Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor, Author at Off the Charts

When Devices Do the Thinking for RNs, What Training Still Matters?

By Sheena Jones. (Sheena is an LPN in training to be an RN at Dutchess Community College, Poughkeepsie, NY.)

So I’m sitting at home on a rare day off and I get a phone call. It’s the supervisor trying to locate one of the many devices each staff member has to sign in and out at the beginning and end of each shift. The hospital I work for uses bar code scanners, wireless computers, PDAs, and Vocera badges. These things are supposed to reduce errors and in general make the jobs of staff members easier. Once I get to work I feel like I have to put on a utility belt to carry all of these devices.

With all of these machines to think for me, I wonder if all of the schooling I’m enduring to go from my LPN to RN is obsolete. Yes, compassion and empathy can’t be taught or replaced by technology. But sometimes it seems to me that a technology-savvy teenager could do much of this job, as long as she could stomach the visuals at the bedside. I remember studying night and day for an exam about calculating medication dosages, only to discover that the computers give the exact dosage and that drugs come from the pharmacy just as they should be given.

Maybe we are a little bit dependent on technology. You should see the mass panic when there is an electrical surge. Nurses often waste time finding computers on wheels (affectionately known as […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:18:47-05:00March 15th, 2010|career, students|5 Comments

Advanced Practice Nurses: Pushed Forward by Health Reform Advocates, Pushed Back by Physicians over Turf – Enough Already!

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

As we’ve noted in past posts on this blog and in AJN editorials in August 2006 and August 2008, organized medicine does not want to acknowledge that nurses can practice independently. And now the turf war between advanced practice nurses (APRNs, which include nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives and clinical nurse specialists) and physicians is heating up.

In California, physicians are suing the state for allowing nurse anesthetists to practice without supervision, using patient safety as a reason. In Kentucky, physicians are opposing legislation to expand the scope of practice for NPs—at issue is whether NPs should need a signed collaborative arrangement with a physician (even though the physician does not supervise the NP). According to an article by a Louisville, Kentucky, newspaper, the Courier-Journal, the physicians charge high fees for their signature or demand a percentage of the practice. The bill, though, passed the state House committee on March 4, with several members questioning the ethics of physicians’ requiring fees.

Nurses have been and continue to fight for the right to practice, and during this period where the government is seeking solutions to health reform, this is a battle that shouldn’t have to happen—a view shared by Stephen Ferrara, NP, at A Nurse Practitioner’s Place (“I have tried to refrain from taking the bait from some recent negative opinions regarding nurse practitioner delivered care”). […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:18:48-05:00March 12th, 2010|health care policy, nursing perspective|2 Comments

Comic Book Superheroes Meant to Raise AIDS Awareness Raise Some AJN Readers’ Ire

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor

Back in January I posed the following question: “Is doing something as silly (and, to some, either sexist or demeaning) as this justified in the name of increasing awareness about a disease?” In that post, I was referring to the bra-focused tactics of a light-hearted campaign intended to raise breast cancer awareness. Along those lines, our March cover has received a lot of attention; unfortunately, not all of it has been positive.

Our goal was to draw attention to our two CE features of the month: “Every Nurse Is an HIV Nurse” and “Aging with HIV: Clinical Considerations for an Emerging Population.” As Shawn Kennedy, interim editor in chief and editorial director at AJN, points out in this month’s editorial, “AIDS awareness in this country seems to have diminished—in fact, for some, it hardly seems a concern at all. A recent CDC report on risk behavior in adolescents found that during 2007, 39% of sexually active high school students ‘had not used a condom during last sexual intercourse.’”

I asked Robert Walker to provide us with this month’s cover art after meeting him through a mutual friend. Through his comic book series O+Men, about nine HIV positive superheroes, he has been getting a lot of recognition for promoting HIV and AIDS awareness. For more information about Walker, read this month’s On the Cover in AJN, or listen to an interview with Walker on National Public Radio.

While […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:18:50-05:00March 11th, 2010|Nursing|1 Comment

There’s a Place for Speed in Online Publishing–But Peer Review Is More Important Than Ever

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN interim editor-in-chief

I read with interest, and also a little concern, a post on a newish blog called Nurse Story.com, which argued for faster Web-based publishing without peer review or much editing.

Yes, the open access model of scientific publishing, with full transparency for all aspects of the review and revision process, is worth watching. Yes, more and more publishing companies are going the online only or online mostly route (and while it’s PC to say it’s in pursuit of being green, I’d bet the primary reason is because it’s cheaper). And yes, it’s much faster to publish on the Internet. You can throw up an article or blog post and change content online by the minute. But is fast and quick all we need? Technology is changing nursing practice, but is it changing our knowledge base so quickly that we shouldn’t take time to weigh and sift the good from the bad? […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:18:53-05:00March 9th, 2010|nursing research|2 Comments

Disabled Musicians Featured in Podcasts, AJN Cover, Subject of Oscar-Winning Film

By Shawn Kennedy, interim editor-in-chief

At the Academy Awards ceremony last night, “Music by Prudence,” the documentary about Prudence Mabhena, won the award for best documentary short. Prudence is the lead singer of Liyana, a group of young Zimbabwean musicians who graced the above cover of our August issue last year. All of the band members have some kind of disability and attended the King George VI School and Centre for Children with Physical Disabilities in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. When they performed throughout the United States last year, AJN’s senior editorial coordinator Alison Bulman interviewed them after their concert in New York.

Go here for links to podcasts of interviews with the band and the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Roger Ross Williams—and also to some of the music of Liyana (the podcasts will load, but right now can take up to 30 seconds on some computers!). You can also read Bulman’s short article about this remarkable troupe here, or a blog post about Liyana we published some months back. Congratulations to Liyana, and to Williams, who helped them tell their story!

(And click here to read an interview posted yesterday on Huffington Post and WalletPop with Alison about her experience interviewing the film’s director and producer, whose relationship has been the subject of controversy since an awkward moment at the Academy Awards ceremony.)