About Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

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

As a Long-Predicted Nursing Shortage Gets Real, Staffing and Retention Issues Get Urgent

Is the nursing shortage finally here?

In her June issue editorial, AJN editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy notes that in her recent visit to the annual National Student Nurses’ Association (NSNA) conference, many of the senior students she spoke with already had jobs lined up.

She surveys some recent indicators pointing to the possible arrival at last of a long-predicted nursing shortage, and some of the possible implications this is having or may have in the coming years for patient care and the health of organizations. For example:

“A survey of 233 chief nursing officers conducted last July conducted last July by national staffing company AMN Healthcare found that 72% said their shortages were moderate to severe, and most expected shortages to worsen over the next five years. They also acknowledged that the shortage was having a negative effect on patient care, patient satisfaction, and staff morale.”

Bonuses for new hires.

She notes that, with hospitals in some regions paying signing bonuses to new nurses, the question of staff retention and development remains the elephant in the room.

The class of 2018, it seems, is entering a job seeker’s market. . . . Organizations that can invest in new nurses with programs that provide support and training will have a leg up […]

2018-06-04T12:21:33-04:00June 4th, 2018|Nursing|2 Comments
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A Moment of Mindfulness: A Nurse’s Mosaic to Remember Patients

A Moment of Mindfulness © 2018 by Tilda Shalof

Noted author Tilda Shalof spent 28 years as an ICU nurse at Toronto General Hospital in Toronto. Over the years, she collected the discarded plastic medical packaging—including medicine caps, tube connectors, and vial lids, all of it sterile. At the suggestion of friend and artist Vanessa Herman-Landau, they used the plastic pieces to create this 4 ft. by 9 ft. mural, which is featured on AJN‘s May issue Art of Nursing page (click through to the PDF version for the best image).

[…]

2018-05-11T08:40:36-04:00May 11th, 2018|Nursing, Patients|0 Comments
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When Clinical Nursing Students Are Bullied by Staff Nurses

A disillusioning experience.

In this month’s Viewpoint column, clinical nurse instructor John Burkley describes a disturbing incident in which his clinical nursing students were treated with dismissiveness and rudeness by a nurse on a unit to which they’d been assigned. The students ultimately left this early encounter with hospital nursing—which took place at a teaching hospital—with varying degrees of disillusionment.

Nurses may need to develop a certain inner resilience to handle the physical, emotional, moral, intellectual, and organizational challenges of their profession. But bullying won’t help them develop it.

Alienating future nurses does lasting harm. What can be done?

As Burkley notes, negative clinical experiences can have a formative influence on aspiring nurses—they “are alienating, contribute negatively to learning, and should not be tolerated.”

Unfortunately, while many nurses are welcoming and supportive of clinical students, such incidents of subtle or overt bullying appear to be common. Drawing on his own experience as well as current literature, Burkley offers a few possible ways nursing schools and teaching hospitals can address this issue. […]

2018-04-30T08:23:05-04:00April 30th, 2018|Ethics, Nursing, nursing career, nursing students|4 Comments
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On Ethical Short-Term Medical Missions: An Argument from Experience

“In the absence of clearly articulated intentions and approaches, how can we be sure that short-term medical missions won’t have unintended long- or short-term consequences?”

Garrett Matlick

That’s the central question posed by Garrett Matlick’s Viewpoint essay, “Short-Term Medical Missions: Toward an Ethical Approach,” in the April issue of AJN. Matlick, currently enrolled in the Family Nurse Practitioner/Master of Public Health Program at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, Baltimore, had an opportunity to observe short-term medical missions (STMMs) that succeeded as well as some that failed.

What works and what doesn’t?

Having considered the current paucity of quality research on STMMs and their effects, Matlick both calls for more rigorous future research and offers a few basic considerations that he believes should be applied to all STMMs that offer direct care to local communities. His case is immensely strengthened by the use of multiple real world examples he observed or participated in while in Cambodia.

AJN sometimes receives Reflections essay submissions from nursing students and others about their experiences in STMMs in various countries. (Unlike the Viewpoint column discussed in this post, Reflections essays tend to focus more on personal reflections and story than on making an argument.) Some submissions reflect a nuanced awareness of limitations […]

2018-04-11T11:53:31-04:00April 11th, 2018|Ethics, nursing students, Public health|0 Comments
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‘A Story Bigger Than Himself’: Easter on the Oncology Unit

“Kevin refused to make cancer the meaning of his days. . . . He showed me that the smallest gesture has the possibility to create expansive love. His kindness reminded many of the patients that they hadn’t lost value and worth, no matter how humbled they had been by cancer.”

That’s from the lovely Reflections essay in the new (April) issue of AJN and is written by nurse Barbara Adams. The article recounts a memorable Easter episode on the oncology unit in which a 26-year-old firefighter demonstrates a different kind of bravery and selflessness. […]

2018-03-30T08:34:03-04:00March 30th, 2018|Nursing, nursing stories, Patients|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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