not my proudest moment.

You see, I’ve felt my nursing self change of late, with an urge growing within me to slowly step back from the bedside, at least for a bit. Perhaps it’s school and the clarification of future goals forming in my mind, but clinical work has felt more like job-work, and this other work, this future work that largely centers on telling my nursing story, is becoming what I think of as calling-work.

Staring down at my poor patient, I realized I’d swung the balance of bedside work and calling-work too much to one side lately. I’ve been working—as a nurse—too much, and working—as a writer and a student—too little. After seven years of bedside nursing, and the joys and trials of per […]

2016-11-21T13:04:34-05:00June 4th, 2014|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective|8 Comments
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A Tale of Two Dangerous Products

Holding On / D'Arcy Norman, via Flickr Holding On / D’Arcy Norman, via Flickr

Amanda Anderson, BSN, RN, CCRN, works in critical care in New York City and is enrolled in the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing/Baruch College of Public Affairs dual master’s degree program in nursing administration and public administration.

There are two news stories I’ve been chewing on lately. One made it to the front page of my New York Times almost every day for a while, and the other I saw just once in the paper’s international news section several weeks ago.

The blockbuster story involves a single company that covered up a problem with an important part in one of its products. Ten years passed and a number of people died before they finally informed the public about the problem. The products with the flawed part have now been recalled, and the company is embroiled in an investigation and likely to face lawsuits and massive fines.

The far less publicized story is about a growing body of […]

2016-11-21T13:04:59-05:00April 21st, 2014|nursing perspective|5 Comments
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Working Out the Bugs: Old and Alone in the City

Amanda Anderson, BSN, RN, CCRN, works in critical care in New York City and is enrolled in the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing/Baruch College of Public Affairs dual master’s degree program in nursing administration and public administration. She tweets at @12hourRN.

Old Woman Dozing/Nicolas Maes Old Woman Dozing/Nicolas Maes

At work the other day, after almost seven years as a nurse, I had an experience that completely floored me. While connecting a bag of cefepime to my tiny, elderly, blind patient’s IV, I spotted a cockroach making its way across her pillow. And then another on her lap. And then they were on the wall behind the bed, coming out of the closet where her belongings were stored. Another nurse had just handed her the pocketbook she’d requested, and the host of insects that apparently called it home were now scurrying quickly around the room, and around me.

I consider myself a fairly brave woman. I can kill a bug if I need to, I see rats quite frequently, and come on, I’m a nurse—there have been some pretty gory things to pass these eyeballs and touch these fingers. But this was different; it was not the hospital grossness that I am a seasoned veteran of. This was a glimpse into my patient’s dirty home. I ran like a little child.

When the situation had calmed […]

2016-11-21T13:05:09-05:00March 19th, 2014|nursing perspective|3 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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