About Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

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

Appreciating War-Time Nurses the World Over

Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN, an occasional contributor to this blog, works as a clinical liaison support manager of infusion, and is currently based in Brisbane, Australia.

Vivian Bullwinkel / Wikipedia

“Chins up, girls. I’m proud of you and I love you all.”

According to a survivor’s account, these words were spoken by an Australian nurse, Irene Drummond, on Radji Beach, February 16, 1942. This crescent-shaped stretch of white sand is in the Banka Strait near Banka Island, Indonesia. Ms. Drummond and 21 fellow Australian nurses (plus one civilian) walked into the warm sea holding hands, creating a human chain. As their feet touched the surf they were riddled with bullets from Japanese machine guns set up on the beach behind them.

The Banka Strait was an escape route from Singapore and the larger region just before and during the Japanese occupation of Singapore during World War II. The Aussie nurses, some of the very last military personnel to be evacuated from Singapore before the occupation, had snuck away under at night aboard the Vyner Brook in February 1942. They were among approximately 200 passengers attempting to escape to safer ground, but Japanese pilots bombed and sunk the ship. Civilians, military personnel, and nurses died during the attack on the Vyner Brooke, and many of the same escaped into lifeboats. Some of the survivors made it to the shore and ultimately ended up on Radji Beach.

As an American nurse living and working in Australia […]

2016-11-21T13:08:54-05:00November 14th, 2012|Nursing, nursing history|9 Comments
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Veterans, Nurses, and PTSD

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Vietnam Women’s Memorial, Washington, DC. Courtesy of Kay Schwebke.

Veteran’s Day was officially yesterday, November 11, but many will mark it today with a day off from work and school and for some reason, shopping. I’m not sure when or why Veterans Day became associated with bargains, but it seems especially out of place this year, as we hear more and more about the issues being faced by the thousands of new veterans. As I note in my November editorial, an Institute of Medicine report estimates that 13% to 20% of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan “have or may develop PTSD.”

Last month, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Brigadier General (Ret.) Bill Bester, former chief of the Army Nurse Corps. I interviewed General Bester about his career and veterans’ health issues. The general was engaging and candid about the difficulties returning veterans face and he spoke about the post-deployment transition period that can be difficult for returning veterans.

He also spoke about his current activities as a senior advisor for the Jonas Foundation’s Veterans Healthcare Program, which supports scholarships for nurses pursuing doctoral degrees related to veteran-specific health issues. The program supports nurses pursuing both PhD as well as DNP degrees and hopes to focus on researching the issues as well as implementing best practices.

With many veterans accessing care outside the VA system, it’s important for nurses in all […]

2016-11-21T13:08:55-05:00November 12th, 2012|Nursing|0 Comments
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One of Many Hurricane Sandy Nursing Stories


Margot Condon is an NYU Langone Medical Center neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurse whose story “went viral” this past week. She was photographed in her efforts to preserve the life of an eight-hour-old infant, as part of a team that evacuated the child down nine flights of stairs. Click the image above to go to the CNN interview with Condon. Such extreme life-saving tasks may not be in a nurse’s job description, but they go to the heart of the nursing profession and its ethos of caring and commitment.

This is just one story from Hurricane Sandy. We know there are many others we will be hearing about in the coming weeks. Here’s a short description from the CNN page with the video:

In the photo, she’s holding a small baby…and pumping air into its lungs outside the hospital during the emergency evacuation. Backup generators failed during Superstorm Sandy and the medical staff was tasked with safely transferring everyone to other facilities.

It took a team of at least six people to get the fragile patient safely down nine flights of stairs in the dark. They had to coordinate their movements, each with a different job. The doctor was there, the security guard with an oxygen tank, the father and others assisting. The baby’s mother was still hospitalized during the dramatic mission.

Condon, a nurse for 36 years, says she remained focused on each step they needed to take, but has never seen […]

2016-11-21T13:09:00-05:00November 5th, 2012|Nursing|1 Comment
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In Sandy’s Wake, Emerging Nurse Stories and Some Resources for Now and Next Time

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

Whether the National Weather Service officially categorized Sandy as a tropical cyclone or a hurricane, the damage it caused was unprecedented as it made its way through the mid-Atlantic area and up through the Hudson Valley and New England.

I’m one of millions without power, but consider myself lucky, given the horrific damage sustained by many in neighboring areas. The severity of the storm really hit home as I learned about hospital closings—as any nurse or physician will tell you, it’s not something done without a great deal of deliberation, as moving severely ill patients carries its own significant risks.

In Brooklyn, Coney Island Hospital, a city-owned facility, was closed. In Manhattan, New York Downtown Hospital and the Manhattan VA Medical Center moved or discharged patients before the storm hit. And because of storm damage, New York University Langone Medical Center and more recently, Bellevue Hospital Center, the 275-year-old flagship hospital of New York’s municipal hospital system, were evacuated.

Stories are emerging about the heroic efforts of hospital staff who worked through the storm, evacuating patients down many flights of stairs, using plastic sleds as they slid patients down as many as 17 flights in some instances. The stories reminded me of those I heard from nurses at Charity Hospital in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and from nurses from St John’s Medical Center in Joplin, Missouri, which was hit by a tornado, or […]

2016-11-21T13:09:01-05:00November 2nd, 2012|Nursing|1 Comment
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Calling All Hurricane Sandy Nursing Stories

Hurricane Sandy, October 28/ NASA photo

AJN‘s offices in Manhattan remain closed today, with no subway service and various continuing power outages in many areas where the staff live in New Jersey, Manhattan, and other surrounding areas. We’re all keeping up as well as we can with our production and editing processes. Meanwhile the presidential election, sure to have a substantial impact on health care in the U.S., creeps ever closer. Please let us know in the comments section any stories you have of nurses and their experiences during Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath. Or share photos. We’d love to get a sense of how it went for nurses out there who were affected by the storm, and we hope to provide open access to some of our disaster care and preparedness articles in the next couple days. AJN Oct. cover, detail

The editors

2016-11-21T13:09:02-05:00October 31st, 2012|Nursing|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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