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

Why Do Needlestick Injuries Still Haunt Us 10 Years after Protective Legislation?

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

In 2008, a survey by the American Nurses Association (ANA) indicated that 64% of nurses reported a needlestick injury. That startling figure was reported by Marla Weston, CEO of the ANA, in her opening remarks last week when the ANA relaunched “Safe Needles Save Lives,” its campaign for use of safe needles in the workplace. The campaign originally launched ten years ago and was instrumental in passage of Public Law 106-430, the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act, which requires employers to “identify, evaluate, and make use of effective safer medical devices.” And while there have been inroads towards use of safer needle systems, the 2008 data show that much needs to be done.

Speaking from experience. Karen Daley, the ANA president, has long been a leader in advocating for safer needle systems. She sustained a needlestick injury while working in the ER a decade ago and contracted hepatitis and HIV infection. Her home state, Massachusetts, has been in the forefront of legislation. According to Angela Laramie from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, all hospitals in Massachusetts are mandated to use sharps injury prevention devices, maintain a log of any injuries, and submit an annual report to the state. Yet, state data show an average of 3,000 needlestick injuries yearly—and more than half of these are with devices that lack safe […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:15:02-05:00November 8th, 2010|Nursing|7 Comments

A Note on the Life Cycle of Blogs

This is just to say that we realize that personal blogs by nurses have life cycles. They wax and they wane. While a core few are updated consistently, with the occasional gap for a vacation, and live on and on, evolving their appearances or keeping the old reliable appearance, many more simply die a quiet natural death. In many cases, no one plays taps. They served their purpose, they were noticed by a few or many of us, and then they quietly grew quiet.

Sometimes the bloggers say goodbye. Sometimes they just stop as if abducted by aliens. Or by their lives, or jobs, or illness, or death, or families, or by an alter ego. Well, that last bit is just speculation. Often the blogs live on, like deserted homes with the furniture still in them, never growing dusty, never surrounded by weeds or visible decay yet somehow sad. Or not so sad: testaments to an episode in a life in which a voice was raised with humor or outrage or questioning in a solitary room with a keyboard somewhere after the kids were in bed or while the DVR recorded the latest episode of something or other or early in the morning while the plows scraped the streets of the night’s snowfall.

Some nurse bloggers are more bloggers than nurses, […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:15:04-05:00November 5th, 2010|healthcare social media, narratives, nursing perspective|6 Comments

‘Goodbye Cherry Ames’ – On Whether Nurses Change the World

For a moment of respite from the beeps and buzzes, I walked back to the stillness of my office, wondering how I’d ever questioned the reason for the toughness and practicality of the nurses when I first came here. How could they be otherwise and survive?

But it wasn’t even 15 minutes later that a nurse about my age stood in my doorway and proudly introduced her college-age son. “Kids today have great opportunities,” she said. “He wants to change the world.” Then she looked away and said, “Me, I just do a job.”

I looked at her in disbelief. “You really feel you aren’t changing the world too, the world of these patients? People who come here with a chronic disease—who could view it as a life sentence? Don’t you realize that you help them know they can actually live with it, resume their lives, move ahead?”

She listened, but seemed unconvinced. Her eyes shining, she replied, “It’s me who learns from them, who’s come to realize that if I’m ever in a situation like theirs, I can go on.”

That’s an excerpt from “Goodbye Cherry Ames,” the Reflections essay in the November issue of AJN. It’s by a social worker who planned to become a nurse. Click through (the PDF version is best), read the short essay, and (if you’re feeling inspired) let us know in the comments below what you would have told that discouraged nurse.—JM, senior editor/blog editor

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:15:05-05:00November 2nd, 2010|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment

Harm Reduction or Stigmatization: What’s Your Approach to Drug-Addicted Patients?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDZhVnR3HC8]

By Alison Bulman, senior editorial coordinator

How much of your nursing education focused on how to handle drug addicts and substance abuse? Probably not much, according to speakers at a recent event I attended with my colleague Christine Moffa, AJN’s clinical editor, at the Center for Health, Media, and Policy at Hunter College.

The event was focused around a clip (longer than the one above) from “Bevel Up: Drugs, Users and Outreach Nursing,” an award-winning film by Canadian documentary filmmaker Nettie Wild. (A photo of a street nurse from the program appeared on AJN’s cover in July 2009, along with an article about the program.) Fiona Gold, BA, RN, and Juanita Maginley, MA, BSN, RN, whose work in Vancouver is the subject of the film, spoke on the panel about the value of harm reduction and about the systemic flaws and tendency to stigmatize drug addicts that prevent health care from reaching this population.

The powerful clip showed street nurses searching the city’s alleys and housing complexes for drug addicts, dealers, and sex workers. They carry bags full of syringes, condoms, and crack pipe mouthpieces which they deliver to those willing to take them. They ask street patients whether they might be pregnant, have unsafe sex, may have a disease, and if they want to have the nurses draw blood for testing.

The outreach project started in response to Vancouver’s alarming increase in HIV infections. Medical services were not reaching the most vulnerable people, so nurses devised a plan to […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2017-06-28T15:00:01-04:00November 1st, 2010|nursing perspective, patient engagement, Public health|23 Comments

Finding a Job as a Nurse In a Digital Age — and Keeping It

Will at Drawing on Experience manages to post a new comic almost every day. A regular theme is the progress of his career—having finished his accelerated nursing program, he’s now looking for a job. To the left is a thumbnail of a recent drawing he did about one of the more annoying aspects of the process (click the image to visit his blog and see a larger version).

Of course, this isn’t the first downturn we’ve had in the U.S. economy; as AJN clinical editor Christine Moffa wrote back in May, newly minted nurses have struggled to find work before. Once you actually do get a job as a nurse, there’s the small matter of doing it for the first time. Or for the second or third time—but as if it’s the first time, at least in some respects. The October Reflections essay, “Paper Chart Nurse,” gives another perspective on the ways computers have changed the lives of nurses. It’s by an oncology nurse who returned to practice two years ago, at age 66. Her struggles with adapting to using an electronic medical record system were at times profoundly discouraging; she just wasn’t as proficient as the younger nurses at computer use, despite all her skills and experience. Have a look and please, tell us what you think.—JM, senior editor