About Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

Senior editor, American Journal of Nursing; editor of AJN Off the Charts.

The ECRI Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns of 2019

A list grounded in data and expert opinion.

Atlantic Training/Wikimedia Commons

Each year, ECRI Institute creates a list of top 10 patient safety concerns in order “to support organizations in their efforts to proactively identify and respond to threats to patient safety.”

The list isn’t generated out of thin air. The ECRI Institute relies both on data regarding events and concerns and on expert judgment. Since 2009, ECRI and partner patient safety organizations “have received more than 2.8 million event reports.”

2019 Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns

  1. Diagnostic Stewardship and Test Result Management Using EHRs
  2. Antimicrobial Stewardship in Physician Practices and Aging Services
  3. Burnout and Its Impact on Patient Safety
  4. Patient Safety Concerns Involving Mobile Health
  5. Reducing Discomfort with Behavioral Health
  6. Detecting Changes in a Patient’s Condition
  7. Developing and Maintaining Skills
  8. Early Recognition of Sepsis across the Continuum
  9. Infections from Peripherally Inserted IV Lines
  10. Standardizing Safety Efforts across Large Health System

[…]

2019-04-15T08:16:15-04:00April 15th, 2019|digital health, Nursing, patient safety, Patients|0 Comments
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The Complex and Illuminating History of Nurse Participation in Bedside Rounds

This week’s offering in homage to Women’s History Month.

We know from research that interdisciplinary bedside rounds improve communication and create a safer care environment. As noted by the author of a new CE article in the April issue, nurse–physician bedside rounding “has been shown to reduce mortality, medication errors, hospital length of stay, and hospital costs; improve staff and patient satisfaction; expand the health care team’s understanding of the patient’s plan of care; and increase both efficiency and perceptions of patient safety.”

Not your grandmother’s rounds.

In her article, “An Historical Review of Nurse–Physician Bedside Rounding,” Genevieve Beaird notes that while nurses rounding with physicians is not new, the nurse’s role today is vastly different from the early days. At that time, the nurse’s main concern was often preparing the stage, so to speak, for the physician’s appearance at the bedside. Here’s a quote from Dorothea Gothson, RN, in a 1913 issue of AJN:

“There is nothing more distressing to either patient or the earnest hardworking nurse than to be surprised by the attending doctors…. Equally annoying is the experience of patients and nurses being ready, waiting for the doctors, and their not appearing for one or two hours after the appointed time—perhaps not at […]

2019-03-22T08:39:03-04:00March 22nd, 2019|Nursing|0 Comments
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In Nursing, What Does It Really Mean to Trust Your Gut?

The March Reflections essay in AJN touches on several big questions:

  • How can you tell if a patient presents an immediate suicide risk?
  • What do nurses really mean when they speak of ‘trusting your gut’?
  • And what are the limits of advocating for a patient when a nurse finds herself in potential opposition to a physician?

by Annelisa Ochoa for AJN

In “Mr. Blue and His Six Cats” (free until April 1), nurse Mariya Rader vividly and economically describes a series of tense events that occurred one shift in the ER where she worked early in her career.

The clock is ticking: should the patient brought in by EMS be discharged because he denies suicidal intent? We follow her persistent search for the right course of action through a series of encounters with the caring team of paramedics who brought him to the ER and are familiar with his ways, the inexperienced new resident physician, and the patient himself.

Trust your gut?

The author had always heard nurses say to ‘trust your gut.’ But what did it really mean?

Remember, I was still relatively new to nursing; I hadn’t yet learned to depend on myself. But I had this sick feeling deep down that I couldn’t […]

2019-03-06T09:59:32-05:00March 6th, 2019|Nursing, nursing stories|2 Comments
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‘We Request Your Quiescent Contribution’: Predatory Publishers Are Absurd, But Not Funny

Multiple daily solicitations.

The screenshot below shows an excerpt from an email our editor-in-chief recently received. Editors at AJN receive multiple emails daily from mysterious publishers soliciting them for article submissions, important roles on editorial boards, or as conference speakers. If it weren’t alarming, it would be flattering. We’re not scholars and experts in sub-specialties of botany or engineering, in fossil fuel geology, neurosurgery, or, for that matter, microbiology. Our advice on such topics might well be dangerous, or at least irrelevant and wrong.

Some open access journals are highly respected in their fields; the journal that sent this letter also bills itself as open access, but if it contains legitimate articles on microbiology, and I’m not saying it doesn’t, they may find themselves with strange bedfellows.

Despite obvious warning signs, some authors are not deterred.

It’s impossible to keep ahead of the flood of such emails, most of which are characterized by typographical oddities and peculiar juxtapositions of tone. There are many other tell-tale signs of predatory publishers, most of which have little or no oversight from real content experts and no editing or filtering of content (one must simply pay a fee to be published or attend a conference).

But what’s most worrisome about this trend is that their strategy of casting […]

2019-02-28T11:46:34-05:00February 28th, 2019|Nursing, nursing research, writing|0 Comments
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A Few Notable Nurse Voices of 2018

A wealth of nursing voices.

I’m always amazed at the number of powerful, wise, courageous, funny nurse voices we have a chance to publish on this blog. Looking back over the past year, here are the links to a few posts by working nurses that stood out as worth another look.

Honoring the Moral Concerns of Caregivers Afraid of Giving Morphine

“‘I told her I’d take care of her,’ he whispers. ‘She took care of me. Now it’s my turn. I made her a promise. I don’t want to do the wrong thing.’”

A Day in the Emergency Room for a Nurse Who Loves Her Job

“I put my shoes on in the car like always. The shoes never go inside, as they bear remnants of the day before. I walk in to meet my tribe. We laugh off the previous day’s challenges as we start over.”

Comforting Our Patients: The Importance of Well-Chosen Words

“There’s seldom an opportunity to edit or revise on the floor of a nursing unit. Words cannot be unsaid.”

The School Nurse

“They march into my heart like little soldiers. There are lads and lassies, rich and poor, sporting bling and brawn.”

Reexamining Resilience

“I find that I have been so transformed […]

2018-12-20T11:51:44-05:00December 20th, 2018|Nursing, nursing stories|2 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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