About Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

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

On the Nurses Walk

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

As some of you may have seen by my tweets over the last week or so, I was in Australia attending a meeting, the International Academy of Nurse Editors gathering in Coolum (August 11 to 14). We discussed editorial and publishing matters—interesting if you’re “in the biz,” but I imagine most nurses would roll their eyes if I discussed it here.

(Side note, to those interested: there was much discussion about the use and misuse of journal rankings and impact factors and the sustainability of society and clinical practice journals if journal rankings are to be the primary factor in deciding where one should publish one’s work. As long as faculty tenure and promotion are tied to publishing in higher-ranked research and “scholarly” academic journals—and for a thought-provoking discussion on how one defines “scholarly,” see this 2006 editorial (click through to the PDF version) by AJN’s editor-in-chief emeritus, Diana Mason—researchers and scholars will seek to publish in those places, as opposed to in clinical journals that are more widely read by practicing nurses. You’ll hear more from us soon on that discussion.)

Sydney: a proving ground for nurses. So, as long as I was halfway around the world, I took some […]

2016-11-21T13:16:01-05:00August 23rd, 2010|Nursing|0 Comments
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When Timely Nurse Removal of Urinary Catheters Reduces UTI Rate

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor

Ever since we started the Cultivating Quality column at AJN, manuscripts featuring evidence-based quality improvement projects have been pouring in. There is a lot of great work being done at the bedside by practicing nurses, and this column provides the opportunity to share their ideas with others.

This month’s Cultivating Quality installment, Reducing Rates of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection, comes from Joyce Wenger, MS, RN, the infection control performance improvement coordinator at Lancaster General Hospital, Lancaster, PA. According to the CDC, urinary tract infections (UTIs) account for more than 30% of hospital-associated infections, and almost all are “caused by instrumentation of the urinary tract.” Nursing staff were able to reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) rates using a three-pronged approach “beginning with education, progressing to tests of new and better products, and ending with the nurse-driven protocol for catheter removal.”

That last part is my favorite. In most facilities a doctor or nurse practitioner has to write an order before a Foley catheter can be removed from a patient. Patients may end up spending several days at increased risk for UTI because of an unnecessary urinary catheter in place. This hospital came up with a plan to give nurses the autonomy to remove them—which makes sense, since they’re the ones checking the patient daily. The team at Lancaster General created the following list of criteria that patients need to meet in order to maintain […]

2017-02-24T14:36:31-05:00August 19th, 2010|Nursing|1 Comment
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Dog Days of August Blog Roundup

What are nurses blogging about this August? (And why do they call these the “dog days”?) A random sampling of what crossed our desks:

The labor and delivery RN who writes the blog At Your Cervix has a nice short post this week on a team of nurses working together to avert a potential catastrophic event.

Artist, writer, nurse, JParadisiRN has a new post that takes the Steven Slater flight attendant incident as a jumping-off point to discuss what drives nurses crazy and unnecessarily slows down work flow. Her answer, in this post at least: waiting for the physician’s order.

Nursetopia writes of a few of her favorite things about being a nurse. (Preprinted physician order forms are one of them, to refer back to the previous post mentioned… So is working on Christmas Day.)

GuitarGirl RN asks why, why, why about the patients who come to the ER where she works. Why do they believe the Internet over the advice of their physicians? Why do they see a crisis when nothing is happening? And so on…

Ok, and just to balance things out, here’s one from Anonymous Doc, who asks why people in the end stages of terminal illness go on believing in long-shot treatments, and physicians go on giving them, despite the fact that he’s never seen a single one result in a miracle. In other words, when is hope justified, and when is it less […]

2016-11-21T13:16:04-05:00August 18th, 2010|nursing perspective|2 Comments
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A Nurse So Cold

Al is weak, frail, and most important, scared. At 55 years of age, after 34 years providing care, she finds herself in a major medical center— on her back, staring at ceiling tiles. The woman who’s always had skin as pure as a china doll now ironically has a porcelain hip. She’s just 36 hours out from a total hip replacement, and she knows something is wrong. She feels her heart pounding, she can hear the beating in her ears, feel the pulsing on her pillow. She rings the call bell to ask for the nurse to check her. An hour comes and goes, and no one comes to her room.

That’s from the August Reflections essay, titled “Miss Orienting Nurse.” The author is Linda Pellico, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Nursing, who tells of her chagrin at witnessing rote care provided to a hospitalized friend by a former student of hers. We hope you’ll read the essay and let us know your own experiences as a nurse or patient—or both. How many of us will someday have to rely on such cold and distant figures as the nurse and MD portrayed in this essay?-JM, senior editor

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2016-11-21T13:16:06-05:00August 16th, 2010|career, nursing perspective, students|2 Comments
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Sand, Surf, and CF

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, clinical editor at AJN

Ever wonder how the staff at AJN decide what to put on our covers? We wanted an image that celebrated the summer, but we also wanted a tie-in with our CE feature. The August cover depicting children running down the beach at Sunny Shores Sea Camp, a four-day summer camp that caters to children with cystic fibrosis (CF) and their families, is a perfect fit. 

Some former colleagues once volunteered at the camp. Several years ago I was working on a pediatric floor where several of our patients had CF, ranging in age from toddlers to adults in their 30s. CF was long considered a childhood disease, due to a short life expectancy associated with it; even though life expectancy has drastically increased, these patients are still often treated on pediatric units, regardless of their age. This month’s CE, Original Research: Parents and Children with Cystic Fibrosis, is by Paula Harff Lomas, MAS, RN, CCRP, and Susan B. Fowler, PhD, RN, CNRN. According to Lomas and Fowler,

“More people with cystic fibrosis are living longer, reaching milestones like starting college, embarking on careers, and marrying. Many adults with cystic fibrosis are interested in starting families; one recent review notes that the number of live births to women with the disease has increased significantly. Thus, there’s a greater need for age-appropriate care in areas such as fertility and reproduction.”

The purpose of this descriptive study was to […]

2016-11-21T13:16:07-05:00August 13th, 2010|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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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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