About Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

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

Diabetes, Hypertension, Obesity. . .The Case of the Missing School Nurse

By Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN

I was amazed by a MarketWatch article this week about the overall lack of school nurses. According to the article, the National Association of School Nurses recommends that one nurse be available for every 750 well children. Many states operate with ratios greatly exceeding that number. For example, in 2009 Michigan had one nurse for every 4,836 children. To give credit where it is due, that same year Vermont provided one nurse for every 311 students. As a nurse, and a parent, I find this data frightening. Not only are there fewer trained professional nurses available to our children every year, but approximately 30% of American children suffer from chronic conditions such as type 1 or type 2 diabetes, asthma, and high blood pressure.

Having more nurses available to patients in an inpatient setting has been proven to promote better patient outcomes. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the same is probably true for school nurses.

Lousy timing. This acute shortage of school nurses could not come at a worse time. With more families than ever feeling the pinch of the recession, children are not immune to the oft-reported outcomes related to our current overall economic condition. Less money can […]

2016-11-21T13:16:09-05:00August 11th, 2010|Nursing|7 Comments
Read More

Social Media and Nurses — Does Betty White Have a Point?

50 Social Media Icons/Ivan Walsh, via Flickr

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

I’ve been extremely busy and have had trouble finding time to write a post for this blog. And it’s not enough just to write a post—we’ve got to think about what should go on Facebook and what should be Tweeted, whether we should do a mention in the eNewsletter and if a topic deserves a spot on AJN’s home page. All this communication takes time.

When she hosted Saturday Night Live, the inimitable Betty White acknowledged all the fans on Facebook who were the driving force behind the campaign to have her become the host. She confessed she didn’t know what Facebook was, and said, “Now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it seems like a huge waste of time.”

Facebook and Twitter sort of remind me of the Valentine’s Day card exchange in grammar school—everyone bought boxes of 100 cards (actually, more like small, cheap postcards) so you could give them out and, hopefully, get as many in return. It was about the number of cards you could collect—even if they were from classmates you didn’t care about or even disliked. You felt good if you had lots of cards and people […]

2016-11-21T13:16:12-05:00August 9th, 2010|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective|5 Comments
Read More

Still Confused About Health Care Reform? Welcome to the Club

By Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN. Peggy is an infusion practice manager who occasionally writes for this blog.

I admit that I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with the ongoing discussions around health care reform. It sounds like I’m not the only one. FierceHealthcare.com recently reported that the results of a Harris Poll suggest many Americans remain befuddled about the implications of the Affordable Care Act passed in March:

“Here are some areas [w]here a general cluelessness among those polled prevailed:

  • 82 percent think the bill will result in rationing of healthcare or that it might (it won’t);
  • 79 percent don’t know or aren’t sure if drug companies will pay an annual fee (they will);
  • 73 percent don’t know the law establishes a new tax on the sale of medical devices;
  • 66 percent don’t know or aren’t sure if the legislation will result in insurance exchanges where people can shop for insurance (it will); and
  • 63 percent either aren’t sure or don’t know if the new law will increase the number of people elibible for Medicaid (it will).

The chairman of the Harris Poll is quoted in the article: “It seems people are still reacting to the rhetoric, not the substance of what is in the bill . . .”

Considering the results of this poll, what do you think it would take to get the public up to speed on the facts? Do Americans not care, or is it too overwhelming? As a nurse, I feel I should be more informed about the law. And I’m going to spend […]

2016-11-21T13:16:17-05:00August 5th, 2010|health care policy|1 Comment
Read More

Watch Out for Dengue Fever in Travelers

By Diana J. Mason, PhD, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief emeritus

You may have heard that in late July the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an advisory on dengue infection, which can lead to dengue fever or dengue hemorrhagic fever, noting that dengue is becoming an epidemic in tropical and subtropical areas of the world, with recent or ongoing outbreaks occurring in Puerto Rico; in Key West, Florida; and the Caribbean. It’s particularly important for nurses to be alert for symptoms of dengue fever among people who have returned from travel to tropical areas. Symptoms may include fever, eye pain, joint pain, rash, and bleeding. The greatest danger is from dengue hemorrhagic fever, which can lead to death.

For more on dengue infection (including its detection, treatment, and prevention), see the April 2008 article on the topic in AJN. And as always, please let us know here if you’ve encountered it recently yourself as a clinician—or traveler.

Bookmark and Share

2016-11-21T13:16:19-05:00August 2nd, 2010|Nursing|0 Comments
Read More

Should We Be Wary of Magic Pills for Shift Work Sleep Disorder?

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editorial director/interim editor-in-chief

Nurses of course work shifts—in my first year in the ER, I rotated monthly: one month on days, one on evenings, and one on nights. Nights were the hardest—coming to work at 11:30 pm when everyone else was still partying or heading to bed. Then trying to sleep in a 3rd floor apartment on Second Avenue in Manhattan—you could still hear all the street noises with the windows closed. You never quite felt yourself on a night shift.

But eventually you found ways to deal with sleeping—you got used to the noise and the light (earplugs and sleep masks helped). And then there was coffee or Coke or Pepsi and chocolate; for some it was NoDoz because they didn’t like coffee. Many of us found it worked well to sleep once kids went off to school and until they got home; that allowed for some errands to get done and for some family time at dinner. Then, a quick “laydown” for a nap around  9 pm for an hour or so was enough to get us through the night shift. Colleagues without children would head right out to do chores early in the morning and then head home to sleep from 1 pm to 9 pm. Summers were great—we’d […]

2016-11-21T13:16:25-05:00July 23rd, 2010|Nursing|1 Comment
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

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.
Go to Top