AJN Quote of the Week
To read the editorial in full: http://ow.ly/UlFoh
Final Connection: An ICU Nurse Revises Her Feelings About Cell Phones
Illustration by Denny Bond. All rights reserved.
Many of us have a love-hate relationship to smartphones, and each person (and generation) draws the line in the sand between invasiveness and usefulness in a different place. Cynthia Stock, the critical care nurse who wrote the Reflections essay in the November issue of AJN, “Final Connection,” starts her brief and moving story with honesty about such matters:
On Monday, if you had asked me how I feel about cell phones, I would have come up with this: I hate to listen to the drone of conversation coming from the person next to me on the treadmill at the gym. I don’t care about trouble with the HOA. I don’t care about a son who can’t decide on a career as a director or an actor. I work out to smooth the kinks in my soul from a job that requires me to navigate a relationship with life and death.
Today, ask me how I feel about cell phones. . . .
A good essay or story often centers around a reversal of some sort. What the protagonist believed may not be so true after all, or may be more complicated than first thought. As you can probably guess, […]
Violence Against Women: Old Stories Repeat, But Some Progress
By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief
Emergency lights #5, by DrStarbuck via Flickr
It seemed ironic that, during this month of domestic violence awareness, a Florida judge showed little awareness of the fear that intimate partner violence can instill. Judge Jerri Collins came under attack from victim advocacy groups after she jailed a young mother who was a victim of domestic violence for failing to show up in court to press charges against her husband. According to various news reports, the distraught woman was afraid to face her husband in court for his sentencing to 16 days for choking and threatening her with a knife. Advocates say the judge’s action sends a message that may result in many women not bringing charges against abusers.
According to the CDC report Intimate Partner Violence Surveillance: Uniform Definitions And Recommended Data Elements (version 2.0; 2015), “over 1 in 5 women (22.3%) and nearly 1 in 7 men (14.0%) have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime.” The real numbers are almost certainly higher, as many victims are afraid to report their partners for fear of retaliation once the abuser is released from jail. There […]
The First 50 Years of NPs: An Illustrated Timeline Shows Triumphs, Continuing Practice Barriers
By Amanda Anderson, a critical care nurse and graduate student in New York City currently doing a graduate placement at AJN.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the nurse practitioner (NP) role. Themes of innovation and sustainability emerge as one examines an illustrated timeline of the history of NPs in AJN‘s October issue and reads the accompanying text. (The first section of the timeline is below. Click to enlarge.)
How did this advanced practice nursing role come into being? As the timeline explains, ” [d]uring the 1960s, health care was becoming increasingly specialized. Physicians were moving out of general practice and into more complex and lucrative specialties, creating a void in primary care and prevention services, and in care of the chronically ill.”
To fill this void, public health nurse Loretta Ford, working with Dr. Henry Silver at the University of Colorado in 1965, launched the first NP certificate program, a seminal moment in the history of this prevention-driven, primary-care-focused nursing role.
Ford wrote about the compelling need for NPs. Calling health care a capital investment, Ford said:
“We have failed to realize the full potential of professional nurses to improve the quality of life. This group has great unused potential for bringing about health care reforms. Properly prepared and effectively utilized, nurses could advance the […]
Case Studies in Effective Care Coordination by Nurses in Rural Kansas
“I did not have a clue how to proceed.”
Care coordinator Burlay Parks meets with a patient at Greeley County Health Services in Tribune, Kansas. Photo by Chrysanne Grund.
The opening sentence of “Pathfinding on the Frontier,” the In the Community column in the October issue of AJN, alludes to the confusion even the most organized and savvy person sometimes feels when navigating our health care system.
In rural settings, referrals to specialists from primary care providers can be difficult for patients and families to follow up on, sometimes requiring that patients travel great distances.
Patient care coordination has been shown to decrease the number of ED visits and hospitalizations. The authors of this article explore care coordination in two Kansas counties, presenting three case studies showing how a nurse care coordinator—as part of a program at a rural primary care practice funded by a two-year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—resolved complex issues for seriously or chronically ill patients involving medications, specialists, and diagnoses. […]